Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
Maria Montessori

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
Maria Montessori

If an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.
Maria Montessori

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?
Maria Montessori

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
Maria Montessori

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

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
Maria Montessori

The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
Maria Montessori

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

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!
Maria Montessori


The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
Maria Montessori

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.
Maria Montessori

To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
Maria Montessori

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

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

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
Maria Montessori

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
Maria Montessori