Quotes about children
page 16

Joseph Strutt photo
Ronald David Laing photo
Yoshida Kenkō photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
John Adams photo
Aldo Capitini photo

“And you mother still close to me,
you know that it is not enough to live an ordered and honest life.
You have been faithful for years to bring order into our house.
As soon as the dawn appeared in the night sky,
you rose towards the tasks awaiting you –
in the silence of a mental prayer.
Perhaps it is not enough even the overwhelming love,
to which you gave the sober expression of concrete acts.
The sacred wool, the steaming milk and the bed
composed with inimitable care by your hands.
Going back in time you recounted to your children their births,
and the birthdays have slowly vanished.
The beginning is now found from a thousand beginnings,
with the ancient, with the unknown, with Christ.
A present act includes them all,
opening after the events have passed.
And there is a severe duty for struggle,
something in our own life could be wrenched away by it.
The guards will soon appear,
and they will take me to my cell with the high window.
You will still be with me,
as mother and inexhaustible human presence.
Giving freely of your love, you still knew that your son is freedom.
You were a nearness, that always found something to do.
I have watched you unflinching under hardness and spite,
always moving, and acting,
holding back your inner rebellion you had pity on rage.
Now we are together to work and open all around.
In the loving gift to the world which ever crucifies us
is our fulfilment.
Seeing its limitations, still to treasure everything
is the gesture of infinite miracle,
and you were right: order comes from this principle,
the earthly goods, as our brothers the prophets tell us,
will be given unto us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist
Kailash Satyarthi photo
Jane Roberts photo
Muhammad photo
Stephen King photo
François-Noël Babeuf photo

“… children of ignorance, who have at all times made the misfortunes of the human races.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

...enfans de l'ignorance qui ont fait en tous tems le malheur des races humaines.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 49, 27082 2892-7, ; Avec l'orthographe personnelle de Babeuf]
On prejudices

Coretta Scott King photo

“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As quoted in New Woman, Vol. 16, No. 4 (April 1986), p. 20

Newton Lee photo
William L. Shirer photo
John Updike photo

“If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“A Foreword for Younger Readers,” Assorted Prose (1965)

Mobutu Sésé Seko photo
Rupert Murdoch photo

“They’ve started it. We’ve had bitter, personal attack on some of our people. They tried to destroy our credibility as a network. But it is only natural that the people can stand who were personally attacked and their children were personally attacked should fight back and I support them. I support my people completely.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

Asked about feud between News Corp. with GE and MSNBC
Source: Countdown's Worst Person: Threats and Feuds Edition http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/03/countdowns-worst-person-threats-and-feuds-edition

Jahangir photo
Ray Comfort photo
Carl Sagan photo
Henry Kirke White photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“I have five children. There were four men, on the fifth I got weak and a woman came out.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Talk at Clube Hebraica in Rio de Janeiro, on 3 April 2017. Bolsonaro: “Quilombola não serve nem para procriar” http://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/noticias/bolsonaro-quilombola-nao-serve-nem-para-procriar/. Congresso em Foco (5 April 2017).

“Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.”

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) novelist, short story writer

Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Harcraft's Twentieth Century Authors (1954)

Noam Chomsky photo
Dylan Moran photo
Eliezer Yudkowsky photo
Moby photo

“Why can't a Democrat get fired up about protecting the environment and enacting gun control legislation just as right wing republicans get fired up about making sure that children have access to assault weapons and banning 'The catcher in the rye' and 'Harry Potter?”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"imo" http://www.moby.com/journal/2002-12-28/imo.html, journal entry (28 December 2002) at moby.com

Rudolf Höss photo

“We need to marshal and direct our energy toward building this nation into a peaceful, prosperous and proud bequest to our children.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Guest speech to the conference of the Fiji Labour Party, Lautoka, 30 July 2005

Toni Morrison photo
Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac photo

“There are no children of whom we are fonder than those that are born of our brains, to whom we are father and mother in one.”

