Quotes from Jean Piaget

So we must start from this dual nature of intelligence as something both biological and logical.

Psychology, in fact, repre- sents the juncture of two opposite directions of are still insufficient. In the science of human be- scientific thought that are dialectically comple- mentary. It follows that the system of sciences cannot be arranged in a linear order, as many people beginning with Auguste Comte have at- tempted to arrange them.

During the first few months of an infant's life, its manner of taking the breast, of laying its head on the pillow, etc., becomes crystallized into imperative habits. This is why education must begin in the cradle.

Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.

The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.

Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do: when neither innateness nor learning has prepared you for the particular situation.

The practice of narrative and argument does not lead to invention, but it compels a certain coherence of thought.

To understand is to invent.

The most developed science remains a continual becoming

Only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual.

In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.

The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.

In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning.

What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research.

Play is the answer to the question, 'How does anything new come about?'

Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process.

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.

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.

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.

I always like to think on a problem before reading about it.

Play is the work of childhood.

The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects.

Logical reasoning is an argument which we have with ourselves and which reproduces internally the features of a real argument.

Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions.