"We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology."
Read quote
9 likes
Children quotes
Children
25.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Children
Browse quotes that often appear alongside children — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Children quotes (page 109 of 1272)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth."
Read quote
9 likes
"An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it."
Read quote
9 likes
"How can you be a recluse in a house full of children, even if you had the inclination to be, which I don't?"
Read quote
9 likes
"What happens with fear is that probability doesn't matter very much. That is, once I have raised the possibility that something terrible can happen to your child, even though the possibility is remote, you may find it very difficult to think of anything else. Emotion becomes dominant."
Read quote
9 likes
"A man is not completely born until he is dead. Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals, a new member added to their happy society?"
Read quote
9 likes
"Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children."
Read quote
9 likes
"With spirit we are all children of the cosmos; Without it we are orphaned and adrift."
Read quote
9 likes
"God is patient with us to become the God's children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping."
Read quote
9 likes
"When a chap is in love, he will go out in all kinds of weather to keep an appointment with his beloved. Love can be demanding, in fact more demanding than law. It has its own imperatives - think of a mother sitting by the bedside of a sick child through the night, impelled only by love. Nothing is too much trouble for love."
Read quote
9 likes
"Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is expended so obscenely on defense budgets would make the difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives."
Read quote
9 likes
"Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment."
Read quote
9 likes
"The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children."
Read quote
9 likes
"In some small field each child should attain, within the limited range of its experience and observation, the power to draw a justly limited inference from observed facts."
Read quote
9 likes
"Once you understand this way, you will be able to make your room alive; you will be able to design a house together with your family; a garden for your children; places where you can work; beautiful terraces where you can sit and dream."
Read quote
9 likes
"The interesting thing with child actors is that kids are natural actors. They're wonderful actors, and most kids are acting all the time. They're imagining they're out in the yard playing. They're imagining that things happened, and they can get very vivid."
Read quote
9 likes
"It's better to build a peaceful child than re-build a violent adult."
Read quote
9 likes
"We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It's been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes."
Read quote
9 likes
"An educator should think of a child as a gardener thinks of a plant, as something to be made to grow by having the right soil and the right amount of water. If your roses fail to bloom, it does not occur to you to whip them, but you try to find out what has been amiss in your treatment of them. ... The important thing is what the children do, and not what they do not do. And what they do, if it is to have value, must be a spontaneous expression of their own vital energy."
Read quote
9 likes
"If men found out how to give birth to children they'll never propose again."
Read quote
9 likes