Quotes about children
page 15

Ernst Gombrich photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Richard Stallman photo
Věra Jourová photo
Bernie Sanders photo
James K. Morrow photo
Koichi Tohei photo
Kunti photo
Lydia Maria Child photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Menachem Begin photo

“We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

Knesset address (June 8, 1982) per 4 October 2004 article "Exposing False Zionist Quotes II" by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=775

Jean Dubuffet photo
Ray Comfort photo
Benjamin R. Barber photo
Harold Monro photo

“The children eat and wriggle and laugh,
The two old ladies stroke their silk;
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.”

Harold Monro (1879–1932) British poet

"Milk for the Cat", line 17, from Alida Monro (ed.) Collected Poems (London: Duckworth, [1933] 1970) p. 163.

Amit Chaudhuri photo

“There must be other leaps in life - as momentous as the "mirror stage" - that Lacan didn't mention. Some are universal; others, culturally particular. To understand that your parents are human (and not an element of the natural world), that they're separate from you, that they were children once, that they were born and came into the world, is another leap. It's as if you hadn't seen who they were earlier - just as, before you were ten months old, you didn't know it was you in the mirror. This happens when you're sixteen or seventeen. Not long after - maybe a year - you find out your parents will die. It's not as if you haven't encountered death already. But, before now, your precocious mind can't accommodate your parents' death except as an academic nicety - to be dismissed gently as too literary and sentimental. After that day, your parents' dying suddenly becomes simple. It grows clear that you're alone and always have been, though certain convergences start to look miraculous - for instance, between your father, mother, and yourself. Though your parents don't die immediately - what you've had is a realisation, not a premonition - you'll carry around this knowledge for their remaining decades or years. You won't think, looking at them, "You're going to die". It'll be an unspoken fact of existence. Nothing about them will surprise you anymore.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Corbin Bleu photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Coloured Lands (1938)

Eben Moglen photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Giorgio Vasari photo
Shi Nai'an photo

“A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. This is because the proper time for those things has passed. At sunrise the country is bright and fresh, and you dress, wash, and eat your breakfast, but before long it is noon. Then you realize how quickly time passes. I am always surprised when people talk about other people's ages, because what is a lifetime but a small part of much greater period? Why talk about insects when the whole world is before you? How can you count time by years? All that is clear is that time passes, and all the time there is a continual change going on. Some change has taken place ever since I began to write this. This continual change and decay fills me with sadness.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "A man should not marry after thirty if he is not already married, and should not enter the government service if he is not already in the service. At fifty, he should not start to raise a family, and at sixty should not travel abroad. This is because there is a time for everything; done out of season and time, there may be more disadvantages than advantages. One wakes up at dawn completely refreshed, washes his face and puts on the headdress, has his breakfast; chews willow branches [for brightening his teeth], and attends to various things. Before he knows it he asks is it noon, and is told it is long past noon. As the morning goes, so goes the afternoon, and as one day passes, so pass the 36,000 days of one's life. If one is going to be upset by this thought, how can one ever enjoy life? I often wonder at a statement that such and such a person is so many years old. By this one means an accumulation of years. But where have the years accumulated? Can one lay hold of them and count them? This shows that the me of the past has long vanished. Moreover, when I have completed this sentence, the preceding sentence has already vanished. That is the tragedy." (The Importance of Understanding, 1960; pp. 83–84)
Preface to Water Margin

Barbara Hepworth photo

“I'd like them (Mainland Chinese) to live here (Kinmen) too. I hope someday they can buy property here and their children could come to school here.”

Wu Cherng-dean (1957) Taiwanese politician

Source: Wu Cherng-dean (2016) cited in " On A Rural Taiwanese Island, Modern China Beckons http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/11/493255462/on-a-rural-taiwanese-island-modern-china-beckons" on NPR, 11 September 2016.

Akira Ifukube photo
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick photo
Francis Escudero photo
Jahangir photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

Dana Gould photo
Karl Barth photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Albert Einstein photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
John Dickinson photo
Alain Finkielkraut photo
Tim Moore photo
Al Gore photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Alex Jones photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“The importance of imitation for the development of higher cognition in human beings: We embody ideas before we abstract them out and then represent them in an articulated way. What is the child doing when they play house? They are watching their parent over multiple instantiations, and then abstracting out the spirit called Mother, and that is whatever is mother-like across all those multiple manifestations, and then laying out that pattern internally and manifesting it in an abstract world. It's that you're smart enough to pull out the abstraction, and then embody it. And certainly the child is striving toward an ideal. If children don't engage in that kind of dramatic and pretend play to some tremendous degree, then they don't get properly socialized. It's really a critical element of developing self understanding and of also developing the capability of being with others, because what you do when you're a child, especially around the age of four is: you jointly construct a shared fictional world, and then you act out your joint roles within that shared fictional world. Embodied imitation and dramatic abstraction constituted the ground out of which higher abstract cognition emerged. How else could it be? Clearly we were mostly bodies before we were minds. Clearly. And so we were acting out things way before we understood them.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GPAl_q2QQ "Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority"

Dennis Kucinich photo
Alan Keyes photo
Elton John photo

“And I guess that's why they call it the blues.
Time on my hands could be time spent with you,
Laughing like children, living like lovers,
Rolling like thunder under the covers.
And I guess that's why they call it the blues.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues
Song lyrics, Too Low for Zero (1983)

Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“In many matters children — not ensnared by dogmatism, passion, or erudition — judge far truer than adults.”

