“With man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.”

If an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.

There is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called ‘mate,’ to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity.

There are two ‘faiths’ which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one’s inner life, the second to one’s life in society.

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid.

An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being, and every insect has it.

Moral Education is the source of that spiritual equilibrium on which everything else depends and which may be compared to that physical equilibrium or sense of balance, without which it is impossible to stand upright or to move into any other position.

Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honour, and in these respects, man always has yielded woman the palm.

It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.

I have for many years interested myself in the study of children from three years upwards. Many have urged me to continue my studies on the same lines with older children. But what I have felt to be most vital is the need for more careful and particularized study of the tiny child.

It is not true that I invented what is called the Montessori Method… I have studied the child; I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it, and that is what is called the Montessori Method.

The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it.

Indeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all – zero!

We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes.

The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convictions, his own affections.

We cannot create observers by saying ‘observe’, but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

I don’t hide anything. There’s just nothing to hide with me.

I’m not scared of Tiger. I’m not scared to go head-to-head. I’m not scared to have a long-drive contest with him.

Gunna was the second person I ever made a song with.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

All the women want to be with me, all the men want to be like me.

The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move.

Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.

There is nothing wrong with getting a bus. Nothing in any way demeaning about boarding a huge smelly communal vehicle that will rumble noisily and very slowly in the vague direction of the place you need to get to and then dump you half a mile away in the freezing wind and rain.