Maria Montessori Quotes

The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.

Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.

It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities.

The adult works to improve his environment while the child works to improve himself.

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.

Childhood constitutes the most important element in an adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made.

First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

A child needs freedom within limits.

The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child.

There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature; to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature.

Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists.

Children become like the things they love.

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child.

A child's work is to create the person she/he will become.

A child's character develops in accordance with the obstacles he has encountered... or the freedom favoring his development that he has enjoyed.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

Character formation cannot be taught. It comes from experience and not from explanation.

We must support as much as possible the child's desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.

Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities.

A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature.

There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life

Giving children the opportunity to stir up life and leave it free to discover.

No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child

The needs of mankind are universal. Our means of meeting them create the richness and diversity of the planet. The Montessori child should come to relish the texture of that diversity.

The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.

The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential

All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become.

Let us treat them [children], therefore, with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them.

Within the child lies the fate of the future.

Little children, from the moment in which they are weaned, are making their way toward independence.

The child who concentrates is immensely happy

Bring the child to the consciousness of his own dignity, and he will be free. We see no limit to what should be offered to the child, for his will be an immense field of chosen activity.

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.

The child should live in an environment of beauty.

Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us.

To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him.

There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all of the life to be found around them in a real forest.

The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.

When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing

A man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has done

The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.

Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation.

The development of the individual can be described as a succession of new births at consecutively higher levels.

To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom.

The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.