Quotes by Maria Montessori

• 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."
• We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
• 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.
• We cannot create observers by saying 'observe,' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.
• To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
• 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.
• The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
• The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!
• One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
• Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
• If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
• 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?
• 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.
• Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
• Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
• We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
• The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
• In the pursuit of knowledge, humility is key; for it is in acknowledging our limits that true growth can begin.
• We are all different pieces of a complex puzzle, each one unique and essential to completing the picture.
• What we learn becomes a part of who we are