Maria Montessori Quotes

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

Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to be able to educate our children is most difficult.

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

The child is much more spiritually elevated than is usually supposed. He often suffers, not from too much work, but from work that is unworthy of him.

The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others; not being told he is naughty.” “Discipline is, therefore, primarily a learning experience and less a punitive experience if appropriately dealt with.

Whatever is presented to him must be made beautiful and clear, striking his imagination. Once this love has been kindled, all problems confronting the educationist will disappear.

Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

Never help a child with a task that they feel they can complete themselves.

We are the sowers - our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.

This is education, understood as a help to life; an education from birth, which feeds a peaceful revolution and unites all in a common aim, attracting them as to a single centre. Mothers, fathers, politicians: all must combine in their respect and help for this delicate work of formation, which the little child carries on in the depth of a profound psychological mystery, under the tutelage of an inner guide. This is the bright new hope for mankind.

When the child goes out, it is the world itself that offers itself to him. Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them up in cupboards.

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

Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.

If children are allowed free development and given occupation to correspond with their unfolding minds their natural goodness will shine forth.

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 child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step.

We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things.

Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation.

The principal agent is the object itself and not the instruction given by the teacher. It is the child who uses the objects; it is the child who is active, and not the teacher.

The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them.

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.

A new education from birth onwards must be built up. Education must be reconstructed and based on the law of nature and not on the preconceived notions and prejudices of adult society.

The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.

Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man.

How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: "your will must disappear and mine prevail!"-how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?

Education today, in this particular social period, is assuming truly unlimited importance. And the increased emphasis on its practical value can be summed up in one sentence: education is the best weapon for peace.

Within the child lies the fate of the future.

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

We must support as much as possible the child's desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.

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

The senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.

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

Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.

Mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.

The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.

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

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.

But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation.

The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.

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.

The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self. Adults work to finish a task, but the child works in order to grow, and is working to create the adult, the person that is to be. Such experience is not just play... it is work he must do in order to grow up.

The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. He has the power to teach himself.

An adult who does not understand that a child needs to use his hands and does not recognize this as the first manifestation of an instinct for work can be an obstacle to the child's development

Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.

Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity... The second fundamental thing is independence.

Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes.

The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.