Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally. These Maria Montessori quotes will motivate you.
Best Maria Montessori Quotes
1. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
2. “The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.” ~ Maria Montessori
3. “The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.” ~ Maria Montessori
4. “Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and when the grass of the meadows is wet with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning.” ~ Maria Montessori
5. “There is a great sense of community within the Montessori classroom, where children of differing ages work together in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competitiveness. There is respect for the environment and for the individuals within it, which comes through experience of freedom within the community.” ~ Maria Montessori
6. “To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.” ~ Maria Montessori
7. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
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.” ~ Maria Montessori
9. “What the hand does the mind remembers.” ~ Maria Montessori
10. “The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self. Adults work to finish a task, but the child works in order to grow, and is working to create the adult, the person that is to be. Such experience is not just play… it is work he must do in order to grow up.” ~ Maria Montessori
11. “We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.” ~ Maria Montessori
12. “Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.” ~ Maria Montessori
13. “Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.” ~ Maria Montessori
14. “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.”” ~ Maria Montessori
15. “Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.” ~ Maria Montessori
16. “The development of the mind comes through movement” ~ Maria Montessori
17. “Play is the work of the child.” ~ Maria Montessori
18. “To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.” ~ Maria Montessori
19. “A child needs freedom within limits.” ~ Maria Montessori
20. “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
21. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
22. “The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.” ~ Maria Montessori
23. “First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.” ~ Maria Montessori
24. “Joy is the evidence of inner growth.” ~ Maria Montessori
25. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
26. “The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. He has the power to teach himself.” ~ Maria Montessori
27. “Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.” ~ Maria Montessori
28. “The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.” ~ Maria Montessori
29. “Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.” ~ Maria Montessori
30. “What we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love.” ~ Maria Montessori
31. “One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.” ~ Maria Montessori
32. “The senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.” ~ Maria Montessori
33. “…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. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. 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.” ~ Maria Montessori quotes
34. “Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.” ~ Maria Montessori
35. “The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.” ~ Maria Montessori
36. “A child’s work is to create the person she/he will become.” ~ Maria Montessori
37. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
38. “A child is an eager observer and is particularly attracted by the actions of the adults and wants to imitate them. In this regard an adult can have a kind of mission. He can be an inspiration for the child’s actions, a kind of open book wherein a child can learn how to direct his own movements. But an adult, if he is to afford proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars.” ~ Maria Montessori
39. “Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of a whole which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future.” ~ Maria Montessori
40. “Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence.” ~ Maria Montessori
41. “As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.” ~ Maria Montessori
42. “When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.” ~ Maria Montessori
43. “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” ~ Maria Montessori
44. “The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth.” ~ Maria Montessori
45 “Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.” ~ Maria Montessori
46″We are the sowers – our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.” ~ Maria Montessori
47″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.” ~ Maria Montessori
48. “If we really want children to grow into independent and resourceful adults, we should stop pouring their milk as soon as they have learned to pour it themselves and stop fastening their buttons as soon as they can fasten them without help.” ~ Maria Montessori
49. “We must support as much as possible the child’s desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.” ~ Maria Montessori
50. “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.” ~ Maria Montessori
51. “It is necessary for the teacher to guide the child without letting him feel her presence too much, so that she may always be ready to supply the desired help, but may never be the obstacle between the child and his experience.” ~ Maria Montessori
52. “Education should no longer be most imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.” ~ Maria Montessori
53. “Character formation cannot be taught. It comes from experience and not from explanation.” ~ Maria Montessori
54. “Of all things love is the most potent.” ~ Maria Montessori
55. “He does it with his hands, by experience, first in play and then through work. The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.” ~ Maria Montessori
56. “Teach by teaching, not by correcting” ~ Maria Montessori
57. “It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment.” ~ Maria Montessori
58. “The first aim of the prepared environment is, as far as it is possible, to render the growing child independent of the adult.” ~ Maria Montessori
59. “These words reveal the child’s inner needs; ‘Help me to do it alone’.” ~ Maria Montessori
60. “It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has.” ~ Maria Montessori
61. “The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.” ~ Maria Montessori
62. “Within the child lies the fate of the future.” ~ Maria Montessori
63. “The child has a different relation to his environment from ours… the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.” ~ Maria Montessori
64. “To consider the school as a place where instruction is given is one point of view. But, to consider the school as a preparation for life is another. In the latter case, the school must satisfy all the needs of life.” ~ Maria Montessori
65. “The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.” ~ Maria Montessori
