Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Education in the light of present-day knowledge and need calls for some spirited and creative innovations both in the substance and the purpose of current pedagogy.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

We have no firm hold on any knowledge or philosophy that can lift us out of our difficulties.

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

No matter how mistaken Communist ideas may be, the experience and knowledge gained by trying them out have given a tremendous impetus to thought and imagination.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.