A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing.

The goal is to teach in such a way as to produce the most learning from the least teaching.

We should think about what we mean by literacy. If you say, "He's a very literate person," what you really mean is that he knows a lot, thinks a lot, has a certain frame of mind that comes through reading and knowing about various subjects.The major route open to literacy has been through reading and writing text. But we're seeing new media offer richer ways to explore knowledge and communicate, through sound and pictures.

For what is important when we give children a theorem to use is not that they should memorize it. What matters most is that by growing up with a few very powerful theorems one comes to appreciate how certain ideas can be used as tools to think with over a lifetime. One learns to enjoy and to respect the power of powerful ideas. One learns that the most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas.

You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it.

There's a tendency to make jazzy educational software that's very uniform and therefore just like school. I'd like to see a company develop software for rebellious kids who don't want to go to school.