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My own criterion of success is the ability to work joyfully and to live positively.

— A. S. Neill Summerhill (1960)

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More quotes by A. S. Neill

A child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing.

Summerhill (1960)

You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults.

Summerhill (1960)

If the emotions are free, the intellect will look after itself.

The Free Child (1953)

Hate breeds hate, and love breeds love.

Summerhill (1960)

No one has the right to make a boy learn Latin, because learning is a matter for individual choice; but if in a Latin class, a boy fools all the time, the class should throw him out, because he interferes with the freedom of others.

Summerhill (1960)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: A. S. Neill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.