The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

When you teach a child something you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself.

Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand, that which we allow him to discover for himself will remain with him visible for the rest of his life.

Play is the work of childhood.

Children require long, uniterrupted periods of play and exploration

Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.

Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.

Teaching means creating situations where structures can be discovered.

Experience precedes understanding.

Censorship like charity should begin at home but unlike charity it should end there.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.

Oh, and once, when I was in the Marines, I got a perfect score on my physical fitness test.

Money isn't everything, but it is when you start thinking about putting money away for your retirement days.

It’s just a shame that it had to be played that way.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.

The walls are covered -crammed- with writing. No. Not writing. They are covered with a single four-letter word that has been inscribed over and over, on every available surface. Love.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

The true leader makes each team member twice the person they were before.