Maria Montessori - The Secret of Childhood (1936)

17 Sourced Quotes

View all Maria Montessori Quotes
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
In nature nothing creates itself and nothing destroys itself.

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

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
In nature everything is transformed but nothing destroyed.

Maria Montessori
The child is essentially alien to this society of men and might express his position in the words of the Gospel: My kingdom is not of this world

Maria Montessori
In the vivid description of the Gospel, it would seem that we must help the Christ hidden in every poor man, in every prisoner, in every sufferer. But if we paraphrased the marvelous scene and applied it to the child, we should find that Christ goes to help all men in the form of the child.

Maria Montessori
A man builds himself through working. There can be no substitute for work, neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.

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
All adults stand accused... the society responsible for the welfare of children has been put on trial. There is something apocalyptic about this startling accusation; it is mysterious and terrible like the voice of the Last Judgment: 'What have you done to the children I entrusted to you?'

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
Deceit is a kind of garment that conceals the soul. It might even be compared to a whole wardrobe, so many are its guises.

Maria Montessori
The social rights of children must be recognized so that a world suited to their needs may be constructed for them. The greatest crime that society commits is that of wasting the money which it should use for children on things that will destroy them and society itself as well.

Maria Montessori
Conventions which camouflage a man's true feelings are a spiritual lie which help him adapt himself to the organized deviations of society.

Maria Montessori