Quotes from Maria Montessori

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.

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.

The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.

We wish the old things because we cannot understand the new, and we are always seeking after that gorgeousness which belongs to things already on the decline, without recognising in the humble simplicity of new ideas the germ which shall develop in the future.

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

A child's character develops in accordance with the obstacles he has encountered... or the freedom favoring his development that he has enjoyed.

To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom.

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

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."

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

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

Within the child lies the fate of the future.

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