Lev S. Vygotsky Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Through others we become ourselves.

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.

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

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

... 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.

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

It is through others that we become ourselves.

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

Language is the tool of the tools

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Psychology teaches us at every step that though two types of activity can have the same external manifestation, whether in origin or essence, their nature may differ most profoundly.

Writing should be meaningful for children, Y an intrinsic need should be aroused in them, and Y writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant.

There is reason to believe that voluntary activity, more than highly developed intellect, distinguishes humans from the animals which stand closest to them.