Lev S. Vygotsky Quotes

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

Language is the tool of the tools

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i.e., to act according to the line of greatest resistance.

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

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 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.

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

We are conscious of ourselves because we are conscious of others; and in an analogous manner, we are conscious of others because in our relationship to ourselves we are the same as others in their relationship to us. I am aware of myself only to the extent that I am as another for myself.

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

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.

Internal and external action are inseparable: imagination, interpretation, and will are internal processes in external action.