“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.”

This is the age in which language and movement develop. The child must be safeguarded in order that these activities may develop freely.

The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one’s own hand – that is what is necessary.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.

Suddenly, the child becomes very sensitive to the rudeness and humiliations which he had previously suffered with patient indifference.

It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted.

How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment, establishing himself lord of the earth, and laying the foundations of civilization.

The maternal duty of suckling her own children, prescribed to mothers by hygienists, is based on a physiological principle: the mother’s milk nourishes an infant more perfectly than any other.

The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.

At three years of age, the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of education in the school.

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.

Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.

When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

Men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.

I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.

Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

It’s nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there’s something playable there, and if it’s interesting to do, then that’s nice.

I don’t discuss basketball. I dictate basketball. I’m not interested in philosophy classes.