The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.

How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: "your will must disappear and mine prevail!"-how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?

Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk about -- came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

Of all things love is the most potent.

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.

The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.