Jean Piaget
Pioneer of developmental psychology
Most quoted
"The child who defines a lie as 'a naughty word' knows perfectly well that lying consists of not speaking the truth. He is not, therefore, mistaking one thing for another; he is simply identifying them one with another by what seems to us a quaint extension of the word lie."
— from The Moral Judgment of the Child, 1932
"The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching."
— from The Origins of Intelligence in Children, 1936
"Knowledge is not a copy of reality. To know an object, to know an event, is not simply to look at it and record it in a mental image or even to make a perceptual copy of it. To know an object is to act on it."
— from Speech at UNESCO, 'Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child', 1964
All quotes by Jean Piaget (326)
Children are not empty vessels to be filled, but active builders of their own knowledge.
Intelligence, the most plastic and at the same time the most structured of all the psychological functions, is essentially an adaptation to new situations.
The child, in fact, is a small philosopher, and his questions are often more profound than our answers.
Every acquisition of accommodation is a new creation.
The more the child is allowed to explore and discover, the more he learns.
The human mind is not a blank slate, but an active constructor of reality.
Play is the answer to the question, 'How does anything new come about?'
The child's mind is a world of its own, and we must enter it to understand it.
Logic and mathematics are not innate, but are constructed through interaction with the environment.
The child's thought is egocentric, not because he is selfish, but because he has not yet learned to differentiate his own perspective from that of others.
The goal of intellectual education is not to know how to repeat or retain ready-made truths, but to learn to master the truth by oneself.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
The universe is not a static collection of facts, but a dynamic process of becoming.
Consciousness is not a thing, but a process of organization and adaptation.
The child's moral development progresses from heteronomy to autonomy.
The true nature of things is not given, but constructed.
The mind is not a passive recipient of information, but an active interpreter of experience.
Learning is an active process of constructing knowledge, not passively acquiring it.
The child's understanding of the world is constantly evolving and becoming more complex.
The development of thought is a continuous process of equilibration.
Contemporaries of Jean Piaget
Other Psychologys born within 50 years of Jean Piaget (1896–1980).