Lev S. Vygotsky Quotes

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

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Teaching, Able

  1093 Copy quote

• By giving our students practice in talking with others, we give them frames for thinking on their own.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Thinking, Talking, Practice

  1078 Copy quote

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

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Teacher, Roles, Providers

  843 Copy quote

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

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Thinking, Development, Individual

  1073 Copy quote

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

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Real, Play

  990 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Glasses, Play

  924 Copy quote

• Through others we become ourselves.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Psychology, Identity, Imitation

  "The history of the development of higher mental functions (Vol. 4, pp. 97-120)". Book by R. Reiber, 1997.

  560 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Inspirational, Education, Philosophy

  549 Copy quote

• What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Development, Might

  564 Copy quote

• Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Memories, People

  614 Copy quote

• The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Eye, World

  507 Copy quote

• Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child's development. Only then can it call to life in the process of education those processes of development which now lie in the zone of proximal development

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Lying, Yesterday

  530 Copy quote

• It is through others that we become ourselves.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  "Brain training in the nursery" by Diane Hofkins, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2009.

  359 Copy quote

• Language is the tool of the tools

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Tools, Language

  319 Copy quote

• ... 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.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Girl, Strong, Passion

  449 Copy quote

• The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Distance, Independent, Adults

  392 Copy quote

• Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Intellectual, Social

  349 Copy quote

• Thought is not merely expressed in words, it comes into existence through them

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Existence

  290 Copy quote

• The only 'good' learning is that which is in advance of development.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Philosophy, Educational, Development

  194 Copy quote

• Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Doe, Realizing, Teach

  239 Copy quote

• The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Execution, Overcoming

  213 Copy quote

• It may be said that the basic characteristic of human behavior in general is that humans personally influence their relations with the environment and through that environment personally change their behavior, subjugating it to their control.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  May, Influence, Environment

  243 Copy quote

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

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Life, Shadow, Remains

  172 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Emotional, Giving, Creative

  162 Copy quote

• Childhood is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments that the child encounters.

  Lev S. Vygotsky

  Children, Philosophy, Educational

  164 Copy quote

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