The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.
Education is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.
Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.
