25 Best Maria Montessori Quotes In 2024

 

Montessori is a life philosophy to embrace and carry our children through a lifetime. Dr. Montessori’s work is full of wisdom and this post includes some of the most wonderful Montessori quotes about teaching children.

  1. “Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.” - Maria Montessori
  2. “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
  3. “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
  4. “The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge.  He has the power to teach himself.” - Maria Montessori
  5. “Free the child’s potential and you will transform him into the world.” - Maria Montessori
  6. “Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.”
  7. “The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.” - Maria Montessori
  8. “The child looks for his independence first, not because he does not desire to be dependent on the adult. But because he has in himself some fire, some urge, to do certain things and not other things.” - Maria Montessori
  9. “To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself–that is the first duty of the educator.” - Maria Montessori
  10. “Whoever touches the life of a child, touches the most sensitive part of a whole which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future.” - Maria Montessori
  11. "The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence." - Maria Montessori
  12. "On every teacher and every parent, I urge not great instruction, but humility and simplicity in dealing with small children. Their lives are fresh, without rivalry or external ambitions, it takes so little to make them happy, to let them work in their own way towards the normal development of the men and women they will be." - Maria Montessori
  13. “The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth.”
  14. “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… Let us treat them with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them.” - Maria Montessori
  15. “The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.”- Maria Montessori
  16. “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
  17. “Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity….  The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist.” - Maria Montessori
  18. “There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life.  He does it in virtue of an unconscious power that exists in childhood…” - Maria Montessori
  19. “The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.” - Maria Montessori
  20. “As we observe children, we see the vitality of their spirit, the maximum effort put forth in all they do, the intuition, attention and focus they bring to all life’s events, and the sheer joy they experience in living.” 
  21. “If salvation and help are to come, it is through the child ; for the child is the constructor of man.” - Maria Montessori 
  22. “A child who has become master of his acts through long and repeated exercises, and who has been encouraged by the pleasant and interesting activities in which he has been engaged, is a child filled with health and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline.” - Maria Montessori 
  23. “When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, ’I want to do it!’ But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children’s needs, they say, ‘Help me to do it alone." - Maria Montessori 
  24. "As the child learns to handle the materials carefully his delight grows, and eventually he can be trusted to dust the cupboard with the fragile glasses inside. There is no need to worry about his ungainly movements [...] they will vanish of their own accord." - Maria Montessori 
  25. "Perhaps the failure of the secondary school is due to the fact that it uses methods of assimilation that are no longer suited to the development of the child. The child should no longer be restricted to the environment of the school, to the vaster environment in which he learned and understood the how and the why, nor be so close to the family from which he depends financially; he wants ‘to live’ society. He should go farther away." - Maria Montessori 

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