Maria Montessori Quotes

Give me a child for the first 7 years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.

I think you're a good person or a todd by the age of eight.

One of the most striking things one finds about the child under 7-8 is his extreme assurance on all subjects.

Kids watch their parents, right? And when kids are three, four, five-years-old, that's when they're like a sponge, and who they are is really developed by the time they are seven.

Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.

Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

I don't think I have ever done anything for this age of children before, a pre-school audience. Generally speaking, we don't have vivid memories of that age and what influenced us, yet clearly they are hugely formative years and it's really important that we can create television of a high quality for that audience.

It's easier to learn things for life by the age of 12 and not the age of 18. This is just my guess.

Children who cling to parents or who don't want to leave home are stunted in their emotional, psychological growth.

Adolescents are still children in that they can't yet tell the difference between make believe and fiction.

One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.

In play, a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself.

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence.

The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was.

We've got to understand that the ages of zero to three are the most formative years of a person's life, the time they learn the concept of reward and punishment and develop a conscience, and that 50 percent of all learned human response is learned in the first year of life.

In general, I think we're more or less shaped and formed by our late 20s. Things come along during that time that make us cynical. By the time you're in your 30s, it's hard to unpick those mindsets that have formed. It takes years of therapy to undo them.

Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk.

You know...it's a hard age. Kids are in that stage where they're beginning to understand the world of adults, without having the maturity of adults to deal with everything going on around them.

It is my belief that children are full of understanding and know as much as and more than adults, until they are about seven, when they suddenly become stupid, like adults.

The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.

I want to get back to education. When I was in college I paid attention to child psychology portions of our psychology classes. I watch other people work with babies. And I saw the baby as developing like a computer and it intrigued me in my life. I wanted to do that.

Growth and psychic development are therefore guided by: the absorbent mind, the nebulae and the sensitive periods, with their respective mechanisms. It is these that are hereditary and characteristic of the human species. But the promise they hold can only be fulfilled through the experience of free activity conducted in the environment.

How hard would it be to ask children what they see in their heads? How big should the house be in comparison to the family standing in front of it? What is it about the anatomy of the people that doesn't look right? Then let them try it again. Teach them to learn how to see and ask questions.

Most infants are geniuses. They're indomitable, fearless, and completely in harmony with a cosmic proclivity for growth. They're heroes because they walk directly through adversity with love and ardent resolve.