Quotes about children
page 12

“Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Ch. 17. ISBN 978-0-375-50789-2

“We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Source: Minority Report

Religion, Beauty, Sense, For Wife

“Chris:I forgive you.
Annie: For killing my children and my sweet husband?
Chris: For being so wonderful a guy would choose hell over heaven just to be around you.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Guy, Forgiveness, Hell

“You will not believe me, but I am proud of your strength. Sometimes… sometimes the only way I can care for my children is to keep my distance.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Way

“Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

“Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Truth, Secret, Imagination, Thinking

“Only children believe they're capable of everything.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

“Made weird children--will die proud. - Rachel Pealer”

Larry Smith

It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous Obscure

“I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Secret, Literature, Thinking, Joy

“With their hands clasped like children in a fairy tale, she fell asleep beside him in the dark.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“You, as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food

World, Food

“Kids. You gotta love them. I adore children. A little salt, a squeeze of lemon--perfect.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Love, Perfection

“I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words”

Alfred De Vigny book Stello

Source: Stello

World

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

World, Light

“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That's what makes them children.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

Truth

“Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Literature

“Children need close friends to help them grow up, to discover things about themselves and about life. They also need close friends to keep them sane”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Life, Help

“All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Community And Growth

Secret

“You don't have favorites among your children but you do have allies.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Unspecified edition, p. 167.
On Beauty (2005)
Variant: You don't have favorites among your children but you do have allies.

“This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

“The trick to having obedient, unquestioning children was to have death be the other option”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Death

“Dear me! If only men and women would trust, understand and help as my children do, what a capital place `the world would be!”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Women, Men, World, Understanding

“Children are capable of such open rudeness.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

“I’m not smarter than you, I’m more knowledgeable than you, and that’s only because I’m older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Knowledge, Parent

“Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author : A Conversation between Maurice Sendak and Virginia Haviland (1972) by Virginia Haviland
Context: I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.

Way, Reality

“In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Men

“It's always been the children who have saved the universe from the previous generation and remade the world in their own image. ---Carl”

Diane Duane book High Wizardry

Source: High Wizardry

World, Universe

“This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Dreams, Color, Sea

“We probably looked like starving orphan children. Hey! We were starving orphan children.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Strange children should smile at each other and say, "Let's play.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Smile

“Many forgotten things live still in children's tales.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

“What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

“Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of our neighbor's children?”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Sleep

“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 (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 20

“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

"The Munich Mannequins" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/munich.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965) <br class="br">Source: The Collected Poems

Perfection

“If you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Life, People

“Just for you non-sea-god types out there, don't go swimming in New York Harbor. It may not be as filthy as it was in my mom's day, but that water will still probably make you grow a third eye or have mutant children when you grow up.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

God, Moms, Water, Sea

“What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Pilgrimage

Source: The Pilgrimage

People, Way

“You're children. Don't you want a home, a family?"
"With, like, vitamin-fortified cereal and educational television?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Education, Family, Home

“The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august solemnity with which their father, devastated by his prolonged vigil and by the wraith of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them: 'The world is round, like an orange.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

World, Imagination

“People…shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Love, People

“The visions we offer our children shape the future.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Future

“Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try not to kill anybody!” Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children. “Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s’mores at the campfire for a week! Now ready your chariots!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Smile

“I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children-lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

People, Question

“We're raising children who have little tolerance for disappointment”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Disappointment

“Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn't have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

Toni Morrison book God Help the Child

Source: God Help the Child

Forgetting

“We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.”

Tom Bissell (1974) American journalist

School, Game

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Learning

“Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Stupidity, Intelligence, Thinking, Appearance

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Source: The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Women, Men, God, Problem

“Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

Learning, Past, Future

“As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=IiKY1H0A_QEC&pg=PT102 (Hyperion, 2005). <br class="br">Cf. Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=EEiqMIgAl3UC&pg=PA49 (White Plains, N. Y.: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2007), p. 49.

