Quotes about children
page 31

“I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: 'a long time ago, in the future.' Let the children see our history, and maybe it will help to shape the future.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: address to the Empire Club and the Royal Commonwealth Society, June 26, 1996

History, Time, Future, Help

“If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

The Independent (12 May 1991)

Passion

“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 4, “Whisper” (p. 115)

People

“A child gets sick with a chronic disease of unhappiness not from unhappy circumstances but from unhappy people around him. Unhappy people cannot raise happy children; it’s impossible.”

Simon Soloveychik (1930–1996) Russia writer and philosopher

Book 1 part 1, ch. 23
Pedagogika dlya vseh (Parenting For Everyone) (1977–1986)

Happiness, People, Disease

“The elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8.

Life, Family, Wine

“What is the impact on our children of this international “Sisterhood is Victimhood” bonding?”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

“Some, in their curiosity, will say, "But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?" I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible…"What good does it do you, Latter-day Saints?" It proves that the Bible is true. What do the infidel world say about the Bible? They say that the Bible is nothing better than last year's almanack; it is nothing but a fable and priestcraft, and it is good for nothing. The Book of Mormon, however, declares that the Bible is true, and it proves it; and the two prove each other true. The Old and New Testaments are the stick of Judah. You recollect that the tribe of Judah tarried in Jerusalem and the Lord blessed Judah, and the result was the writings of the Old and New Testaments. But where is the stick of Joseph? Can you tell where it is? Yes. It was the children of Joseph who came across the waters to this continent, and this land was filled with people, and the Book of Mormon or the stick of Joseph contains their writings, and they are in the hands of Ephraim. Where are the Ephraimites? They are mixed through all the nations of the earth. God is calling upon them to gather out, and He is uniting them, and they are giving the Gospel to the whole world. Is there any harm or any false doctrine in that? A great many say there is. If there is, it is all in the Bible.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 13:174-175 (May 29, 1870)
1870s

God, People, Books, World

“Let me make it clear: this grammar school boy will take no lessons from that public school boy on the importance of children from less privileged backgrounds gaining access to university.”

Michael Howard (1941) British politician

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo031203/debtext/31203-03.htm#31203-03_wqn4, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 415 col. 498 At Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons, December 3, 2003

School, Boy, Universe

“Her children knew she's sleeping with all these men. That just seems to me, it's the definition of "not a good mother." … Is everyone just saying here that it's okay to ostentatiously have premarital sex in front of your children? … [Diana is] an ordinary and pathetic and confessional — I've never had bulimia! I've never had an affair! I've never had a divorce! So I don't think she's better than I am.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Statement on MSNBC (19 September 1997) as quoted in "The Wit and Wisdom (NOT) of Ann Coulter" (4 September 2004) http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020205Coulter.html. 1980s-90s

Men, Sex, Thinking, Sleep

“And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)

Dreams

“At a state level, it's up to them. I don't want it to be a federal thing. I personally still think it's wrong. People don't understand the dictionary— it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do — what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we're supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing.”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

On same-sex marriages, in "Q & A: 'Joe the Plumber'" interview by Sarah Pulliam, in Christianity Today (May 2009) Web-only article http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/mayweb-only/118-13.0.html.

Love, God, People, Understanding

“I think hockey is a game, a child's game, played by men and to play it effectively you must have fun just like children do. I've been with too many teams in sports through the years where you weren't allowed to open your mouth, you weren't allowed to laugh, you weren't allowed to question the coach or anyone in authority … You lived in fear. My players don't live in fear. They get up in the morning, they're happy and they go to bed, they're happy. And that's the type of person I am.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

From the 1975 Stanley Cup Finals film: "A Silver Fantasy."

