"I was born a poor black child."
Read quote
7 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 135 of 1272)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions. Either they will ask: "what in God's name were they doing?" or they may look back and say: "how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?""
Read quote
7 likes
"Old Age, a second child, by nature curst With more and greater evils than the first, Weak, sickly, full of pains: in ev'ry breath Railing at life, and yet afraid of death."
Read quote
7 likes
"May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times?"
Read quote
7 likes
"There is nothing--no, nothing--innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea."
Read quote
7 likes
"And what an example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar;—it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now he was enveloped in the old calico robes, that had grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none."
Read quote
7 likes
"He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so much happiness."
Read quote
7 likes
"We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them."
Read quote
7 likes
"Hair is vitally personal to children. They weep vigorously when it is cut for the first time; no matter how it grows, bushy, straight or curly, they feel they are being shorn of a part of their personality."
Read quote
7 likes
"Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on."
Read quote
7 likes
"Never, even as a child, would I bend to a rule."
Read quote
7 likes
"How can any person justify an aesthetic that reduces a woman or child to an emaciated skeleton? Is it art? Surely fashion's aesthetic should enhance and beautify the human form, not destroy it."
Read quote
7 likes
"Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone. It meant knowing you are property that could be sold to the highest bidder, of value only to continue to support the plantation economy."
Read quote
7 likes
"place where man laughs, sings, picks flowers, chases butterflies and pets birds, makes love with maidens, and plays with children. Here he spontaneously reveals his nature, the base as well as the noble. Here also he buries his sorrows and difficulties and cherishes his ideals and hopes. It is in the garden that men discover themselves. Indeed one discovers not only his real self but also his ideal self?he returns to his youth. Inevitably the garden is made the scene of man's merriment, escapades, romantic abandonment, spiritual awakening or the perfection of his finer self."
Read quote
7 likes
"Children have a remarkable talent for not taking the adult world with the kind of respect we are so confident it ought to be given. To the irritation of authority figures of all sorts, children expend considerable energy in "clowning around." They refuse to appreciate the gravity of our monumental concerns, while we forget that if we were to become more like children our concerns might not be so monumental."
Read quote
7 likes
"Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh. I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love."
Read quote
7 likes
"There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children."
Read quote
7 likes
"It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants. It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a somewhat blatant nationalism."
Read quote
7 likes
"Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy."
Read quote
7 likes
"I know of only a few truisms, one being [that] if your parents didn't have children, you won't have children. Another is whenever you make a strength program easier, you will get weaker."
Read quote
7 likes