Maria Montessori Quotes

Children can become self-reliant and self-disciplined by being free to do what they want to do.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

Discipline must come through liberty.

Liberty is the right to discipline ourselves in order not to be disciplined by others

As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.

When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom.

If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.

It is not government's job to mandate responsibility on our behalf. We have the intelligence and good sense to make wise consumption choices for ourselves and our children. It is up to us to do what is best for our health and our children's health.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

When I lose my temper it's because I decide to. If I do something it's because I want to do it.

I only have control over what I do.

I think the real free person in society is one that's disciplined. It's the one that can choose; that is the free one.

The rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom.

Self Control, Not State Control

Self regulation is a myth.

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing.

The young child needs not only gratification; he needs also to learn the limitations that the physical world puts upon his gratifications

A well-governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

From the moral as from the intellectual point of view, the child is born neither good nor bad but master of his destiny.

I can't tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I've got a good bead on myself.