Children quotes
25.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside children — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Sixty-eight percent of the pregnancies in the United States are neither prepared for nor expected. Of those sixty-eight percent, quite a bit end in abortion, but still there are a large number of children that come in this world without being expected."
"I would give up my life for my children, but not myself."
"[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers] A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times — you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you."
"The wife ought to have the first child and the husband the second, then there wouldn't ever be any more."
"I used to love to write. As a child I used to write all the time. I loved to write up until the second I got my first professional writing job. It turns out it's not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work."
"Children are much less annoying [than adults] and they never start trends."
"If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away."
"We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside."
"Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)"
"Children need boundaries, so they can know how far they have to go to get beyond them."
"I remember as a child going around with "Votes For Women" balloons. I learnt early what it is to be snubbed for a good cause."
"In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today."
"The pain of losing my child was a cleansing experience. I had to throw overboard all excess baggage and keep only what is essential."
"Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."
"When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains."
"... wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity."
"It is my deepest conviction that the children should be seen and heard as our most treasured assets."
"The Children's Hospital will be a credible demonstration of the commitment of African leaders to place the rights of children at the forefront. Nothing less would be enough."
"Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dullness that they blunt the sense and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later - that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should not through books antedate their actual experiences."
"I think it's really hard to understand the depths and the power of the love that someone has for their children unless you really have children."