Men, Happiness, Fear, Game

“One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. The child has not yet had the chance to know what it is like to be a grownup; he believes, even, that being a grownup is a mistake he will never make—when he grows up he will keep on being a child, a big child with power. So the child and grownup live in mutual love, misunderstanding, and distaste. Children shout and play and cry and want candy; grownups say Ssh! and work and scold and want steak. There is no disputing tastes as contradictory as these. It is not just Mowgli who was raised by a couple of wolves; any child is raised by a couple of grownups. Father and Mother may be nearer and dearer than anyone will ever be again—still, they are members of a different species. God is, I suppose, what our parents were; certainly the ogre of the stories is so huge, so powerful, and so stupid because that is the way a grownup looks to a child.
Grownups forget or cannot believe that they seem even more unreasonable to children than children seem to them.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book’, pp. 51–52
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Love, God, Stupidity, Way

“Whenever men began to talk about too many people, they are paving the way for their destruction. It represents a suicidal element in man. For children are the aspects of man’s dominion. Moreover another aspect of that dominion is dominion over every living thing. Over the animal world. Man is thus created with a relationship towards animals established as normative with healthy psychology.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Creationism and Psychology (n. d.)

Men, People, World, Way

“The future of poetry should be, must be, in the hearts of children, lifting them above mean desires and helping them to believe, with Socrates, that they who have the fewest wants are nearest to the gods.”

Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927) American writer and poet

On poetry

God, Future, Help, Heart

“I'm struggling with flowering trees [in Spring 1881, shortly after his Algeria trip] and with women and children. I keep feeling regretful, all the same – I think of all the trouble I have given you for nothing, and I wonder how long you will put up with my womanish whims; and through all I keep seeing those pretty English girls [Duret invited him to visit England]. What a misfortune, always to be so undecided! But it's at the root of my character, and I'm too old to change.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, pp. 156-157 : a letter to Théodore Duret, March 1881

Women, Feeling, Girl, Spring

“Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence. Children grow up very fast but not very far. That is why it is possible for 14 year olds now to establish friendships with 26 year olds - because they know by the age of 14 all they are ever going to know.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Frontpage Magazine interview (August 31, 2005).

Friendship, Age, Parting, Childhood

“Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"To the lady who berated me, I say: on your bike", Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2002, p. 21.
2000s, 2002

People, Cars, Study, Reading

“The sky is grey
The road is grey
The building is grey
The rain is grey
Through this stretch of dead ash
Walked two children
One in bright red
One in light green.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"Feeling" [Ganjue]

Light, Dead

“Kenneth Burke calls form the satisfaction of an expectation; The Man Who Loved Children is full of such satisfactions, but it has a good deal of the deliberate disappointment of an expectation that is also form.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 40
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Love, Disappointment

“Children are different—mentally, physically, spiritually, quantitatively, qualitatively; and furthermore, they're all a little bit nuts.”

Jean Kerr book Please Don't Eat the Daisies

" Children Really are Not People http://books.google.com/books?id=w0FnrZaKX7MC&q=%22Children+are+different+mentally+physically+spiritually+quantitatively+qualitatively+and+furthermore+they're+all+a+little+bit+nuts%22&pg=PA157#v=onepage," Please Don't Eat the Daisies, The Saturday Evening Post, 27 July 1957 http://books.google.com/books?id=0QkfAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Children+are+different+mentally+physically+spiritually+quantitatively+qualitatively+and+furthermore+they're+all+a+little+bit+nuts%22&pg=PA17#v=onepage Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957)

“Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 57.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Birth

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of little children tends towards the formation of character.”

Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)

Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 216.

Education

“I live in a tough neighborhood. They got a children's zoo. Last week, four kids escaped.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 14

“But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight's show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?" (October 7, 2014) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself 2010s

Women, People, Books, Thinking

“Bremner (as himself): "But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair. No, the difference is Saddam rules Iraq through a combination of terror and brutality, backed up by a vicious regime of intimidation and torture - or is that David Blunkett? As absolute ruler Saddam recently claimed 100% victory in a Presidential Election."
John Fortune: "Although that's not surprising, given that voters were accompanied into the booths by Saddam's Ba'ath party officials, and given a choice between voting for Saddam or voting for their wives and children to be killed, and their houses to be burnt down."
Bremner (as Peter Snow): "And just a bit of fun, just a bit of fun, even small children were counted as supporters on the principle that you might as well throw in the baby with the Ba'ath voter."”

