Maria Montessori quotes - page 2

Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them. The remedy is not that adults should gain some new intellectual knowledge or achieve a higher standard of culture. No, they must find a different point of departure. The adult must find within himself the still unknown error that prevents him from seeing the child as he is. (Maria Montessori)
Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her. View quote
Maria Montessori
Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create. View quote
Maria Montessori
Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life. View quote
Maria Montessori
No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child. View quote
Maria Montessori
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. View quote
Maria Montessori
The children are now working as if I did not exist. View quote
Maria Montessori
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded. View quote
Maria Montessori
The child is an enigma... He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be. View quote
Maria Montessori
Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world. View quote
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)
Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. View quote
Maria Montessori
The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy. View quote
Maria Montessori
He is a serene and pleasant man where he is powerful through being efficient, but is domineering where he is served. View quote
Maria Montessori
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. View quote
Maria Montessori
The teachers of the old school, prepared according to the principles of metaphysical philosophy, understood the ideas of certain men regarded as authorities, and moved the muscles of speech in talking of them, and the muscles of the eye in reading their theories. Our scientific teachers, instead, are familiar with certain instruments and know how to move the muscles of the hand and arm in order to use these instruments; besides this, they have an intellectual preparation which consists of a series of typical tests, which they have, in a barren and mechanical way, learned how to apply. The difference is not substantial, for profound differences cannot exist in exterior technique alone, but lie rather within the inner man. View quote
Maria Montessori
We have in ourselves tendencies that are not good and which flourish like weeds in a field. (Original sin). These tendencies are many; they fall into seven groups, known of old as the Seven deadly sins. All deadly sins tend to separate us from the child; for the child compared to us, is not only purer but has mysterious qualities, which we adults as a rule cannot perceive, but in which we must believe with faith, for Jesus spoke to them so clearly and insistently that all the Evangelists recorded His words: Unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall nor enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. View quote
Maria Montessori
It seems as though a new epoch were in preparation, a truly human epoch. View quote
Maria Montessori
To prepare teachers in the method of the experimental sciences is not an easy matter. View quote
Maria Montessori
Such prizes and punishments are, if I may be allowed the expression, the bench of the soul, the instrument of slavery for the spirit. View quote
Maria Montessori
That which the educator must seek is to be able to see the child as Jesus saw him. (Maria Montessori)
The man who, through his own efforts, is able to perform all the actions necessary for his comfort and development in life, conquers himself, and in doing so multiplies his abilities and perfects himself as an individual. We must make of the future generation, powerful men, and by that we mean men who are independent and free. View quote
Maria Montessori
This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on. View quote
Maria Montessori
The domineering habit develops side by side with helplessness. View quote
Maria Montessori
One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status. View quote
Maria Montessori