It Is A Rare Privilege To Watch

I Am Beginning To Suspect All Elaborate And Special Systems Of Education. They Seem To Me To Be Built Upon The Supposition That Every Child Is A Kind Of Idiot Who Must Be Taught To Think. Whereas If The Child Is Left To Himself, He Will Think More And Better , If Less "showily." Let Him Come And Go Freely, Let Him Touch Real Things And Combine His Impressions For Himself... Teaching Fills The Mind With Artificial Associations That Must Be Got Rid Of Before The Child Can Develop Independent Ideas Out Of Actual Experiences.

Too Often, I Think, Children Are Required To Write Before They Have Anything To Say. Teach Them To Think And Read And Talk Without Self-repression, And They Will Write Because They Cannot Help It.

Is It Not True, Then, That My Life With All Its Limitation Touches At Many Points The Life Of The World Beautiful? Everything Has Its Wonders, Even Darkness And Silence, And I Learn, Whatever State I May Be, Therein To Be Content.

I Cannot Explain It; But When Difficulties Arise, I Am Not Perplexed Or Doubtful. I Know How To Meet Them.

We Have No Firm Hold On Any Knowledge Or Philosophy That Can Lift Us Out Of Our Difficulties.