Rory Bremner (1961) British comedian

On the imminent Iraq war (2003)

War, Support, Victory, Baby

“How do you get rid of the trash? It's out there in society, it's going on every day […] You can educate children an awful lot easier than you can get rid of the trash.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

Source: [Bob, Sipchen, http://www.aegis.com/news/lt/1997/LT970701.html, Straight Talk From a Straight Shooter Journeys: Joycelyn Elders was known for her outspokenness during her run, Los Angeles Times, E-1, July 3, 1997, 2007-05-20]

Education

“Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.
Blessed be God's name?
Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Death, God, Tree, Universe

“Did you cling to the things they sold you?
Did you cover your eyes when they told you
That he can't come back, 'cause he has no children
To come back for”

George Michael (1963–2016) English singer-songwriter, musician, producer

Praying for Time
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990)

“How are men and women to think about their maleness and their femaleness in this twentieth century, in which so many of our old ideas must be made new? Have we over-domesticated men, denied their natural adventurousness, tied them down to machines that are after all only glorified spindles and looms, mortars and pestles and digging sticks, all of which were once women's work? Have we cut women off from their natural closeness to their children, taught them to look for a job instead of the touch of a child's hand, for status in a competitive world rather than a unique place by a glowing hearth? In educating women like men, have we done something disastrous to both men and women alike, or have we only taken one further step in the recurrent task of building more and better on our original human nature?”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 1; Start of first chapter entitled "The Significance of the Questions We Ask"

Women, Men, World, Education

“In fact, for the first time in my life, I am worried about the fact that children might be "brainwashed" in schools throughout the country to "tolerate" homosexuality ("tolerate" as in "hail"), which may turn out to be an encouragement to 1. uncritically approve gay marriage, and 2. become gay yourself.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Why I voted against "gay" marriage http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa08.html#usa1108c

Life, Marriage, School, Time

“Nature, or to speak in more Christian fashion, God, the common Father of men, from the outset gave equal rights to all his children to all the things they needed to preserve their lives. None of us can boast of being more privileged than the rest by nature; but through the insatiable desire to amass wealth, it became impossible for this beautiful brotherhood to endure for long in the world. Men had to resort to division and possession, which resulted in constant quarrels and litigation; of this were born the words 'mine' and 'thine'—such cold terms, as the admirable St. John Chrysostom remarks—of this, too, was born the great diversity of conditions, some living in affluence in every respect, others languishing in penury.”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) French bishop and theologian

"Panegyric in honor of St. Francis of Assisi", as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1968), p. 84

Men, God, World, Beauty

“What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes (1925)

Books, Nature

“I determined to spend the Remainder of my Days in privacy and Retirement with my Children, from whose Society alone I could expect Comfort.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to a member of the Brent family (2 October 1778) http://www.virginia1774.org/ToMrBrent.html

“The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent. Would you get on a plane — or put your children on a plane — if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the statistic holds for condoms, folks.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

[The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, October 1992, 134, 978-0671751456, 92028659, 26397008, 1724938M]

Lie, Failure

“As parents, we can do a great deal to further this goal by helping our children develop alternative ways of knowing the world — verbally/analytically and visually/spatially. During the crucial early years, parents can help to shape a child's life in such a way that words do not completely mask other kinds of reality. My most urgent suggestions to parents are concerned with the use of words, or rather, not using words.”

Betty Edwards (1926) American artist

Source: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), p.239

Life, World, Way, Reality

“If we turn back to the time when the first compulsory education act was passed, we find that the capitalists of England fought these acts with all their might, but that they soon withdrew their opposition and supported them. For the employers recognised that though the children would know a little more, the amount could be so restricted that the result would only be to make them better wage slaves, knowing no more of freedom than what we have known and experienced of it.”

