Quotes from Maria Montessori

The world of education is a sort of retreat where the individuals, for the whole of their scholastic life, remain isolated from the problems of the world. They prepare themselves for life by remaining outside of life.

There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.

She offends the fundamental human dignity of her son,–she treats him as if he were a doll, when he is, instead, a man confided by nature to her care.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Within the child lies the fate of the future.

Of all things love is the most potent.

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.

No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child

Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

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

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

To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.

If salvation and help are to come, it is through the child ; for the child is the constructor of man.

Such prizes and punishments are, if I may be allowed the expression, the bench of the soul, the instrument of slavery for the spirit.

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

Our work is not to teach, but to help the absorbent mind in its work of development. How marvelous it would be if by our help, if by an intelligent treatment of the child, if by understanding the needs of his physical life and by feeding his intellect, we could prolong the period of functioning of the absorbent mind!

It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities.