Re raising kids: Love, without discipline, isn’t.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Kids use to ask where they came from, now they tell you where to go
—Indian Proverb
Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more?. We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The wildest colts make the best horses.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Never have children, only grand children.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
—Garrison Keillor (b.1942) American Author, Humorist, Radio Personality
The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus every boy is a challenge to his elders. It is for them that we must win the war-it is for them that we must make a just and lasting peace. For the world of tomorrow, about which all of us are dreaming and planning, will be carried forward by the boys of today.
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st American President
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Where children are, there is the golden age.
—Novalis (1772–1801) German Romantic Poet, Novelist
If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian Physician, Educator
Education is in danger of becoming a religion based on fear; its doctrine is to compete. Our children are being led to believe that they are doomed to failure in a world which has room only for those at the top … in all our efforts to provide “advantages” we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history and possibly the unhappiest.
—Eda LeShan (1922–2002) American TV Personality, Playwright, Educator, Writer
Alas, regardless of their doom,
the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day.
—Thomas Gray (1716–71) English Poet, Book Collector
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
Let all children remember, if ever they are weary of laboring for their parents, that Christ labored for his; if impatient of their commands, that Christ cheerfully obeyed; if reluctant to provide for their parents, that Christ forgot himself and provided for his mother amid the agonies of the crucifixion. The affectionate language of this divine example to every child is, “Go thou and do likewise.”
—John Sullivan Dwight
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Children are excellent physiognomists, and soon discover their real friends.—Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are.—What is childhood but a series of happy delusions?
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
Several children present me with scraps of paper for autographs: obviously don’t know who I am and don’t care. I sign “Jackie Collins” and they go away quite content.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to lose time in order to gain it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
What is a home without children?. Quiet.
—Henny Youngman (1906–98) Anglo-American Comedian, Violinist
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
You can’t cheat kids. If you cheat them when they’re children they’ll make you pay when they’re sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that’s finally when they’re old enough to stand up to you and say, ‘What a hypocrite you’ve been all this time. You’ve never given me what I really wanted, which is you’.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood.
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
All women should know how to take care of children. Most of them will have a husband some day.
—Franklin P. Jones
If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.
—Brian Tracy (b.1944) American Author, Motivational Speaker
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won’t grow again.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Children have more need of models than of critics.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
Infancy isn’t what it is cracked up to be. Children, not knowing that they are having an easy time, have a good many hard times. Growing and learning and obeying the rules of their elders, or fighting against them, are not easy things to do.
—Don Marquis (1878–1937) American Humorist, Journalist, Author
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Little girl’s definition of conscience: “Something that makes you tell your mother before your brother or sister does.”
—Unknown
I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children; and what an inhuman world, without the aged.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Birds in their little nest agree; and ‘Tis a shameful sight, when children of one family fall out, and chide, and fight.
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English Hymn writer
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
—Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian Revolutionary Leader
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Too many parents are not on spanking terms with their children.
—Indian Proverb
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
—F. H. Bradley (1846–1924 ) British Idealist Philosopher
A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (1915–77) American Columnist, Author
What guides us is children’s response, their joy in learning to dance, to sing, to live together. It should be a guide to the whole world.
—Yehudi Menuhin (1916–99) American-born British Violinist, Conductor
There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher