Maria Montessori Quotes

Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him.

Growth and psychic development are therefore guided by: the absorbent mind, the nebulae and the sensitive periods, with their respective mechanisms. It is these that are hereditary and characteristic of the human species. But the promise they hold can only be fulfilled through the experience of free activity conducted in the environment.

Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now man is in a phase in which he must decide for himself how far he can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity.

A child's work is to create the person she/he will become.

No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.

Times have changed, and science has made great progress, and so has our work; but our principles have only been confirmed, and along with them our conviction that mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.

If I am going up a ladder, and a dog begins to bite at my ankles, I can do one of two things - either turn round and kick out at the it, or simply go on up the ladder. I prefer to go up the ladder!

He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception. It is clear then that if we wish to make use of a method of experimental psychology, the first thing necessary is to renounce all former creeds and to proceed by means of the method in the search for truth.

We seek to sow life in the child rather than theories, to help him in his growth, mental and emotional as well as physical, and for that we must offer grand and lofty ideas to the human mind.

Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission.

The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth.

Only practical work and experience lead the young to maturity.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

The real preparation for education is a study of one's self. The training of the teacher...is something far more than a learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit.

An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.

He who is served is limited in his independence.

Since it is through movement that the will realises itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act.

The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality.

No one can be free unless he is independent. Therefore, the first active manifestations of the child's individual liberty must be so guided that through this activity he may arrive at independence.

First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.

The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.

A vital force is active in every individual and leads it towards its own evolution.

Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment.

The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child's own natural desire to learn.

Solicitous care for living things affords satisfaction to one of the most lively instincts of the child's mind. Nothing is better calculated than this to awaken an attitude of foresight.

Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.

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.

There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.

Today, however, those things which occupy us in the field of education are the interests of humanity at large and of civilization, and before such great forces we can recognize only one country-the entire world.

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

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.

Great tact and delicacy is necessary for the care of the mind of a child from three to six years, and an adult can have very little of it.

Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.

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.

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it.

The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.

No one can be free unless he is independent.

We must therefore turn to the child as to the key to the fate of our future life.

There is in every child a painstaking teacher so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one teaches them anything.

Love and the hope of it are not things one can learn; they are a part of life's heritage.

Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work.

No one who has ever done anything really great or successful has ever done it simply because he was attracted by what we call a 'reward' or by the fear of what we call a 'punishment.'

The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.

These words reveal the child’s inner needs; ‘Help me to do it alone’.

The concept of an education centered upon the care of the living being alters all previous ideas. Resting no longer on a curriculum, or a timetable, education must conform to the facts of human life.

The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.

At birth, the child leaves a person - his mother's womb - and this makes him independent of her bodily functions. The baby is next endowed with an urge, or need, to face the out world and to absorb it. We might say that he is born with 'the psychology of world conquest.' By absorbing what he finds about him, he forms his own personality.

The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.