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.

Within the child lies the fate of the future. Whoever wishes to confer some benefit on society must preserve him from deviations and observe his natural ways of acting. A child is mysterious and powerful and contains within himself the secret of human nature.

The fundamental basis of education must always remain that one must act for oneself. That is clear. One must act for him or herself.

The teacher's task is not a small easy one! She has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger. She is not like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus. The needs of the child are clearly more difficult to answer.

What is a scientist?... We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself.

Only when the child is able to identify its own center with the center of the universe does education really begin.

I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.