“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.”

We cannot create observers by saying ‘observe’, but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

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.

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.

One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.

You feel vulnerable when you hear things that are not being said.

The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.

It’s not easy being a father, but I’ve been allowed a comeback.

The idea of being a foreign correspondent and wandering the world and witnessing great events.

It never happened to me and I never saw it happen to anyone else.

The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.