William Earsman (1884–1965) Australian left-wing activist

The Proletariat and Education: The Necessity for Labor Colleges

Education, Support, Freedom, Time

“Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told. I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us – as readers, as writers, as citizens – have obligations.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Books, World, Way, Communication

“There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago? When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

Death, Age, Disease, Time

“Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron…Carlyle, Tennyson, John Henry Newman…Thackeray, Browning and Dickens. There was a galaxy of talent of the highest order in a literature that stands second to none in the world…No country can compare with our own in the literature of that period…I have always firmly held that there is no race with more ability latent than our own, or with a higher aptitude for mechanical genius. When the College was founded, Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, all sons of working men, were inventing the machines which brought the cotton industry. I mention these names to show the stuff of which our people are made, and how that stuff is worth training and educating. It would be a very interesting subject, for anyone who cared to explore it, to see how many of the mechanical inventions which are light-heartedly attributed to Americans are really the product of British brains, whether they were British brains which have gone to work in that country, or the brains of children of British parents who have gone there.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Birkbeck College (20 March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 143-144.
1924

Men, People, World, Education

“The children of the third and fourth generation (of Uzbegs, Persians, Arabs and Turks)… are held in much less respect than the newcomers.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

“The Male Teacher Corps not only exposes children to men from a variety of professions, but exposes children to men with more risk-taking, entrepreneurial male energy and values, creating a balance between exposure to the male and female value systems.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 116.

Men, Teachers

“Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.”

Eleanor Farjeon book Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Evil

“How can we tell our children that — when we have ourselves so often cried out in bitter despair at what we regarded to be the injustice of life — and when we have so often surrendered?”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

Life, Despair

“Many of us were taught not to tattle. It was a culture of silencing and that was normalized. I urge all of us to not only support survivors and bystanders, who are brave enough to tell their truth, but to promote restorative justice. May we also please protect and employ them. May we teach our children that speaking out without the fear of retribution, is our culture’s new North Star.”

Laura Dern (1967) American actress, director, producer

As quoted on the broadcast of the 75th Golden Globe Awards, NBC (7 January 2018) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/laura-dern-culture-silencing-victims-golden-globes_us_5a52d805e4b089e14dbc5ac0

Truth, Fear, Justice, Star

“School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

Love, God, School, Mathematics

“No prophet ever encountered God without withdrawing into solitude and silence. Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist encountered God in the great silence of the desert. Today, too, monks seek God in solitude and silence. I am speaking, not just about geographical solitude or movement, but about an interior state. It is not enough to be quiet, either. It is necessary to become silence. For, even before the desert, the solitude and the silence, God is already in man. The true desert is within us, in our soul. Strengthened with this knowledge, we can understand how silence is indispensable if we are to find God. The Father waits for his children in their own hearts.”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017)

God, Soul, Understanding, Knowledge

“The Raja of Malwa had 5,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry and would have been defeated only after great slaughter. The inhabitants of Kaithal were given such severe punishment (1254) that "they might not forget the lesson for the rest of their lives". In 1256 Ulugh Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Saimur, and "so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described". Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and many of its valiant fighting men were killed. In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) "numberless Hindus perished. In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sword in Hariyana." When Balban became the sultan "large sections of the male population were massacred in Katehar and, according to Barani, in villages and jungles heaps of human corpses were left rotting". During the expedition to Bengal, "on either side of the principal bazar (of Lakhnauti), in a street two miles in length, a row of stakes was set up and the adherents of Tughril were impaled upon them"….. During campaigns and wars, the disorganized flight of the panic-stricken people must have killed large numbers through exposure, starvation and epidemic. Nor should the ravages of famines on populations be ignored. Drought, pestilence, and famines in the medieval times find repeated mention in contemporary chronicles.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 7

Women, Men, War, People

“That wild Irish novel (Blackcock's Feather, Maurice Walsh), a wonderful Elizabethan cloak and dagger story, has started me spinning again, those same old threads; the link between begetting and killing, i. e. that sex and death must both be phenomena of fallen Creation…Another odd parallel; the very men who haven't the courage to beget children, to accept fatherhood, are likely to be pacifists on principle, and opponents of the death penalty. What was it that old Afghan, Mahbud Ali, said to Kim: "When I was fifteen I had shot my man and begot my man!".. as representative of God and Christ glorified, consecrated to him, he [the priest] is absolved from these characteristics of fallen humanity, dispensed, raised above them - neither for ascetic reasons, nor on human grounds, but simply because these are the symbols of the Adamite order.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 41-42 Diaries 1951.