Über viele Dinge urteilen Kinder, von Systemgeist, Leidenschaft und Gelehrsamkeit unverführt, weit richtiger als Erwachsene.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

“Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Also quoted in Every Day Is Father's Day: The Best Things Ever Said About Dear Old Dad (1989), p. 150
The Business of Life (1949)

Oliver P. Morton photo
Rick Perry photo

“I don't think the federal government has a role in your children's education.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-08-16T15:28
Rick Perry: 'I Don't Think The Federal Government Has A Role' In Education
Ian
Millhiser
Scott
Keyes
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/16/297174/perry-vs-education/
posed question: "I would like to know your position on the federal government's role in my children's education."
2011

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The essence of Gumby is that he makes children feel safe. He's their greatest pal.”

Art Clokey (1921–2010) American animator

Quoted by Mike Antonucci (Knight Ridder), "Gumby's creator formed a spirit in clay", The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1 January 1998, p. 6E

F. Anstey photo
James Eastland photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“There are children born to be children, and others who must mark time till they can take their natural places as adults.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

John Campbell Shairp photo

“Not as men of science, not as critics, not as philosophers, but as little children, shall we enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 332.

Margaret Sanger photo
John A. McDougall photo

“The pain and suffering inflicted on children by the American diet is so brutal that if it were administered with a stick, parents would be put in jail.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

“Vegan Diet Damages Baby's Brain—Sensationalism!,” in VegNews (March–April 2003), p. 10; as quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (Lantern Books, 2005), p. 66 https://books.google.it/books?id=BTqLjAOwsSMC&pg=PA66.

Richard Dawkins photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Roger Nash Baldwin photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Anzia Yezierska photo

“The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

The Fat of the Land, from Hungry Hearts and Other Stories (1920)

Lupe Fiasco photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“All children are manipulators.”

Treasure Box (1996)

“Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part One, Entropy, Gamblers Ruin, p. 50
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Louis Althusser photo

“The children whom nobody leads by the hand are the children who know they are children.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

Pope John Paul II photo

“God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Written prayer placed by the pope into the Western Wall in Jerusalem on 26 March 2000, during his apostolic journey to the Holy Land
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000326_jerusalem-prayer_en.html

Anna Soubry photo
Alberto Gonzales photo
Ray Comfort photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;
Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Islanders, l. 55-57.
Other works

Kunti photo
Frances Kellor photo

“Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)
Context: When the country first tried in 1915 to Americanize its foreign-born people, Americanization was thought of quite simply as the task of bringing native and foreign-born Americans together, and it was believed that the rest would take, care of itself. It was thought that if all of us could talk together in a common language unity would be assured, and that if all were citizens under one flag no force could separate them. Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through.

David Berg photo

“The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 324.

Aldous Huxley photo
Warren Farrell photo

“After a divorce, men’s biggest fear is, typically, losing their children (women’s is poverty).”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 190.

Kancha Ilaiah photo

“How do you change ancient prejudices in any society? You do it through repositioning caste at childhood. If young children are taught respect over a bedtime story or in class, that could help enormously”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

Quoted in "One Man Takes Aim At Prejudice With Storybook" at The Washington Post (20 January 2008) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/19/AR2008011902412.html.

Eric Schmidt photo

“Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people — they're just, they're just literally lying.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

'They're just literally lying': Google’s Eric Schmidt on cutting ties with conservative group http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/09/22/theyre-just-literally-lying-googles-eric-schmidt-on-cutting-ties-with-conservative-group in SFGate (22 September 2014).

James A. Garfield photo

“Mister Speaker, let us learn a lesson from the dealing of God with the Jewish nation. When his chosen people, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, had crossed the Red Sea and traversed the gloomy wilderness with its thundering Sinai, its bloody battles, disastrous defeats, and glorious victories; when near the end of their perilous pilgrimage they listened to the last words of blessing and warning from their great leader before he was buried with immortal honors by the angel of the Lord; when at last the victorious host, sadly joyful, stood on the banks of the Jordan, their enemies drowned in the sea or slain in the wilderness, they paused and made solemn preparation to pass over and possess the land of promise. By the command of God, given through Moses and enforced by his great successor, the ark of the covenant, containing the tables of the law and the sacred memorials of their pilgrimage, was borne by chosen men two thousand cubits in advance of the people. On the further shore stood Ebal and Gerizim, the mounts of cursing and blessing, from which, in the hearing of all the people, were pronounced the curses of God against injustice and disobedience, and his blessing upon justice and obedience. On the shore, between the mountains and in the midst of the people, a monument was erected, and on it were written the words of the law, 'to be a memorial unto the children of Israel forever and ever.”

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)

H.V. Sheshadri photo
Louis C.K. photo
Stephen King photo
Donald Barthelme photo

“My deranged mother has written another book. This one is called The Bough and is even worse that the others. I refer not to its quality—it exhibits the usual “coruscating wit” and “penetrating social observation”—but to the extent to which it utilizes, as a kind of mulch pile, the lives of her children.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Author”, opening; p. 45.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Adolph Freiherr Knigge photo

“For a person of understanding, interacting with children is endlessly interesting. Here one sees the book of nature thrown open, stripped of artificiality.”

Der Umgang mit Kindern hat für einen verständigen Menschen unendlich viel Interesse. Hier sieht er das Buch der Natur in unverfälschter Ausgabe aufgeschlagen.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi photo

“Mothers always sacrifice and wastes her life for their children. that's why I ask her to participate even more than youth.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi asking Egyptian women to go vote on the referendum during a cultural symposium organized by MOD Department of Moral Affairs on 11 January 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w50oWry07E.
2014