“It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in young human beings, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening them with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality.”

“It is essential that students acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. They must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise they — with their specialized knowledge — more closely resembles well-trained dogs than a harmoniously developed people. They must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings, in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow people and to the community.”

“Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.”

“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.”

“These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not — or at least not in the main — through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the ‘humanities’ as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.”

“It is not enough to teach a specialty. Through it one may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality.”