Death, Men, God, Penalty

“Hochschild’s biggest mistake, though, was one made by almost every popularized housework study: not adequately measuring men’s contribution to work around the home. For example, if mom drives the children to daycare, it’s called housework; if dad drives the family to grandma’s, it isn’t called housework.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men, Family, Home, Moms

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Speech to the Negro American Labor Council (May 1965), as quoted in From Civil Rights to Human Rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (2009), by Thomas F. Jackson, p. 230
1960s

God, Democracy, Country, Wealth

“Transforming hereditary privilege into ‘merit,’ the existing system of educational selection, with the Big Three [Harvard, Princeton, Yale] as its capstone, provides the appearance if not the substance of equality of opportunity. In so doing, it legitimates the established order as one that rewards ability over the prerogatives of birth. The problem with a ‘meritocracy,’ then, is not only that its ideals are routinely violated (though that is true), but also that it veils the power relations beneath it. For the definition of ‘merit,’ including the one that now prevails in America’s leading universities, always bears the imprint of the distribution of power in the larger society. Those who are able to define ‘merit’ will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources—cultural, economic and social—will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious.”

Jerome Karabel (1950) American sociologist

The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin: 2005), pp. 549-550.

Education, Birth, Problem, Universe

“The “brightness” of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 85.

Feeling, Question

“What makes a date so dreadful is the weight of expectation attached to it. There is every chance that you may meet your soulmate, get married, have children and be buried side by side. There is an equal chance that the person you meet will look as if they’ve already been buried for some time.”

Guy Browning (1964) British comedian

How to... Date, Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade: How to Survive Life’s Smaller Challenges (2004).

Chance, Time, Personality

“He was moderately sure that a thirteen-year-old boy who'd load up four other children and set out in a steamcrawler across the Korunnai Highland at night-a boy who'd rather die than leave an unconscious girl behind-had guts enough for just about anything.”

Matthew Stover book Shatterpoint

Mace Windu, p. 146
Shatterpoint (2004)

Girl, Boy, Night

“Over the last 24 hrs I have gone through lots of emotions. Scared, Anger, Heartache, Compassion and many others. I truely dont understand why a person would want to take the life of another. Something has changed in this country and in this world lately that is scary to see. This world is becoming the kind of place i am afraid to raise my children in. At the end of the day we arent Democrats or Republicans, Whites or Blacks, Men or Women. We are all humans and we are all Americans and its time to start acting like it and stand together as ONE! That is the only way we will ever get this Country to be better than it has ever been, but we have a long way to go and we have to start now. My heart aches for the Victims and their families of this Senseless act. I am so sorry for the hurt and pain everyone is feeling right now and there are no words i can say.”

Jason Aldean (1977) American country music singer

As quoted in "Jason Aldean releases a statement of unity following Las Vegas shooting" http://us995.cbslocal.com/2017/10/02/jason-aldean-releases-a-statement-of-unity-following-las-vegas-shooting/ (2 October 2017), by Kimmie Caruba, CBS Local

Life, Women, Men, Pain

“We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were.”

Mort Sahl (1927–2021) American comedian and actor

Relationships

“It is no coincidence that while some major female artists have married, very few have borne children. The issue is not conservation of energy but imaginative integrity. Art is its own self-swelling, proof that the mind is greater than the body.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 660

Art, Imagination

“The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military -- a final atrocity against his people.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Invasion of Iraq (March 2003)

Women, Men, War, People

“After Nietzsche’s devastating criticism of those “last men” who “invented happiness,” there is probably no need for me to remind you of the naïve optimism with which we once celebrated science, or the technology for the mastery of life based on it, as the path to happiness. Who believes this, apart from a few overgrown children occupying university chairs or editorial offices?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

"Science as a Vocation" (1917)

Life, Men, Happiness, Optimism

“I have even acted in a children’s film. It was a 10-minute role which I did somewhere around 1961. I had to quote from Gandhi. I spoke for 8 to 10 minutes continuously without any rehearsal, or writing, or retake. Not one word had to be changed. Because when you speak and act truthfully, you do not make a mistake. It comes naturally.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

Quotes, Nature, Change

“We still remain prone to doctrines, philosophies, faiths, and beliefs that spread through the populations of entire civilizations. It is hard to imagine any foolproof ways to protect ourselves from such infections. …the best we can do is to try to educate our children to learn more skills of critical thinking and methods of scientific verification.”

