“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”

We await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through.

Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?

We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading.

Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

The possibility of observing the developments of the psychical life of the child as natural phenomena and experimental reactions transforms the school itself in action into a kind of scientific laboratory for the psychogenetic study of man.

We are not created only to enjoy the world, we are created in order to evolve the cosmos.

The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature.

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.

Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.

Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on.

There can be no ‘graduated exercises in drawing’ leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit.

All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working.

Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education!

To have power is to possess the capacity to control or direct change. All forms of leadership must make use of power.

In order to find reality, each must search for his own universe, look for the details that contribute to this reality7 that one feels under the surface of things.

As far as unwed mothers on welfare are concerned, it seems to me that they must be capable of some other form of labor.

They must be very careful and think about enrolling in training first, they must make a thoughtful decision before actually doing it.

Of course, everyone knows that I’m also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.

When I use the term “complex realism”, what I’m suggesting is that the writer must be realist, always realist, but not realist in the sense we have usually used the term in literature.

If you can serve everyone who visits you, you must be doing well in business.

You must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.