Quotes about children (4463 quotes, page 45)

“When possible, children should be comfortable and free when they are playing or studying, and it is the way in a civilized country to make them more comfortable by not being too strict and giving grace and love at the same time.”

Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) first president of South Korea (1875-1965)

Source: Speech at the first anniversary of the founding of Seoul Board of Education (2 October 1957)

Study , Love , Time , Country

“Those who want to be among the Ethiopian children, who will be hailed by history, rise up for your country today. Let's meet at the front.”

Abiy Ahmed (1976) Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: Abiy Ahmed (2021) cited in: " Ethiopia civil war: How PM Abiy led fight-back against rebel advance https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59552888" in BBC News, 16 December 2021.

History , Country

“A lot of families (in French Guiana) live in makeshift homes where people don't have access to water. When people don't have running water and no money because they have to feed and clothe their children and pay their rent, buying hydroalcoholic gel (hand sanitizer) is not a priority.”

Gabriel Serville (1959) French politician

Source: Gabriel Serville (2021) cited in: " In French Guiana, virus exposes inequality, colonial legacy https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/in-french-guiana-virus-exposes-inequality-colonial-legacy/" in The Seattle Times, 19 July 2020.

Home , Money , People , Water

“The pro-life Republicans drop the children at birth and do nothing for them after that.”

Bob Casey Sr. (1932–2000) American politician (1932-2000)

Source: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/no-violence/civil/hentoff_casey.html

Birth , Life

“New Year's Eve is literally filled with good cheer and happy thoughts, as we all try to put our best foot forward. This openness and generosity are the spirit of this wonderful holiday, when it is so important to warm parents’ hearts with kindness and loving care, to hug them if they are near you, and to tell everyone around you how dear they are to you and that happiness is all about love, children, family, and friends.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2021

Parent , Love , Happiness , Family

“Few desire to know the truth of what is happening in our state’s abortion clinics. All of the outrage, all of the noise is directed at one thing: silencing the uncomfortable truth. It’s either willful ignorance or a decision to partner with the abortion industry. When I started in public office, I was intellectually pro-life, but now I have come to see that the life issue is truly the issue of our time. The depth of evil that exists to protect this lie prevents the states from protecting children. How we determine the answer to this issue is what will determine where our nation will end up. Unless the truth prevails, abortion will destroy us as a nation.”

Phill Kline (1959) American politician

Source: Ask the Attorney: An Interview with Former Kansas Attorney General and Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline http://lifelegalgiving.com/ask-the-attorney-an-interview-with-former-kansas-attorney-general-and-johnson-county-district-attorney-phill-kline/ (1 August 2009)

Decision , Life , Silence , Truth

“People need to feel they belong to their country. Their need for community is most pronounced in a time of adversity. The people who are hit hardest by a depression, who feel that their children will suffer, look for loyalty from the rest of the community and the government. The present immigration programme, in its indifference to the feelings of the old Australians, erodes those loyalties. The multicultural policy, and its emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority, gnaws at that sense of solidarity that many people crave for.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

Communication , Loyalty , Country , Indifference

“It's a cultural mentality that is causing divisions, hatred and the consolidation of ignorance. Families are being destroyed, and it's getting worse because children themselves are being accused of being witches.”

José Manuel Imbamba (1965) Angolan Roman Catholic archbishop and university teacher

Pope in Angola: Fight superstition https://www.scross.co.za/2009/03/pope-in-angola-fight-superstition/ (21 March 2009)

Family

“The royal children have skulls of granite, it’s true, but they come by that honestly.”

Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer

Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin War (2008), Chapter 2 (p. 51)

“We hope that the initiative of these children spreads and many other children all over the world pray for peace.”

Antoine Chbeir (1961) Lebanese cleric, Maronite bishop of Latakia

Source: Syria: “God, give us peace!” https://acninternational.org/syria-god-give-us-peace/ (9 June 2016)

Peace , Hope , World

“School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008)
Source: Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, New Society Publishers (2013) p. xxii

School , Thinking , Training

“This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 100

School , Food , Personality

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 17

Time

“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 97

Imagination , World , Family , Way

“Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
An' men an' children hurryin' by the door,
An' street cars clangin' on their busy way.
The faces of the people seemed to be
Washed pale by tears o' grief an' strife an' care,
Till everywhere I turned to I could see
The same old gloomy pictures of despair.The windows of the shops all looked the same,
Decked out with stuff their owners wished to sell;
When visitors across our doorway came
I could recite the tales they'd have to tell.
All things had lost their old-time power to please;
Dog-tired I was an' irritable, too,
An' so I traded chimney tops for trees,
An' shingled roof for open skies of blue.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: When Day is Done (1921), The Cure for Weariness, stanzas 1 and 2

Business , Tear , Men , Tree

“Oh, my shoulders grow aweary of the burdens I am bearin',
An' I grumble when I'm footsore at the rough road I am farin',
But I strap my knapsack tighter till I feel the leather bind me,
An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones who come behind me.
It's for them that I am ploddin', for the children comin' after;
I would strew their path with roses and would fill their days with laughter.Oh, there's selfishness within me, there are times it gets to talkin',
Times I hear it whisper to me, "It's a dusty road you're walkin';
Why not rest your feet a little; why not pause an' take your leisure?
Don't you hunger in your strivin' for the merry whirl of pleasure?"
Then I turn an' see them smilin' an' I grip my burdens tighter,
For the joy that I am seekin' is to see their eyes grow brighter.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: The Path to Home (1919), p.112 - The Burden Bearer, stanzas 1 and 2.

