Maria Montessori Quotes

Mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.

When mental development is under discussion, there are many who say, 'How does movement come into it? We are talking about the mind.' And when we think of intellectual activity, we always imagine people sitting still, motionless. But mental development must be connected with movement and be dependent on it. It is vital that educational theory and practice should be informed by that idea.

the brain works better if the hand works too.

The development of the mind comes through movement

Since it is through movement that the will realises itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act.

I'm not really capable of memorizing stuff without moving around, that's how I do it.

A kid who moves is a kid who learns.

Think with your whole body.

We evolved to move and to learn with all our five senses!

If I could do anything in my life and be remembered for anything, I would like to be remembered for helping the world see the value of physical engagement with ideas.

Physical development fosters learning.

There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.

Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

What transforms this world is - knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.

Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them

Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve.

If you don't have the ability or encouragement to use yourself in a physical way, you could become just another talking head. And talking heads run things. That's part of the reason why we're in such a sad state as a planet, because it's all about thinking, and thinking has led to a lot of aggrandizement - taking over [resources] and figuring out how you can steal and leaving people and the planet in an impoverished state.

First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.

All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.

If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread.

A mind truly cultivated never feels that the intellectual process is complete until it can reproduce in some media the thing which it has absorbed.

Education is that human process of feeling your body mature, feeding your mind with ideas that it never had before, or information you never had. You simply cannot do that on a computer.

Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.