Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116
“Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.”
Part 1, Chapter 8. Compare: "La Nature a été en eux forte que l'éducation" (translated: "Nature was a stronger force in them than education"), Voltaire, Vie de Molière.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)
Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 185 -->
Context: The majority of parents are poor psychologists and give their children the most questionable moral trainings. It is perhaps in this domain that one realized most how keenly how immoral it can be to believe too much in morality, and how much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world. Thus the adult leads the child to the notion of objective responsibility, and consolidates in consequence a tendency that is already natural to the spontaneous mentality of little children.
“The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature.”
Rose, Blanche, and Violet (London: Smith, Elder, 1848) vol. 1, pp. viii-ix
Context: The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be Brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.
"Mob Morals and the Art of Loving Art", X, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1961).
X magazine (1959-62)
"The History of My Youth", p. 55.
Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859)
Context: I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart.
Source: Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013), p. 12
Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 25; as quoted in Sanderson Beck. Francis W. Parker's Concentration Pedagogy: Education to Free the Human Spirit http://www.san.beck.org/Parker.html, 1996
