Jean Piaget

"According to Claparède, feelings appoint a goal for behaviour, while intelligence merely provides the means (the "technique"). But there exists an awareness of ends as well as of means, and this continually modifies the goals of action."

- Jean Piaget

"What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see."

- Jean Piaget

"A response is thus a particular case of interaction between the external world and the subject, but unlike physiological interactions, which are of a material nature and involve an internal change in the bodies which are present, the responses studied by psychology are of a functional nature and are achieved at greater and greater distances in space (perception, etc.) and in time (memory, etc.) besides following more and more complex paths (reversals, detours, etc.)."

- Jean Piaget

"Every structure is to be thought of as a particular form of equilibrium, more or less stable within its restricted field and losing its stability on reaching the limits of the field."

- Jean Piaget

"We shall simply say then that every action involves an energetic or affective aspect and a structural or cognitive aspect, which, in fact, unites the different points of view already mentioned."

- Jean Piaget

"Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is known, or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds?"

- Jean Piaget

"The principal 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."

- Jean Piaget

"If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society."

- Jean Piaget

"Play is the work of childhood."

- Jean Piaget

"Play is the answer to how anything new comes about."

- Jean Piaget

"I could not think without writing."

- Jean Piaget

"When you teach a child something, you take away forever the chance for him to discover it himself."

- Jean Piaget

"It is true that a fact can sometimes appear to resemble an “accident,” as in the case of the apple that fell near Newton, but the accident only became a “fact” because Newton asked certain questions."

- Jean Piaget

"Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves."

- Jean Piaget

"The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers."

- Jean Piaget

"Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. 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 by himself will remain with him visibly for the rest of his life."

- Jean Piaget

"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; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered."

- Jean Piaget

"Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely."

- Jean Piaget

"Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation."

- Jean Piaget

"The individual acts only if he experiences a need, i.e., if the equilibrium between the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and action tends to re-establish the equilibrium, i.e., to re-adapt the organism."

- Jean Piaget

"To avoid the difficulties of teleological language, adaptation must be described as an equilibrium between the action of the organism on the environment and vice versa."

- Jean Piaget

"Every psychological explanation comes sooner or later to lean either on biology or on logic (or on sociology, but this in turn leads to the same alternatives)."

- Jean Piaget

"Logic is the mirror of thought, and not vice versa."

- Jean Piaget

"Intelligence, the most plastic and at the same time the most durable structural equilibrium of behaviour, is essentially a system of living and acting operations."

- Jean Piaget

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

- Jean Piaget