No one can help us to achieve the intimate isolation by which we find our secret worlds, so mysterious, rich and full. If others intervene, it is destroyed. This degree of thought, which we attain by freeing ourselves from the external world, must be fed by the inner spirit, and our surroundings cannot influence us in any way other than to leave us in peace.

The ‘absorbent mind’ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!

The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.

The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them.

Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us.