Maria Montessori

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

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.

The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be.

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

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

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.

When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.

If the whole of mankind is to be united into one brotherhood, all obstacles must be removed so that men, all over the surface of the globe, should be as children playing in a garden.

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

How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her.

If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course.

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.

There are two 'faiths' which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one's inner life, the second to one's life in society.

Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.