Children quotes
25.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside children — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty, the trouble of civility, the spoil of wealth, the distraction of reason. He is the brewer's agent, the tavern and alehouse benefactor, the beggar's companion, the constable's trouble, his wife's woe, his children's sorrow, his neighbours scoff, his own shame."
"Behold our refutation of the error. It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves. If then anyone there be who, boastfully taking pride in his supposed wisdom, wishes to challenge what we have written, let him not do it in some corner nor before children who are powerless to decide on such difficult matters. Let him reply openly if he dare. He shall find me there confronting him, and not only my negligible self, but many another whose study is truth."
"I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement."
"The Lourie Center is an important model to consider...(in) mental health care... It is imperative that we use this knowledge to help ensure that every young child in our society has the opportunity to get an emotionally healthy start in life."
"Just this week, my husband proposed a plan for schools and libraries to develop their own plans to keep children from finding indecent material on the Internet as an alternative to a Congressional proposal that would require a federally mandated solution."
"As a child, I was an imaginary playmate."
"If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it - which is what mothers do with their children - then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around."
"Sometimes when you have children they're the opposites of you."
"Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community - everybody - to raise a child. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for white people or for black people. Why are we hanging onto it, I don't know. It isolates people into little units - people need a larger unit."
"When a child is born, it's born with a heart of gold, but the way of this world can turn that heart cold. I'm still a good person, and I thank God for that - He's working with me on it."
"I have a beautiful wife and two beautiful children, and every day I am paid to do what I love."
"But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart."
"The children - I call them children when they're under 18 - are hungry for that love. The drugs are just a sleep that you can't even wake up from, because you might remember what you did when you were there. There's no place for them - there should be a rehabilitation center on every corner, along with McDonald's and the banks. This is serious business. The waiting lists are incredible. I mean, it's terrible. It's really terrible."
"When you think of sexual liberation, which women wanted to have or not have children, which is the choice, not a command, and other kinds of things they wanted in their relationships with their husbands, or partners or what have you, became for subsequent generations some license that they themselves feel, that is absolutely demeaning and mean younger and younger and younger."
"I owe it to my children to secure their future."
"Having the children you want, not having the children you don't want but in order to do that you have to have the right to abortion and the right to pay equity, those two give you choice. One or the other does not."
"The National Rifle Association is a domestic terrorist organization that tacitly supports the killing of children more than it supports reasoned gun legislation."
"My life revolves around my child's routine."
"Maybe that is why young people make success. They don't know enough."
"Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back."
