The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.

As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.

If an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.

Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher...is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

When the child goes out, it is the world itself that offers itself to him. Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them up in cupboards.