Marvin Minsky book The Emotion Machine

The Emotion Machine (2006)

Education, Faith, Way, Imagination

“The question is as follows: if the Arabs settle among us and make enough children to become a majority, will Israel continue to be a Jewish state? Do we have to accept that the Arab majority will decide? Obviously, nobody in Israel can accept this. Because to accept this would amount to being anti-Zionist!”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

G-d's Law: an Interview with Rabbi Meir Kahane https://web.archive.org/web/20090219141224/http://kahane.org/meir/interview.htm

Question

“Since no one is always right, always being right is really a role model for his children feeling inadequate.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 120.

Feeling

“While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women, Men, Law, Change

“if we are all god's children than why have we rigged the earth with dynamite and are flipping coins to see gets to set it off”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

History Ends in Green (1983)

God

“I put everything I had into it — all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

On his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, in a 1989 CNN interview, quoted in "Oscar-winner Gregory Peck dies at age 87" in USA Today (12 June 2003) http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-06-12-peck-obit_x.htm

Life, Family, Justice, Feeling

“Our great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"Postscript to the News", broadcast on BBC radio, June 5, 1940; published in The Listener, June 13, 1940.

War, Hell, Learning, Holiday

“Hitler's Europe Yes, welcome to Hitler's Europe… Come on, human race - for our children's sake if not our own. This is wakey, wakey time.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source The European Spider's Web, in Bridge of Love Magazine - May 1997

Time

“If parents would only realize how they bore their children!”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Episode I
1910s, Misalliance (1910)

Parent

“We shall Strike. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order. We are poor, we are humble, and our only choices is to Strike in those ranchers where we are not treated with the respect we deserve as working men, where our rights as free and sovereign men are not recognized. We do not want the paternalism of the rancher; we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. We shall overcome.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)

Men, Justice, Future, Fight

“Are they all his children? “How can they be?” “Whose else could they be?”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

The citizens of Hastinapura watched the sad procession, in: p. 32.
The End Of An Epoch

“Most of the parents I interviewed for this book said they would never want other children than the ones they had, which at first seemed surprising given the challenges their children embody. But why do any of us prefer our own children, all of them defective in some regard, to others real or imagined? If some glorious angel descended into my living room and offered to exchange my children for other, better children—brighter, kinder, funnier, more loving, more disciplined, more accomplished—I would clutch the ones I have and, like most parents, pray away the atrocious specter.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 698.

Love, Books, Angels, Imagination

“Halloween is so close I can practically taste the children's tears.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

18 September 2013 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/380346681117507584 Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Tear

“I would rather pass by the statue of Cervantes by car today than let my children cross by mine on foot tomorrow.”

Pedro Muñoz Seca (1879–1936) Spanish writer

Said in 1923 when he was criticized by several writers due to the light style of his nonetheless extremely popular plays.
Source: http://curistoria.blogspot.com/2009/05/pedro-munoz-seca-las-cosas-claras.html

Cars

“It is reason, logic and rationality that machines, said to be soulless, have. In the deontological sense, in fact, morality is evolutionary atavism. It let us survive, that's why it was maintained. As parents were not empathetic, not guided by the good of others, children might have not survived, neglected and abandoned by the group, so morality was promoted in the genes.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Woźniak, Olga; Vetulani, Jerzy (24 December 2011): Stań się dobrym. To się opłaca, interview. Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish).

Parent, Sense

“The unfortunate peasants who were incapable of discharging the demand of their rapacious lords, were bereft of their children who were carried away as slaves.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

François Bernier, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

““You founded the place. Why don’t you want to go?”
“I don’t like children,” the duke replied.
“Then why put out all that money to preserve them?”
“Because it is wrong to let them die.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Source: The Privilege of the Sword (2006), Part I, Chapter VIII, (p. 79)

Money

“Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 21

God, Hostility, Art, Learning

“We are taking our four little children, and I never need anyone to remind me that they need their breakfast... dinner... supper. And I cannot imagine that our heavenly Father is less able or less willing to remember His children’s needs, when He sends them forth to the end of the earth about His business.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Four: Survivors’ Pact. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1984, 156).

