If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.
We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.
Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.
The child's mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being, and every insect has it.
When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.
The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.
We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading.
It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.
The selfsame procedure which zoology, a branch of the natural sciences, applies to the study of animals, anthropology must apply to the study of man; and by doing so, it enrolls itself as a science in the field of nature.
The hand is, in the highest degree, a human characteristic. It is man's organ of grasp and of the sense of touch, while in animals these two functions are relegated to the mouth.
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.'
Many people must have noticed the intense attention given by children to the conversation of grown-ups when they cannot possibly be understanding a word of what they hear. They are trying to get hold of words, and they often demonstrate this fact by repeating joyously some word which they have been able to grasp.
I have for many years interested myself in the study of children from three years upwards. Many have urged me to continue my studies on the same lines with older children. But what I have felt to be most vital is the need for more careful and particularized study of the tiny child.