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654) French author, best known for his epistolary essays

Il n'y a point d'enfants que nous aimions davantage que ceux qui naissent de notre esprit, et desquels nous sommes père et mère tout ensemble.
Socrate Chrétien, Discours VI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 67.
Socrate Chrétien (1662)

Hesiod photo
Bob Keeshan photo

“The children should never be excluded from what I am doing and should never have the feeling of being part of an audience.”

Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) United States Marine

Instructions to director Peter Birch on the format of Captain Kangaroo, as quoted in "Bob Keeshan, Creator and Star of TV's 'Captain Kangaroo,' Is Dead at 76" in The New York Times (24 January 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/arts/bob-keeshan-creator-and-star-of-tv-s-captain-kangaroo-is-dead-at-76.html?pagewanted=all

Pope Sixtus V photo

“It is a pity that Elizabeth and I cannot marry each other. Our children would have gained mastery over the whole world.”

Pope Sixtus V (1520–1590) pope

On Queen Elizabeth I of England, in 1587; reported in Emil Reich, Woman Through the Ages: Volume 2 (1908), p. 38. Alternately reported without the phrase "each other" and ending with "would have ruled the whole world".
Attributed

Shlomo Amar photo

“There is no such thin as having understanding or tolerance for this. … When I have spoken about this in the past, secular people called to thank me. People don't want it. They want their children to get married and have children.”

Shlomo Amar (1948) Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem

About the LGBT community in an interview with Israel Hayom http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=38063 (November 17, 2016)

Gloria Estefan photo

“"Noelle's Treasure Tale" [Estefan's second children's book] comes out October 10”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

2006
comment to audience at Zo's Summer Groove benefit concert (Miami, July 15, 2006)
2007, 2008

Muhammad photo
Otto Ohlendorf photo

“The treatment of the Germans by the Allies was at least as bad as the shooting of those Jews. The bombing of cities with men, women, and children burning with phosphorus - these things were all done by the Allies.”

Otto Ohlendorf (1907–1951) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, March 1, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Derren Brown photo
Ernst Hanfstaengl photo

“(Television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Variant: (Television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children.
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 26

Bill Clinton photo

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.”

Haim Ginott (1922–1973) psychologist

Quoted in Practical Parenting Tips By Vicki Lansky, p. 190

Harry Chapin photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6 month old daughter to go about without her diapers on. Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on peoples sexual frustrations.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1969 essay in the Freeman — as quoted in "You Might Very Well Be the Cause of Cancer": Read Bernie Sanders' 1970s-Era Essays http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride, by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones (6 July 2015)
1970s

Dana Gioia photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Benjamin Spock photo
Warren Farrell photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Dora Russell photo
Charlie Sheen photo
Agatha Christie photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Warren Farrell photo
Madonna photo
Margaret Mead photo
James Thomson (poet) photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Francis Pharcellus Church photo
James Cromwell photo

“Until men learn to celebrate and operate on the feminine aspect of themselves and stop the oppression of women, children, the environment, other species, we don’t have a world to live in. It’s not a world that anyone chooses to live in.”

James Cromwell (1940) American actor and producer

"Tribeca Film Festival Interview: John and James Cromwell of A .45 at 50th" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cynthia-ellis/tribeca-film-festival-int_b_561477.html by Cynthia Ellis, in HuffingtonPost.com (4 July 2010)

John F. Kennedy photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“True empathy is not about waiting to understand another person; it is about proactively seeking to do so. It takes effort to give another person your full time and attention; to ask others how they are feeling and if they coping well with things. And don’t overlook those closest to you. Never take anyone for granted. Avoid being too preoccupied to sit down and talk with your children, partners and colleagues.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“270. A Man among Children will be long a Child, a Child among Men will be soon a Man.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Suzanne Collins photo

“"So, what brings the Children's Crusade into the Firelands? I don't flatter myself you were looking for me." "We got lost on a picnic."”

Ripred and Luxa, p. 247
The Underland Chronicles, Gregor and the Marks of Secret (2006)

Benjamin Franklin photo

“There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.”

