Maria Montessori: 1870 - 1952

“A great social mission that will ensure the child justice, harmony and love remains to be accomplished.  And this great task must be the work of education, for this is the only way to build a new world and to bring peace.”

“My life has been spent studying the human development. I have scrutinized the nature of man from his origins, studying both in the West and in the East. Although for over forty years I have devoted myself to this work, childhood still appears to me as an inexhaustible source of revelations and, let me tell you, of hopes [...]. We must study man in his beginning, from birth, when the great powers of nature are in action. In this way we can hope for a better education [...]. My point of view is scientific. The question can also be examined from other points of view: religious, philosophical and social ones [...]. All our forces must be united and cooperative, so that new and more terrible catastrophes may be avoided for humanity”.

Montessori, Message to the Congress, in M. Montessori, Il metodo del bambino e la formazione dell’uomo. Scritti e documenti inediti e rari, a cura di A. Scocchera, Roma, Edizioni Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2002, p.129.