Quotations
"The principle good of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done."
"Being personally acquainted with a number of Waldorf students, I can say that they come closer to realizing their own potentials than practically anyone I know."
"The heart of the Waldorf method is that education is an art – it must speak to the child's experience. To educate the whole child, his heart and his will must be reached, as well as the mind."
"If you've had the experience of binding a book, knitting a sock,playing a recorder, then you feel that you can build a rocket ship, or learn a new software program you've never touched. It's not bravado, just a quiet confidence. There is nothing you can't do. Why couldn't you? Why couldn't anybody?"
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
"By the time they reach us at the college and university level, Waldorf students are grounded broadly and deeply and have a remarkable enthusiasm for learning. Such students possess the eye of a discoverer and the compassionate heart of a reformer, which, when joined to a task, can change the planet."
"The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility - these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education."
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."
"It is absolutely essential that before we think, before we so much as begin to set our thinking in motion, we experience the condition of wonder."
"If there is any one thing that the Waldorf system does, it nurtures, protects, and develops the intelligence of the true child."
"If young children have been able in their play to give up their whole loving beings to the world around them, they will be able in later life to devote themselves with confidence and power to the service of the world."
"If we are to teach peace in the world we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless ideal resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering."