Maria Montessori famous quotes

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Independent #Law

The first aim of the prepared environment is, as far as it is possible, to render the growing child independent of the adult.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Independent #Adults

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

#Children #Educator #Should

Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Helping

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
-- Maria Montessori

#Family #Children #Parenting

The 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 Montessori

#Inspirational #Life #Success

Any child who is self-sufficient , who can ties his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Self #Shoes

Play is the work of the child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Play #Children Playing

What 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 Montessori

#Children #Miracle #Independence

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Community #Atmosphere

The child has a different relation to his environment from ours... the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Eye #Soul

Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.
-- Maria Montessori

#Understanding #Intellectual #Growth

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
-- Maria Montessori

#Peace #War #Educational

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
-- Maria Montessori

#Imagination #Doe #Use

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Ideas #Unity

Of all things love is the most potent.
-- Maria Montessori

#Love Is #Parental

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Naughty #Discipline

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

#Children #Humanity #Craving

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Education #Children #Tests

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Lying #Desire

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Weapons #Today #Assuming

Little children, from the moment they are weaned, are making their way toward independence.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Independence #Littles

No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child ... No slave was ever so much the property of his master as the child is of his parent ... Never were the rights of man ever so disregarded as in the case of the child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Men #Parent

Let us treat them [children], therefore, with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Kindness #Wish

Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists.
-- Maria Montessori

#War #Politician #Preventing War

To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
-- Maria Montessori

#Leaving #Tasks #Aids

Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Design #Erase

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Ideas #Differences

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

#Children #Lying #Evil

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Children #First Love

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!
-- Maria Montessori

#Teaching #Men #Language

We 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 Montessori

#Religious #Sweet #Children

Within the child lies the fate of the future.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Lying #Future

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

#Beauty #Science #Imagination

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
-- Maria Montessori

#Education #Children #Parenting

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
-- Maria Montessori

#Education #Teacher #Work

The 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 Montessori

#Strong #Children #Giving

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

#Self #Essence #Independence

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

#Children #Men #He Man

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

#Children #Mind #Able

Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.
-- Maria Montessori

#Mind #Awakening #Firsts

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

#Growth #Size #Transformation

A child needs freedom within limits.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Needs #Limits

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Lying #Humanity

The 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 Montessori

#Teacher #Children #Giving

Character formation cannot be taught. It comes from experience and not from explanation.
-- Maria Montessori

#Character #Taught #Explanation

The child should live in an environment of beauty.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Environment #Should

The activity of the child has always been looked upon as an expression of his vitality.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Expression #Vitality

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

#Children #Parent #Guardian

Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Mind #Movement

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

#Children #Personality #Essentials

All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Adults #Fruit

The study of love and its utilization will lead us to the source from which it springs, The Child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Spring #Study

Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.
-- Maria Montessori

#Environmental #Development #Human Development

There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature; to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Order #Appreciate

Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Demand #Instruction

It is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single species.
-- Maria Montessori

#Animal #Men #Path

The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Discipline #Profound

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

#Children #Use #Shapes

As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Interest #Instability

We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.
-- Maria Montessori

#Generosity #Unity #Together

When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Contact

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Important #Age

This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with his hands and actively exercising his senses, also takes into account a child's special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They can thus carryout an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Moving #Writing

Children become like the things they love.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children

The needs of mankind are universal. Our means of meeting them create the richness and diversity of the planet. The Montessori child should come to relish the texture of that diversity.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Mean #Diversity

Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk about -- came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Children #School

Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity. It seems a strange thing to say, but this can happen even if the child merely becomes aware of being watched. After all, we too sometimes feel unable to go on working if someone comes to see what we are doing. The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist. Naturally, one can see what he is doing with a quick glance, but without his being aware of it.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Children #Principles

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Country #Civilization #Humanity

Do not offer the child the content of the mind, but the order for that content.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Order #Mind

We must help the child to act for himself, will for himself, think for himself; this is the art of those who aspire to serve the spirit.
-- Maria Montessori

#Art #Children #Thinking

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Discovery #Personality

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

#Children #Generations #Labor

The adult works to improve his environment while the child works to improve himself.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Adults #Environment

The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #School #Doe

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Reality #Ideas #Intellectual

The child should love everything he learns. Whatever is presented to him must be made beautiful and clear. Once this love has been kindled, all problems confronting the educationalist will disappear.
-- Maria Montessori

#Beautiful #Children #Problem

When mental development is under discussion, there are many who say, 'How does movement come into it? We are talking about the mind.' And when we think of intellectual activity, we always imagine people sitting still, motionless. But 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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Educational #Thinking #Talking

A child is an eager observer and is particularly attracted by the actions of the adults and wants to imitate them. In this regard an adult can have a kind of mission. He can be an inspiration for the child's actions, a kind of open book wherein a child can learn how to direct his own movements. But an adult, if he is to afford proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Book #Inspiration

The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Progress #Being Free

When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Needs #Probing

There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Special #Kind

The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Environment #Rich

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Life #Mean #Men

The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth.
-- Maria Montessori

#Change #Greatness #Personality

To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Appreciation #Lying

Happiness is not the whole aim of education. A man must be independent in his powers and character; able to work and assert his mastery over all that depends on him.
-- Maria Montessori

#Character #Independent #Men

The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience 'work'.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Mean #Independent

Education should no longer be most imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.
-- Maria Montessori

#Education #Path #Release

It is necessary for the teacher to guide the child without letting him feel her presence too much, so that she may always be ready to supply the desired help, but may never be the obstacle between the child and his experience.
-- Maria Montessori

#Teacher #Children #May

The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.
-- Maria Montessori

#Spiritual #Teacher #Intellectual

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.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Attitude #Mind

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

#Education #Children #Doe

Childhood constitutes the most important element in an adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made.
-- Maria Montessori

#Men #Years #Childhood

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

#Teacher #Children #Three

No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Problem #Oppression

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

#Children #Trying #Form

Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and when the grass of the meadows is wet with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning.
-- Maria Montessori

#Running #Morning #Children

He who is served is limited in his independence.
-- Maria Montessori

#Independence

The child becomes a person through work.
-- Maria Montessori

#Children #Persons