Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator who pioneered the holistic method of teaching known as The Montessori Method. This educational approach focuses on your learners’ natural gifts with its individualized approach to teaching. Our collection of quotes from Maria Montessori herself showcases the beautiful connection that she fostered with her students through her innovative perspective on educating young minds.
1. “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.'”
2. “Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.”
3. “The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.”
4. “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”
5. “The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.”
6. “The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.”
7. “The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.”
8. “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.”
9. “One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.”
10. “The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.”
11. “Within the child lies the fate of the future.”
12. “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.”
13. “The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
14. “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”
15. “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.”
16. “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”
17. “When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, ‘I want to do it!’ But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children’s needs, they say, ‘Help me to do it alone.'”
18. “Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves.”
19. “Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.”
20. “The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.”
21. “The child is much more spiritually elevated than is usually supposed. He often suffers, not from too much work, but from work that is unworthy of him.”
22. “The child is the father of the man.”
23. “The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest.”
24. “An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty.”
25. “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.”
26. “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.”
27. “A child’s work is to create the person she will become.”
28. “It is through appropriate work and activities that the character of the child is transformed.”
29. “The child is capable of developing and giving us tangible proof of the possibility of a better humanity.”
30. “To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.”
31. “The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. He has the power to teach himself.”
32. “There is in the soul of a child an impenetrable secret that is gradually revealed as it develops.”
33. “The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.”
34. “Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation.”
35. “The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul.”
36. “He does it with his hands, by experience, first in play and then through work. The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”
37. “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.”
38. “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.”
39. “The training of the teacher who is to help life is something far more than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit.”
40. “We must therefore create a favorable environment that will encourage the flowering of a child’s natural gifts. All that is needed is to remove the obstacles. And this should be the basis of, and point of departure for, all future education. The first thing to be done, therefore, is to discover the true nature of a child and then assist him in his normal development.”
41. “If an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.”
42. “The child is much more spiritually elevated than is usually supposed. He often suffers, not from too much work, but from work that is unworthy of him.”
43. “Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.”
44. “Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.”
45. “The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth.”
46. “There is a part of a child’s soul that has always been unknown but which must be known. With a spirit of sacrifice and enthusiasm, we must go in search, like those who travel to foreign lands and tear up mountains in their search for hidden gold.”
47. “The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.”
48. “The greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this: to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child.”
49. “We must support as much as possible the child’s desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.”
50. “The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him.”
51. “The first idea that the child must acquire in order to be actively disciplined is that of the difference between good and evil.”
52. “There is no description, no image in any book capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them in a real forest.”
53. “We must help the child to liberate himself from his defects without making him feel his weakness.”
54. “In the child is much knowledge, much wisdom. If we do not profit from it, it is only because of neglect on our part to become humble and to see the wonder of this soul and learn what the child can teach.”
55. “The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply felt impressions he receives.”
56. “It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to each individual the chance to fulfill his potential possibilities.”
57. “The real preparation for education is the study of one’s self.”
58. “Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.”
59. “The child’s development follows a path of successive stages of independence.”
60. “The first duty of an educator is to stir up life but leave it free to develop.”
61. “The study of the child … may have an infinitely wider influence, extending to all human questions.”
62. “The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.”
63. “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.”
64. “Joy, feeling one’s own value, being appreciated and loved by others, feeling useful and capable of production are all factors of enormous value for the human soul.”
65. “If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist them to advance on the way to independence.”
66. “Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”
67. “In the psychological realm of relationship between teacher and child, the teacher’s part and its techniques are analogous to those of the valet; they are to serve, and to serve well: to serve the spirit.”
68. “It is my belief that the thing which we should cultivate in our teachers is more the spirit than the mechanical skill of the scientist; that is, the direction of the preparation should be toward the spirit rather than toward the mechanism.”
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