Maria Montessori: Quotes about children

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

Maria Montessori

Part I : The Child's Part in World Reconstruction, p. 4.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
Context: If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.

Men , Children , Help

“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

Success , Children , Teachers , Success

“Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.”

Maria Montessori

Children , Future

“The children are now working as if I did not exist.”

Maria Montessori

Source: The Absorbent Mind (1949), Ch. 27 : The Teacher's Preparation, p. 283; part of this has become paraphrased as :
Context: One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status … What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

Success , Children

“The task of the educator of young children lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.”

Maria Montessori

Attributed in The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), edited by Bill Swainson, p. 662

Children , Education , Evil

“Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them. The remedy is not that adults should gain some new intellectual knowledge or achieve a higher standard of culture. No, they must find a different point of departure. The adult must find within himself the still unknown error that prevents him from seeing the child as he is.”

Maria Montessori

Source: The Secret of Childhood (1936), Ch. 2

Children , Error , Departure , Knowledge

“We have in ourselves tendencies that are not good and which flourish like weeds in a field. (Original sin). These tendencies are many; they fall into seven groups, known of old as the Seven deadly sins. All deadly sins tend to separate us from the child; for the child compared to us, is not only purer but has mysterious qualities, which we adults as a rule cannot perceive, but in which we must believe with faith, for Jesus spoke to them so clearly and insistently that all the Evangelists recorded His words: Unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall nor enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Maria Montessori

That which the educator must seek is to be able to see the child as Jesus saw him. It is with this endeavour, thus defined and delimited, that we wish to deal.
The Secret of Childhood, p. 108

Faith , Children