“Much of what we call History is the success stories of madmen.”

“It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call 'motivation'. A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing.”

“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.”

“Fear, boredom, and resistance--they all go to makewhat we call stupid children.”

“A life worth living, and work worth doing - that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education.”

“We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions -- if they have any -- and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.”

“I doubt very much if it is possible to teach anyone to understand anything,that is to say, to see how various parts of it relate to all the other parts, tohave a model of the structure in one's mind. We can give other peoplenames, and lists, but we cannot give them our mental structures; they mustbuild their own.”