World, Imagination, Adulthood

“You know children, always playing with the forces of darkness.”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

World, Parent

“Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Books

“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Stupidity, School

“Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Intelligence

“I don't argue with my enemies; I explain to their children.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

“Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.”

Lisa Unger book Fragile

Source: Fragile

“What she did have, after raising two children, was the equivalent of a PhD in mothering and my undying respect.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: Escape

“It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present

Thinking, Time, Reading

“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Dreams, Future

“We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Suffering, Time, Hurt, Forgetting

“I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Love, Cry

“Fang snorted in disbelief. "On one hand, we have a mythical nice family that wants to adopt me. On the other, we have a gang of insane scientists desperate to do genetic experiments on innocent children. Guess which hand I get dealt?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

Family

“Programs like TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, formerly known as AFDC) and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) subsidize the exclusion of dads. In effect, they create, as we have seen, future welfare recipients. Or tax spenders.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 114.

Women, Family, Future

“The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual, and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Howard Gardner (in Siegel & Shaughnessy, 1994), quoted in: Cara F. Shores (2011), The Best of Corwin: Response to Intervention, p. 51

Way, Feeling, Past

“Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.”

John Knowles book A Separate Peace

Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89

Men, World

“Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams.”

Fran Lebowitz book Social Studies

"Parental Guidance".
Social Studies (1981)

Money

“Teach him what has been said in the past; then he will set a good example to the children of the magistrates, and judgement and all exactitude shall enter into him. Speak to him, for there is none born wise.”

Ptahhotep Ancient Egyptian vizier

Introduction.
The Maxims of Ptahhotep (c. 2350 BCE)

Past

“The twentieth century has witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace. No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 681
The 1930s

War, World, School, Parent

“When you open a door for others to have an opinion on your relationship, it can be dangerous. Find what you need, not what everyone else wants for you. Women have been taught that in order to have a place in the world, an identity, they must marry and have children. If that's the life you truly want, great. But for many women, marriage is only about needing the world to know that someone desires them enough to say, "Here's a contract to prove that I love you and will commit to you for the rest of my life."”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

For these women, no contract equals no validation — and, thus, no reason for existing.
O interview (2003)

Love, Life, Women, Marriage

“Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. XIV

Love, Women, Men, Idea

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, War, People, World

“Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books, 2011. Print..”

Ransom Riggs (1979) American writer

References

Books, Home

“One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Truth, Books

“I never exert pressure on my children: I encourage the children, Katija and Rahima, to pursue their dreams. Rahima is embarrassed by autograph-seekers and doesn't want me to visit her school. In fact, I have never attended a single PTA meeting or gone to pick up the report cards of my children.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

A R Rahman: In tune with life

School, Dreams

“This is going to be an image for the history books. If you come, I believe this may, and it may be in 100 years from now or 200 years from now, I believe this will be remembered as the moment America turned the corner. I don't know how it works out. I don't know if it even works out in my lifetime. But I believe this is the pivot point. Be there, with your children.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-06-08
Beck believes that in 100 to 200 years, his 8-28 rally "will be remembered as the moment America turned the corner"
2010-06-08
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201006080027
on his Restoring Honor rally on 2010-08-28
2010s, 2010

Books, History

“The marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It's repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense. Both prefer a policy of being "cautious soldiers," "incrementalists" who shun upheavals and vote the status quo, although they subscribe to this policy for different reasons. Brooks worships the status quo because he has no penis and wants to spend the rest of his life buying periwinkle bath towels without troubling interruptions of conscience. The DLC, a nonprofit created in the mid-1980s to help big business have a say in the Democratic Party platform, supports the status quo because they are paid agents of the commercial interests that define it. Moreover, Brooks and the DLC have this in common: While they both frown on the open flag-waving and ostentatious religiosity of the talk-radio right-wing as being gauche and in bad form, they're only truly offended by people of their own background who happen to be idealistic. Hence the recurring backlash by both against the various angry electoral challenges to the establishment of the Democratic Party.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20060808224928/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/39862/

