Top 250 Maria Montessori Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 6

51. “To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom.”

— Maria Montessori

52. “There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.”

— Maria Montessori

53. “An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.”

— Maria Montessori

54. “Character formation cannot be taught. It comes from experience and not from explanation.”

— Maria Montessori

55. “The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction.”

— Maria Montessori

56. “The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.”

— Maria Montessori

57. “We must help the child to act for himself, will for himself, think for himself; this is the art of those who aspire to serve the spirit.”

— Maria Montessori

58. “Mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.”

— Maria Montessori

59. “He who is served is limited in his independence.”

— Maria Montessori

60. “It is necessary for the teacher to guide the child without letting him feel her presence too much, so that she may always be ready to supply the desired help, but may never be the obstacle between the child and his experience.”

— Maria Montessori

61. “Joy is the evidence of inner growth.”

— Maria Montessori

62. “It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment.”

— Maria Montessori

63. “As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.”

— Maria Montessori

64. “Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.”

— Maria Montessori

65. “It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.”

— Maria Montessori

66. “One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.”

— Maria Montessori

67. “Any child who is self-sufficient, who can ties his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence.”

— Maria Montessori

68. “When the child goes out, it is the world itself that offers itself to him. Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them up in cupboards.”

— Maria Montessori

69. “My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.”

— Maria Montessori

70. “The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment.”

— Maria Montessori

71. “It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has.”

— Maria Montessori

72. “Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”

— Maria Montessori

73. “Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him.”

— Maria Montessori

74. “The needs of mankind are universal. Our means of meeting them create the richness and diversity of the planet. The Montessori child should come to relish the texture of that diversity.”

— Maria Montessori

75. “To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.”

— Maria Montessori

76. “The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential.”

— Maria Montessori

77. “The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.”

— Maria Montessori

78. “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.”

— Maria Montessori

79. “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.”

— Maria Montessori

80. “Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements.”

— Maria Montessori

81. “Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”

— Maria Montessori

82. “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.”

— Maria Montessori

83. “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

84. “It is almost possible to say that there is a mathematical relationship between the beauty of his surroundings and the activity of the child; he will make discoveries rather more voluntarily in a gracious setting than in an ugly one.”

— Maria Montessori

85. “The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.”

— Maria Montessori

86. “Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities.”

— Maria Montessori

87. “The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.”

— Maria Montessori

88. “Education must start from birth.”

— Maria Montessori

89. “Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work.”

— Maria Montessori

90. “The development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.”

— Maria Montessori

91. “Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists.”

— Maria Montessori

92. “To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.”

— Maria Montessori

93. “Giving children the opportunity to stir up life and leave it free to discover.”

— Maria Montessori

94. “No one who has ever done anything really great or successful has ever done it simply because he was attracted by what we call a ‘reward’ or by the fear of what we call a ‘punishment.’”

— Maria Montessori

95. “If we really want children to grow into independent and resourceful adults, we should stop pouring their milk as soon as they have learned to pour it themselves and stop fastening their buttons as soon as they can fasten them without help.”

— Maria Montessori

96. “We are the sowers – our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.”

— Maria Montessori

97. “The child who concentrates is immensely happy.”

— Maria Montessori

98. “Education should no longer be most imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.”

— Maria Montessori

99. “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.”

— Maria Montessori

100. “How often is the soul of man – especially in childhood – deprived because he is not allowed to come in contact with nature.”

— Maria Montessori