Quotes from Maria Montessori

The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.

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

The fundamental basis of education must always remain that one must act for oneself. That is clear. One must act for him or herself.

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

The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be.

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe ' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

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

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

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

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. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.

Discipline must come through liberty. We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.

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.

There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful 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 can teach them anything!

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

Needless help is an actual hindrance to the development of natural forces.

Children become like the things they love.

Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man.