Quotes from Maria Montessori

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

Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.

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

Little children, from the moment in which they are weaned, are making their way toward independence.

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

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

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.

Human dignity ... is derived from a sense of independence.

No one can be free unless he is independent... In reality, he who is served is limited in his independence.

He who is served is limited in his independence.

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.

If the ways of the Almighty are not humanly logical, it is not the fault of the Almighty but of the limitations of human logic.

We do not believe in the educative power of words and commands alone, but seek cautiously, and almost without the child's knowing it, to guide his natural activity.

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

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.

The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence.

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

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

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

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

All the movements of our body are not merely those dictated by impulse or weariness; they are the correct expression of what we consider decorous. Without impulses, we could take no part in social life; on the other hand, without inhibitions, we could not correct, direct, and utilize our impulses.

Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two 'languages.' It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.

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.