Maria Montessori Quotes

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.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

What is generally known as discipline in traditional schools is not activity, but immobility and silence. It is not discipline, but something that festers inside a child, arousing his rebellious feelings.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth. From this almost mystic affirmation there comes what may seem a strange conclusion: that education must start from birth.

~ Maria Montessori

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

Now, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission.

~ Maria Montessori

Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.

~ Maria Montessori

The selfsame procedure which zoology, a branch of the natural sciences, applies to the study of animals, anthropology must apply to the study of man; and by doing so, it enrolls itself as a science in the field of nature.

~ Maria Montessori

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.'

~ Maria Montessori

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

~ Maria Montessori

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

At three years of age, the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of education in the school. The acquisitions he has made are such that we can say the child who enters school at three is an old man.

~ Maria Montessori

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand - that is what is necessary.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

The child's mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being, and every insect has it.

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

In the first three years of life, the foundations of physical and also of psychic health are laid. In these years, the child not only increases in size but passes through great transformations. This is the age in which language and movement develop. The child must be safeguarded in order that these activities may develop freely.

~ Maria Montessori

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

There are two 'faiths' which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one's inner life, the second to one's life in society.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

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.

~ Maria Montessori

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

~ Maria Montessori

When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.

~ Maria Montessori