To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.

There is a great sense of community within the Montessori classroom, where children of differing ages work together in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competitiveness. There is respect for the environment and for the individuals within it, which comes through experience of freedom within the community.

This then is the first duty of an educator: to stir up life but leave it free to develop.

Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence.

The development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.

Order is ... the true key to rapidity of reaction.

What the hand does the mind remembers.