It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation. – Maria Montessori
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. – Maria Montessori
The possibility of observing the developments of the psychical life of the child as natural phenomena and experimental reactions transforms the school itself in action into a kind of scientific laboratory for the psychogenetic study of man. – Maria Montessori
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. – Maria Montessori
The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was. – Maria Montessori
The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work, and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence. Suddenly, the child becomes very sensitive to the rudeness and humiliations which he had previously suffered with patient indifference. – Maria Montessori
Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean. – Maria Montessori
Personal health is related to self-control and to the worship of life in all its natural beauty – self-control bringing with it happiness, renewed youth, and long life. – Maria Montessori
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. – Maria Montessori
Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life. – Maria Montessori
Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education! – Maria Montessori
It is not true that I invented what is called the Montessori Method… I have studied the child; I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it, and that is what is called the Montessori Method. – Maria Montessori
I have for many years interested myself in the study of children from three years upwards. Many have urged me to continue my studies on the same lines with older children. But what I have felt to be most vital is the need for more careful and particularized study of the tiny child. – Maria Montessori
Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment, establishing himself lord of the earth, and laying the foundations of civilization. – Maria Montessori
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? – Maria Montessori
We await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through. – Maria Montessori
There can be no ‘graduated exercises in drawing’ leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit. – Maria Montessori
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity. – Maria Montessori
The ancient superficial idea of the uniform and progressive growth of the human personality has remained unaltered, and the erroneous belief has persisted that it is the duty of the adult to fashion the child according to the pattern required by society. – Maria Montessori
One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child. – Maria Montessori
If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course. – Maria Montessori
There are two ‘faiths’ which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one’s inner life, the second to one’s life in society. – Maria Montessori
It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one’s own hand – that is what is necessary. – Maria Montessori
It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted. – Maria Montessori
To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task, the whole life must cooperate. In this sense, life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest. – Maria Montessori
It is the children between five and seven who are the word-lovers. It is they who show a predisposition toward such study. Their undeveloped minds can not yet grasp a complete idea with distinctness. They do, however, understand words. And they may be entirely carried away by their ecstatic, their tireless interest in the parts of speech. – Maria Montessori