Leon Rene Yankwich (1888–1975) United States federal judge

Zipkin v. Mozon (June 1928)
Quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations by Peter McDonald (2004) p. 108

Phyllis Schlafly photo

“People think that child-support enforcement benefits children, but it doesn't.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

Federal Incentives Make Children Fatherless, Phyllis Schlafly Columns, 2007-03-30, Schlafly, Phyllis, 2005-05-11 http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/may05/05-05-11.html,

Tom Baker photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
Herbert Hoover photo

“The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

On his years in the White House, in On Growing Up: Letters to American Boys and Girls (1962)

Anastacia photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“[About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Der Dichter, 1910. Alle Verk, x. 24.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
P. D. James photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“Unless we are free from fear we will not be able to give our children the kind of future that we would like them to have.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech (2013)

Kenji Miyazawa photo
Leo Ryan photo
Hermann Hesse photo
David Cross photo
Poul Anderson photo

“Missile: A self-contained device which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other non-combatants, unless these happen to have resided in Saigon, Da Nang, Hué, etc. Cf. bombing.”

Variant: Bombing: A method of warfare which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other non-combatants, unless these happen to have resided in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Osaka, etc., though not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Cf. missile.
Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

Jomo Kenyatta photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Preta, I’m not going to discuss promiscuity with anyone. I don't run that risk because my children are well educated and they don't live in a promiscuous environment such as is, unfortunately, yours.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Responding to the singer Preta Gil after asked about what he would do if his son fell in love with a black woman on 28 March 2011 https://extra.globo.com/famosos/deputado-jair-bolsonaro-fala-da-promiscuidade-de-preta-gil-declara-que-seria-incapaz-de-amar-um-filho-homossexual-em-entrevista-1980933.html in an interview to the program CQC on Band. Brazil presidential candidate Bolsonaro's most controversial quotes https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotes-012652084.html. Yahoo!, 29 September 2018.

Harper Lee photo
Joe Biden photo

“I, too, believe there are natural rights that predate any written political or legal documents; we have these rights merely because we're children of God.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 178
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Charles Boarman photo

“My dear Father, Charley wrote you in his letter to his Aunt Laura thanking you for your kindness in sending us a nice Christmas present. You must not think because I have not written you myself before this that I appreciated your kindness less. I have been so troubled with pains and weakness in my arm and hand as to be almost useless at times. I think it was nursing so much when the children were sick. I was so relieved when Anna's note to Charly arrived yesterday telling Frankie was better. It would have been dreadful for Mother to have gone out west at this miserable season of the year. I was wretchedly uneasy. I do hope poor Franky will get along nicely now. It will make him much more careful about exposing himself having had this severe attack. Charley received the enclosed letters Anna sent from Sister Eliza and Toad[? ]. I was very glad to get them. It is quite refreshing to read Sister Eliza's letters. They are so cheerful and happy. I had a letter from her on Friday. This Custom House investigating committee is attracting a great deal of attention and time here. It holds its sessions at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Mr. Broome was up on Tuesday evening until ten o'clock but was not called upon. It is very slow. He has been for three weeks passed preparing the statement for those summoned from the Public Stores. Mr. Broome sends Laura a paper to look at—The Fisk tragedy. What is Nora doing with herself this winter. She might write to me sometimes. Give much love to Mother. Ask her for her receipt for getting fat. I would like to gain some myself. It is so much nicer to grow fleshy as you advance in life than to shrivel and dry up. The children are all well and growing very fast. Lloyd has to study very hard this year. His studies are quite difficult. I suppose Charley Harris is working hard too. Mr. Broome sent you a paper with the Navy Register in this week. I received your papers and often Richard calls and gets them. I must close. Mr. Broome and children join me in love to you, Mother, Laura, Anna, Nora, Charly & all.
With much love,
Your devoted child, Mary Jane
I enclose Nancy letter which was written some time ago.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Mary Jane Boarman in a Sunday letter to her father (January 21, 1872)
The people mentioned in Mary Jane's letter were her children Lloyd, Charley, and Nancy; her husband, William Henry Broome; her sisters Eliza, Anna, Laura, and Nora; her brother Frankie; and her nephew frontier physician Dr. Charles "Charley" Harris, son of her sister Susan.
John Broome and Rebecca Lloyd: Their Descendants and Related Families, 18th to 21st Centuries (2009)

Frances Farmer photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo