quotations about children
Nobody's born rotten. You just don't have bad kids. It's not true. There is no such thing. But we can make them bad.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
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interview, Touch the Future, fall 1998
[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
Children are natural mimics. They act like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That’s not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 2, 2008
A child is an uncut diamond.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it.
FRANK WARREN
attributed, The Little Red Book of Hope
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
CHARLES LAMB
"A Bachelor's Complaint", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
She not only loves her children, she respects them. They have wills, tastes, thoughts, judgments of their own, and this is as she wishes it to be. She distinguishes clearly between counsel and command: command must be obeyed; counsel may be disregarded without rebuke and without loss of favor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Few are fit to train monkeys, yet not one of us but thinks himself competent to bring up children.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.
STEPHANIE MARTSON
The Magic of Encouragement
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.
MARIANNE E. NEIFERT
Dr. Mom's Parenting Guide
Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, May 17, 2014
A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
CHARLES DICKENS
Master Humphrey's Clock
I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!
HOMER SIMPSON
"The Wandering Juvie", The Simpsons
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD
Electricity on the Farm
Most children feel immortal--they have no sense that they're ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that's barely comprehensible.
JOHN SAUL
Shadows
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children." And you say "Why?" And they say, "Because a child is so truthful. That's what I love about 'em...they tell the truth." That's a lie! I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
BILL COSBY
Bill Cosby: Himself