Maria Montessori - Child Quotes

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

Maria Montessori
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
The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child.

Maria Montessori
The adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.

Maria Montessori
One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child possesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly perfect this inner life over a long period of time.

Maria Montessori
Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.

Maria Montessori
Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction.

Maria Montessori
There is... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

Maria Montessori
But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation.

Maria Montessori
A child is mysterious and powerful and contains within himself the secret of human nature.

Maria Montessori
Solicitous care for living things affords satisfaction to one of the most lively instincts of the child's mind. Nothing is better calculated than this to awaken an attitude of foresight.

Maria Montessori
Infancy is a period of true importance, because, when we want to infuse new ideas, to modify or better the habits and customs of a people, to breathe new vigor into its national traits, we must use the child as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with adults.

Maria Montessori
It is necessary, then, to give the child the possibility of developing according to the laws of his nature, so that he can become strong, and, having become strong, can do even more than we dared hope for him.

Maria Montessori
If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to 'things' and desires to posses them.

Maria Montessori
If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.

Maria Montessori
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.

Maria Montessori
The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.

Maria Montessori
No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.

Maria Montessori
It is in the encounter of the maternal guiding instincts with the sensitive periods of the newly born that conscious love develops between parent and child.

Maria Montessori
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
Great tact and delicacy is necessary for the care of the mind of a child from three to six years, and an adult can have very little of it.

Maria Montessori
The greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this: to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child.

Maria Montessori
We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things.

Maria Montessori
We seek to sow life in the child rather than theories, to help him in his growth, mental and emotional as well as physical, and for that we must offer grand and lofty ideas to the human mind,

Maria Montessori
If education recognizes the intrinsic value of the child's personality and provides an environment suited to spiritual growth, we have the revelation of an entirely new child whose astonishing characteristics can eventually contribute to the betterment of the world.

Maria Montessori
Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.

Maria Montessori
The study of love and its utilization will lead us to the source from which it springs, The Child.

Maria Montessori
We must therefore turn to the child as to the key to the fate of our future life.

Maria Montessori
A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

Maria Montessori
At one year of age the child says his first intentional wordhis babbling has a purpose, and this intention is a proof of conscious intelligenceHe becomes ever more aware that language refers to his surroundings, and his wish to master it consciously becomes also greater.Subconsciously and unaided, he strains himself to learn, and this effort makes his success all the more astonishing.

Maria Montessori