SUMMERHILL by A.S. Neill

I read this book when I was 16 and it changed my life. I was in a school that allowed me to design my own curriculum, so I did. I moved to Chinatown in NYC and got a job and credit for it.

If the emotions are free the intellect will look after itself.
― 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.
― A.S. Neill

Hate breeds hate, and love breeds love.
― A.S. Neill

You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into accepters of the status quo – a good thing for a society that needs obedient sitters at dreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8:30 suburban train – a society, in short, that is carried on the shabby shoulders of the scared little man – the scared-to-death conformist.
― A.S. Neill

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.
― A.S. Neill