Children quotes
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside children — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them."
"But an adult if he is to provide proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars."
"Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person's life all the way to retirement. Instilling the financial-literacy message in children is especially important, because they will carry it for the rest of their lives. The results of the survey are very encouraging, and we want to do our part to make sure all children develop and strengthen their financial-literacy skills."
"It is a libel to suggest that children need rewards for attending to tasks, apart from intrinsic interest and satisfaction. Children work very hard in their purposeful endeavors in the world, when they have ends they want to accomplish themselves. It is meaningless teaching, not learning, that demands irrelevant incentives."
"It is infinitely more useful for a child to hear a story told by a person than by computer. Because the greatest part of the learning experience lies not in the particular words of the story but in the involvement with the individual reading it."
"The children almost broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it."
"I've always been interested in exploring the concept of child prodigies. When I was younger, I wrote a story about Mozart as a child and I just always loved this idea of young people who are able to take control of their lives and bring a whole lot of change at such a young age."
"One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return."
"Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."
"children are simply human beings who are allowed to do what everyone else really desires to do, as for instance, to fly kites, or when seriously wronged to emit prolonged screams for several minutes."
"Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?"
"We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children."
"You see we adults have learned how to disguise our terrible characters but a child... well, it's like a grotesque drawing of us. They should be neither seen nor heard. And no one must make another one."
"Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful."
"They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service."
"Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of the levers of power."
"My parents know I was outgoing as a child, and whenever people came over I'd automatically do impressions of them as soon as they left; it was my mom's favorite thing."
"I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or letin the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc."
"I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age."
"The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?"
