"The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be."
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Quote collection
Maria Montessori quotes (page 6 of 17)
321 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Within the child lies the fate of the future."
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"All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become."
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"Let us treat them [children], therefore, with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them."
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"It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was."
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"Little children, from the moment in which they are weaned, are making their way toward independence."
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"The child who concentrates is immensely happy"
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"Bring the child to the consciousness of his own dignity, and he will be free. We see no limit to what should be offered to the child, for his will be an immense field of chosen activity."
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"The child should live in an environment of beauty."
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"Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us."
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"To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher."
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"Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work."
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"We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active."
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"There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all of the life to be found around them in a real forest."
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"The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives."
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"When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing"
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"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. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life."
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"The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him."
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"We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind."
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"The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence."
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