The child is capable of developing and giving us tangible proof of the possibility of a better humanity.
Maria Montessori
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants - doing nothing but living a natural life - came out wise?
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot
Character, not circumstance, is what builds the ultimate destiny of a person.
Booker T. Washington
The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
Development is a series of rebirths.
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.
The first essential for the child's development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.
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.
The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.
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.
We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself.
To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.
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.