Imagination, Business

“Like you, our love of the land is deep. Like you, our pride in the sacred traditions of our culture is immense. Like you, our desire for the economic advancement of our people is solid and enduring. And like you, we are committed to a better future for our children.”

Timoci Bavadra (1934–1989) Fijian politician

Radio broadcast, 24 April 1987 (excerpts)

Love, People, Future

“In one essential point, I fear, we are all deficient: they are nowhere sufficiently instructed. I am far from recommending it to you, at once to set them all free; because to do so would be an heavy loss to you, and probably no gain to them: but I do entreat you to make them some amends for the drudgery of their bodies by cultivating their minds. … though they still continue to be your slaves, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

[Boucher organised education for his own slaves, and baptised many others into the Anglican faith, on one occasion over 300 in a single day]
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

God, Fear, Loss

“For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.Constantly carrying out their policy of making Configuration the leading idea in every mind, the Circles reverse the nature of that Commandment which in Spaceland regulates the relations between parents and children. With you, children are taught to honour their parents; with us — next to the Circles, who are the chief object of universal homage — a man is taught to honour his Grandson, if he has one; or, if not, his Son. By "honour", however, is by no means meant "indulgence", but a reverent regard for their highest interests: and the Circles teach that the duty of fathers is to subordinate their own interests to those of posterity, thereby advancing the welfare of the whole State as well as that of their own immediate descendants.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests

Law, Way, Home, Idea

“Every election we hear about the trouble with our public education systems. Despite all of the attention and lip service this critically important issue receives, we continue to see vast opportunity for improvement. I have personally seen the devastating effects of failing schools. They impact our children in profound ways.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Education, School, Way, Personality

“Four o’clock strikes,
There’s a rising hum,
Then the doors fly open,
The children come.”

Henry Summers (1911–2005) British civil servant

"Out of School"

Flying

“Welfare without work erodes the spirit and the sense of self-worth of the recipient. And it conditions the children of nonworking parents to an indolent and unproductive life. Hardworking parents raise hardworking kids; we should recognize that the opposite is also true. The influence of the work habits of our parents and other adults around us as we grow up has lasting impact.”

Mitt Romney book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness

Source: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, 2010, Chapter 10, pg. 251 http://books.google.com/books?id=PDpBpo5CVB4C&pg=PA251

Life, Parent, Sense

“Long before… our techniques of today, men could conceive and build structures adapted to the requirements of resistance… because he had observed… the branches of a tree bending under the weight of fruits and the tensioned cords of strings in which children have rocked from time immemorial…”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

Men, Tree, Time

“I think marriage is primarily about children, main purpose being to propagate & create environment for children to grow up. Its a good policy for society to support male/female marriage imo.”

Lucinda Creighton (1980) Irish politician

Creighton's comments on Twitter opposing same-sex marriage caused uproar across Ireland, particularly as she was the party's equality spokeswoman at this time. Gaelick http://www.gaelick.com/2012/02/sligo-lgbt-soc-protests-against-lucinda-creighton-with-marriage-ceremony/22059/.

Marriage, Support, Thinking

“Children are the keys of Paradise … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.”

Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903) American poet

Songs of Summer (1856), p. 113.

“Okay, here's a tip: if you're doing something creepy like molesting children, you don't need to take topless photos of yourself to seal the deal. We know, the pedosmile is enough.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Photo

“A child that knows nothing of God’s earth, of green fields, or sparkling brooks, of breezy hill and springy heather, and whose mind is stored with none of the beauties of nature, but knows only the drunkenness prevalent in the hideous slum it is forced to live in, and whose walks abroad have never extended beyond the corner public-house and the pawnshop, cannot be benefited by education. Such children grow up to depraved, and become a danger and terror to the State; wealth-destroyers instead of wealth-producers.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

"Land for House," 1898

God, Education, Beauty, Nature

“Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Radio Address (June 3, 2006); quoted in "Bush, senators renew fight against gay marriage" at CNN.com (June 5, 2006) http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/05/same.sex.marriage.ap/index.html 2000s, 2006

Love, Marriage, Age