Montessori Quotes – Inspiration from Maria Montessori

The goal of Montessori education is to foster independent, confident, and curious learners.

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe.

Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.

The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.

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

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.’

The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct their own experiences.

The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

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

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.

The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. They have the power to teach 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.

There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature; to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony, and the beauty in nature.

Montessori Quotes – Inspiration from Maria Montessori part 2

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

Never give more to an individual than you give to the whole group. The temptation to do so is great, but the results are disastrous.

Education is not something which the teacher does, but is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.

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

An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.

The child has a different relation to his environment from ours. Adults admire their environment; they can remember it and think about it. But the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul.

Never interrupt an activity in the child’s environment, because every interruption disorganizes the child’s concentration and wastes precious time.

We must give the child an environment that he can utilize by himself: a little washstand of their own, a bureau with drawers they can open, objects of common use with which they can operate, a small bed in which they can sleep at night under a blanket they can fold and spread by themselves.

The child, developing within an environment, which is a social organization, becomes adept at organizing.

The child’s conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his ‘natural development.’

The child can develop fully by means of experience in their environment. We call such experiences ‘work.’

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.

Discipline must come through liberty. We do not consider an individual disciplined only when they have been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic.

To assist a child, we must provide them with an environment which will enable them to develop freely.

Following the child means abandoning all your correct theories of education. This calls for humility and courage, as well as a respect for the child.

An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking.

A child is not an empty vessel to be filled, but rather a fire to be kindled.

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

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

The child’s progress does not depend on what he knows, but on what he has a spontaneous urge to do.

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

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

One must cultivate an ever-growing responsiveness to intellectual needs, by giving oneself time.

The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality.

If a stimulus is applied in the right way to the psychic functions, the psyche reacts by developing itself.

In its most ideal and hopeful form, education takes place in the hands of people who love and understand the child.

The path of the missionary is science.

Through practical work and exercises, the child becomes a valuable element of the community.

Development comes from environmental experience, and practical experience is the beginning of knowledge.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make them learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within them the light which is called intelligence.