Life, Marriage, People, Business

“I think that what we need is to create policies which deal with immigration in a rational way. And a rational way is not locking children up in detention centers or separating them from their mothers. What we need is Trump to sit down with members of Congress and work on a rational program which deals with this serious issue.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Answering to Jake Tapper on if he is in favor of abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. [Mirkinson, Jack, Not Good Enough, Bernie Sanders, https://splinternews.com/not-good-enough-bernie-sanders-1827099565, 27 June 2018, Splinter News, 26 June 2018]
2010s, 2018

Way, Thinking

“These are areas of unparalleled natural beauty to be handed to our children undisturbed. We are merely custodians. You would not build a toll plaza and an administration block in the Grand Canyon or next to the Victoria Falls or within any other World Heritage Site.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

24 February 2012, Cape Argus (p5), in response to the building of a toll plaza on Chapman’s Peak, South Africa.
Speaking & Features

World, Beauty, Nature

“Get it down quickly, don't worry about the background. Just go for the tonal values. You see? When you look at it, and above all when you see how to render it as you see it, thats is, in such a way that its make the same impression on the viewer as it does on you, you don't look for, you don't see the lines on the paper over there, do you? And then, when you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't thats right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl. And the grapes, now do you count each? No, of course not. What strikes you is their clear, amber colour and the bloom which models the form by softening it. What you have to decide with the cloth is where the highlights come and then the planes which are not in the direct light. Halftones are for the magasin pittoresque engravers. The folds will come by themselves if you put them in the proper place. Ah! M. Ingres, there's the man! We're all just children. There's the one who knew how to paint materials! Ask Bracquemond [Paris' artist and print-maker]. Above all, keep your colours fresh. [instructing his new protegee, the Spanish young woman-painter Eva Gonzales, circa 1869]”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Manet, recorded by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52
1850 - 1875

Way, Light, Appearance, Painting

“The Hindus and idol-worshippers had agreed to pay the money for toleration (zar-i zimmiya) and had consented to the poll-tax (jizya) in return for which they and their families enjoyed security. These people now erected new idol-temples in the city and the environs in opposition to the Law of the Prophet which declares that such temples are not to be tolerated. Under divine guidance I destroyed these edifices and I killed those leaders of infidelity who seduced others into error, and the lower orders I subjected to stripes and chastisement, until this abuse was entirely abolished. The following is an instance:- In the village of Maluh there is a tank which they call kund (tank). Here they had built idol-temples and on certain days the Hindus were accustomed to proceed thither on horseback, and wearing arms. Their women and children also went out in palankins and carts. There they assembled in thousands and performed idol-worship' When intelligence of this came to my ears my religious feelings prompted me at once to put a stop to this scandal and offence to the religion of Islam. On the day of the assembly I went there in person and I ordered that the leaders of these people and the promoters of this abomination should be put to death. I forbade the infliction of any severe punishments on Hindus in general, but I destroyed their idol-temples, and instead thereof raised mosques. I founded two flourishing towns (kasba), one called Tughlikpur, the other Salarpur. Where infidels and idolaters worshipped idols, Musulmans now, by God's mercy, perform their devotions to the true God. Praises of God and the summons to prayer are now heard there, and that place which was formerly the home of infidels has become the habitation of the faithful, who there repeat their creed and offer up their praises to God…..'Information was brought to me that some Hindus had erected a new idol temple in the village of Salihpur, and were performing worship to their idols. I sent some persons there to destroy the idol temple, and put a stop to their pernicious incitements to error.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi and Environs , Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 380-81
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Death, Women, Money, God

“You didn't lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn't the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn't be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don't mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we're here waiting for you.”

