467 Quotes by Maria Montessori

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

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

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

The true basis of the imagination is reality

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.

There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.

What is generally known as discipline in traditional schools is not activity, but immobility and silence. It is not discipline, but something that festers inside a child, arousing his rebellious feelings.

To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator.

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.