Maria Montessori
Educator, Physician
"The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child's own natural desire to learn."
Childhood quotes
Childhood
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Maria Montessori
Educator, Physician
"The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six."
Jean Piaget
Psychologist, Philosopher
"Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand, that which we allow him to discover for himself will remain with him visible for the rest of his life."
Jean Piaget
Psychologist, Philosopher
"Play is the work of childhood."
Rene Descartes
Philosopher, Mathematician
"Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last."
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Childhood quotes (page 1 of 78)
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"Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself."
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"We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope."
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"The rate of childhood obesity is just ridiculous. Anytime I can get involved with teaching them how to get physical exercise, I want to help in any way possible"
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"My childhood was really nice. My parents never forced me to do anything; it was always, "If you want to do that, fine." When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, "Fine, but study welding just in case.""
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"Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation."
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"The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation."
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"Childhood constitutes the most important element in an adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made."
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"The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth."
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"Childhood obesity isn't some simple, discrete issue. There's no one cause we can pinpoint. There's no one program we can fund to make it go away. Rather, it's an issue that touches on every aspect of how we live and how we work."
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"I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival."
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"Romantic Love delivers us into the passionate arms of someone who will ultimately trigger the same frustrations we had with our parents, but for the best possible reason! Doing so brings our childhood wounds to the surface so they can be healed."
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"As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know."
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"In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent."
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"A pony is a childhood dream. A horse is an adulthood treasure."
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"Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness."
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"If you don't heal the wounds of your childhood, you bleed into the future."
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"Candy is childhood, the best and bright moments you wish could have lasted forever."
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"Kids believe in Santa; adults believe in childhood."
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"We always marry someone for the purpose of finishing our childhood."
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"Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life."
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