Jim Sinclair (activist) (1940) Autism rights activist

"Don't Mourn for Us" (1993)

Family, Dreams, Waiting

“Those days, poor teachers and poor policemen alone would have maximum children. But my father believed in a sort of family planning. He was known as family planning teacher then.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Scientist wonders why nobody asks him about Dan David prize (2013)

Family, Teachers

“[T]he least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man's body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men. He does not hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a bit better than another because he can knock him down or carry a bigger sack of potatoes than he.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 11

Men, God, Training

“A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; while we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell. We live a while in Boston, and then a while in New York, and then, perhaps, turn up at Cincinnati. Scarcely any body with us is living where they expect to live and die. The man that dies in the house he was born in is a wonder. There is something pleasant in the permanence and repose of the English family estate, which we, in America, know very little of.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854).

Family, Housing

“The vanguard of industrial investment in the world capitalist system is in the lowest paid segment of those countries paying the lowest wages. Young women in developing countries are the labor force on this frontier just as women and children were in the industrialization of England and Europe in the nineteenth century. Escaping the patriarchal restrictions of domestic production, young women workers are segregated in the new industrial compounds where they are subject to the patriarchal control of managers.”

June Nash (1927–2019) American anthropologist

Source: Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor, 1983, p. x

Women, World, Country

“There is nothynge that more dyspleaseth God,
Than from theyr children to spare the rod.”

John Skelton (1460–1529) English poet

Magnificence, A goodly interlude, line 1954 (published c. 1533), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: He that spareth the rod hateth his son, Proverbs xiii. 24; They spare the rod and spoyl the child, Ralph Venning, Mysteries and Revelations (second ed.), p. 5. 1649; Spare the rod and spoil the child, Samuel Butler: Hudibras, pt. ii. c. i. l. 843.

God

“…thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Stupidity, Parent, Sleep

“Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

People

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 10

Feeling, Sense, Horse, Housing

“We're like children who always want to take apart watches to see how they work.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

As quoted by Freeman Dyson, "Seeing the Unseen," New York Review of Books (Feb. 24, 2005), quoting Rutherford in the London Daily Herald

“Mr. Peres, you are older than I am. And your voice is genuinely loud. I know that it is because you are, in fact, in a psychology of feeling guilty, thus you better know that I will not sound that loud. And when killing is the case, you know how to kill very well. I know how you killed the children on the beaches, I know how you shot them. Two ex-PMs of your country once told me important things. You have had such prime ministers who said, "When I enter Palestine on a tank, I feel happy — in a different way." You have had PMs who said to me "I feel happy when I am on a tank while entering Palestine." And you give me those numbers. I would release their names, in case some of you might be curious of. I also condemn those who acclaim this cruelty, because I think it is a crime against humanity as well.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted during a discussion panel at 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in "Turkish PM storms off in Gaza row" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/7859417.stm, BBC (January 29, 2009)

Happiness, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, People

“It is only after prolonged, and often painful, self-examination that any of us can realise the extent to which our minds are in bondage to words, to phrases, to formulae. We are the children of an age which spends the best energies of its life in the discussion of life, in an atmosphere of deferred fulfillment, continually postponing the act of living to the work of mentally preparing to live. Preoccupied with these preparations, we become skeptical as to all that lies beyond; and if for a moment we pass the boundary which separates the area of discussion from the fact discussed, our minds become troubled and amazed, and we conclude, strangely enough, that we are in a land of moonshine and of dreams.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

Life, Pain, Age, Dreams

“It needs satisfaction just like any other, & you really really really get frustrated if you can't have it. You can get such guilt complexes, too, for having any. But why did the Lord make you able to have children at the age of 11, 12 & 13 if you weren't supposed to have sex then?”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Child Brides!

Age, Sex

“If anyone did that, I absolutely apologize. … Because everything we do is based at adults. We're asking adults be responsible. You were telling me about giving your children meat and milk. They're going to be to grow up to be tubs of lard. They're getting heart attacks.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Interview on CNN's Crossfire http://www.animalrights.net/archives/year/2002/000094.html (2002); in response to Tucker Carlson's description of a PETA member campaigning directly to his four-year-old son outside a circus. <br class="br">2002

Heart

Quotes about children page 12

Quotes about children
page 12