Adults quotes

Adults

1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

1K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside adults — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Adults quotes (page 10 of 51)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Natalie Portman Actress, Director, Producer
Adults

"I am more a teenager than anyone else I know. One minute I feel really adult and the next minute I say, 'Let's play hide-and-seek.'"

Read quote 3 likes
Malcolm Gladwell Journalist, Author
Adults

"What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement."

Read quote 3 likes
Mara Wilson Actress
Adults

"I had so many adults around me reminding me that I was a kid. I also had a lot of adults saying things to me like, "When I was your age..." and sort of idealizing it. I didn't like that they idealized it."

Read quote 3 likes
Mara Wilson Actress
Adults

"It's a little bit annoying, because it feels like everybody's taking the power away from you. Everybody's taking your adult life away from you. On one level, I used to resent it."

Read quote 3 likes
Mara Wilson Actress
Adults

"I was such a nerd. It just wasn't something I would have wanted. And I didn't want to act like an adult."

Read quote 3 likes
Mara Wilson Actress
Adults

"I didn't trust adults because I thought they were all kind of corrupted. I thought children were pure and innocent, and that was inherently better. I guess I was a philosophical child."

Read quote 3 likes
Mara Wilson Actress
Adults

"People who meet me as an adult are often surprised that I'm alive and have never been in prison or rehab. Sometimes they're disappointed I'm not cooler."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil Gaiman Author
Adults

"Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil Gaiman Author
Adults

"I knew enough about adults to know that if did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil Gaiman Author
Adults

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil Gaiman Author
Adults

"Just go with it. It won't hurt.' I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil Gaiman Author
Adults

"Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you're ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you're older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child."

Read quote 3 likes
Neil deGrasse Tyson Astrophysicist, Science Communicator
Adults

"Something we all have as kids and is beaten out of us as adults. Parents come up to me, "How do I get my kids interested in science?" They're already interested in science. Just stop beating it out of them."

Read quote 3 likes
Lauren Oliver Author
Adults

"Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes."

Read quote 3 likes