Maria Montessori

The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

A vital force is active in every individual and leads it towards its own evolution.

— Maria Montessori

The child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step.

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

Order is one of the needs of life which, when it is satisfied, produces a real happiness

— Maria Montessori

The instructions of the teacher consist then merely in a hint, a touch-enough to give a start to the child. The rest…

— Maria Montessori

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from…

— Maria Montessori

Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.

— Maria Montessori

We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a…

— Maria Montessori

Independence is not a static condition; it is a continuous conquest, and in order to reach not only freedom, but also strength,…

— Maria Montessori

Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves…

— Maria Montessori

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.

— Maria Montessori

Except when he has regressive tendencies, the child's nature is to aim directly and energetically at functional independence.

— Maria Montessori

To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and…

— Maria Montessori

It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the…

— Maria Montessori

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The…

— Maria Montessori

All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the value of work…

— Maria Montessori

If the idea of the universe is presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than…

— Maria Montessori

Children have an anxious concern for living beings, and the satisfaction of this instinct fills them with delight. It is therefore easy…

— Maria Montessori

When the children had completed an absorbing bit of work, they appeared rested and deeply pleased. It almost seemed as if a…

— Maria Montessori

The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is…

— Maria Montessori

The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.

— Maria Montessori

The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

— Maria Montessori

The real preparation for education is the study of one's self.

— Maria Montessori

The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.

— Maria Montessori

Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.

— Maria Montessori

A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

— Maria Montessori

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.

— Maria Montessori

The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

Do not offer the child the content of the mind, but the order for that content.

— Maria Montessori

It is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single…

— Maria Montessori

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

— Maria Montessori

Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them.

— Maria Montessori

At about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name.

— Maria Montessori

Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment,…

— Maria Montessori

Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and…

— Maria Montessori