Lev Vygotsky Quotes

“A child’s greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action.”

“A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.”

“Any human act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him.”

“By giving our students practice in talking with others, we give them frames for thinking on their own.
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“In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.”

“Internal and external action are inseparable: imagination, interpretation, and will are internal processes in external action.”

“Language is the tool of the tools.”

“Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things.”

“People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.”

“Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i.e., to act according to the line of greatest resistance.”

“The individual becomes for himself what he is in himself through what he manifests for others.”

“The teacher must adopt the role of facilitator not content provider.”

“The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.”

“Through others we become ourselves.”

“We are conscious of ourselves because we are conscious of others; and in an analogous manner, we are conscious of others because in our relationship to ourselves we are the same as others in their relationship to us. I am aware of myself only to the extent that I am as another for myself.”

“What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow.”