If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be placed in order . . .
Maria MontessoriA great deal of time and intellectual force are lost in the world, because the false seems great and the truth so small and insignificant.
Maria MontessoriThe adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.
Maria MontessoriIt is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.
Maria MontessoriNo one can help us to achieve the intimate isolation by which we find our secret worlds, so mysterious, rich and full. If others intervene, it is destroyed. This degree of thought, which we attain by freeing ourselves from the external world, must be fed by the inner spirit, and our surroundings cannot influence us in any way other than to leave us in peace.
Maria MontessoriSometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us.
Maria MontessoriWe cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
Maria MontessoriIt follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.
Maria MontessoriChildren are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.
Maria MontessoriThe child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction.
Maria MontessoriThe child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy.
Maria MontessoriIt is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single species.
Maria MontessoriWe 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.
Maria MontessoriA child starts from nothing and advances alone. It is the child's reason about which the sensitive periods revolve. The reason provides the initial force and energy, and a child absorbs his first images to assist the reason and act on it.
Maria MontessoriThere should be music in the child's environment, just as there does exist in the child's environment spoken speech. In the social environment the child should be considered and music should be provided.
Maria MontessoriThe environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
Maria MontessoriIf we try to think back to the dim and distant past... what is it that helps us reconstruct those times, and to picture the lives of those who lived in them? It is their art... It is thanks to the hand, the companion of the mind, that civilization has arisen.
Maria MontessoriThe laws governing the universe can be made interesting and wonderful to the child, more interesting even that things in themselves, and he begins to ask: What am I? What is the task of man in this wonderful universe? Do we merely live here for ourselves, or is there something more for us to do? Why do we struggle and fight? What is good and evil? Where will it all end?
Maria MontessoriThe instructions of the teacher consist then merely in a hint, a touch-enough to give a start to the child. The rest develops of itself.
Maria MontessoriThe ancient saying, "There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses," and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.
Maria MontessoriBring 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.
Maria MontessoriThe 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 MontessoriIf an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.
Maria MontessoriTo assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.
Maria MontessoriJoy, feeling one’s own value, being appreciated and loved by others, feeling useful and capable of production are all factors of enormous value for the human soul.
Maria MontessoriAt about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name.
Maria MontessoriWhat we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love.
Maria MontessoriThere are many who hold, as I do, that the most important part of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when a man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers.
Maria MontessoriWe must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction
Maria MontessoriThe role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential
Maria MontessoriThe great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man.
Maria MontessoriWe 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.
Maria Montessori