Maria Montessori Quotes

Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission.

We do not believe in the educative power of words and commands alone, but seek cautiously, and almost without the child's knowing it, to guide his natural activity.

Order is one of the needs of life which, when it is satisfied, produces a real happiness

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

Love and the hope of it are not things one can learn; they are a part of life's heritage.

A humankind abandoned in its earlier formative stage becomes its own greatest threat to survival.

He who is served is limited in his independence.

Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them.

The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery.

The real preparation for education is the study of one's self.

Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.

Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline.

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.

The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.

In nature nothing creates itself and nothing destroys itself.

Conventions which camouflage a man's true feelings are a spiritual lie which help him adapt himself to the organized deviations of society.

It is in the encounter of the maternal guiding instincts with the sensitive periods of the newly born that conscious love develops between parent and child.

Deceit is a kind of garment that conceals the soul. It might even be compared to a whole wardrobe, so many are its guises.

For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it.

Nothing is created or destroyed in nature.

To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator.

The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.

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

There can be no substitute for work neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.

The respect and protection of woman and of maternity should be raised to the position of an inalienable social duty and should become one of the principles of human morality.

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

We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I did not exist.'

It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.

Personal health is related to self-control and to the worship of life in all its natural beauty - self-control bringing with it happiness, renewed youth, and long life.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son.

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.

If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course.

How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

If the whole of mankind is to be united into one brotherhood, all obstacles must be removed so that men, all over the surface of the globe, should be as children playing in a garden.

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.