Hunger , Pleasure , Selfishness , Time

“The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.”

John Taylor Gatto book The Underground History of American Education

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling (2001), pp. 105-106

Fashion , Life , Learning , Secret

“By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling—teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, and others—have ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 85

Teachers , Education , School

“Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the Mass schooling that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 70

Dependency , Education , School , Time

“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 68

Communication , Learning , Chance , Time

“The home-schooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents; last month the education press reported the amazing news that, in their ability to think, children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 22

Home , People , Training , Education

“I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), pp. xxxiii-xxxiv

Dependency , Nature , Thinking , Learning

“Slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. xxxiv

Dependency , Learning , Age , School

“I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: "I Quit, I Think" (1991)

People , Teachers , Secret , Training

“When American schooling stopped being primary for mental development and character training,.. it became a training ground to supply the existing economy with a particular kind of labor and customers that it needed. One buried byproduct of this shift was to sabotage free market principles. Because by conditioning children to what is, instead of what could be, it heavily subsidized existed commerce and social political dispositions.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: “A Different Kind of Teacher: Nobody can educate you except yourself,” C-SPAN (January 5, 2001) https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4653000/educate-yourself

Training , School

“Infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything to do with children.”

Larry Niven book N-Space

Short fiction, N-Space (1990)
Source: Madness Has Its Place (p. 568)

“Children are our futures and hopes.”

Kazeronnie Mak

Future , Hope

“Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

Baby , Intelligence , Death , Pain

“I have been opposed to vivisection for many years; not just because it is unbelievably barbaric and unforgivably cruel but also because it is worthless, wasteful, inaccurate, uninformative and dangerously misleading. The cruelty is indefensible and an affront to human dignity, but in a desperate attempt to justify their evil practices many vivisectors still claim that what they do helps save human lives. They are lying. The truth is that animal experiments kill people and animal researchers are responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children every year; they are also directly responsible for a massive amount of human suffering.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Why Animal Experiments Must Stop" (1991), in animalliberationfront.com http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/waems.htm.

Lying , Death , Women , Men

“America the brave still fears what we don't know And God loves all his children it's somehow forgotten, but we paraphrase a book written 3, 500 hundred years ago.”

Macklemore (1983) American rapper from Washington

Source: Song Same Love

Fear , God , Books , Love

“I’ve never doubted I would have children. It’s not something I’ve ever wavered on.”

Jonathan Bailey (1988) British actor

Source: "Jonathan Bailey: From Broadchurch to the West End: the star of Sondheim’s smash hit Company in The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/from-broadchurch-to-the-west-end-the-star-of-sondheims-smash-hit-company-mjppfprkr (31 October 2018)

“The rights of children, then, as individuals, begin while yet they are in fetal life. Children do not come into existence by any will or consent of their own.”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

In a speech "Children--Their Rights and Privileges" that led to Victoria Woodhull's election as President of the American Association of Spiritualists at their Eighth National Convention on its second day, Wednesday, September 13, 1871, at Troy, New York

Life

“The continuous cries for help - from children and women and men - ring in my ears, even today seventy-seven years later.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

pg. 115
Source: 2020s, Ch. 7 section 2

Help , Men , Women

“The moral beatings that people took from their children, I was thinking, were the hardest to endure and the hardest to escape.”

Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) Novelist

The Goodbye Look (1969)

Thinking , People

“Petronius once told me that pathological murderers tend to start their killing sprees while they are children. Find a man who takes prostitutes off the streets as a personal vocation, and he'll probably have a set of neat jars with his childhood collection of dissected rats.”

Lindsey Davis book Nemesis

Nemesis (2010)

Childhood , Personality

“What’s happened to us that we take killings for granted among our children? Don’t give me that hogwash about students at college having to be treated as adults—there’s nothing adult about playing with guns and grenades!”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 78, “No, Of Course Logorrhea Isn’t What Happens When You Break a Log-Jam But the Result Is Pretty Much the Same for Anyone Who’s in the Way ” (p. 282)

“Kids, you better listen to the folks than me. It's not for children.”

Goran Bare (1965) Croatian rock musician, singer

About turbo folk music
Original: (hr) Djeco, bolje slušajte narodnjake, nego mene. Nije to za djecu.

“We must work together to create an America where everyone feels safe in their community, where children feel safe in their schools. And, of course, that responsibility that we collectively have to ensure that all people feel safe in their community is what brings us together today.”

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

2022, May 2022
Source: Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris at Signing of Executive Order to Advance Effective, Accountable Policing and Strengthen Public Safety (May 25, 2022) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-and-vice-president-harris-at-signing-of-executive-order-to-advance-effective-accountable-policing-and-strengthen-public-safety/

People , Communication , School , Feeling

“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.”

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

1970s

“That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. I won't do that. I'll temper a story, yes. But I won't play down, and I won't patronize.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

From Walt Disney World: Then, Now, & Forever: Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that. I won't do that. I'll temper a story, yes. But I won't play down, and I won't patronize.
Year unknown, published in 2001, The Quotable Walt Disney (2001)

People , World , Forgetting

“I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

1963, Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)

Way

“Parents, give your children to God... there will be blessings. Give thanks to our heavenly Father for he is exceedingly generous and He will give a hundred-fold.”

Simon Peter Poh Hoon Seng (1963) Malaysian prelate

Auxiliary bishop ordained for Kuching archdiocese https://catholicnews.sg/2015/10/12/auxiliary-bishop-ordained-for-kuching-archdiocese/ (12 October 2015)

God , Parent

“We are all naturally self-righteous. It is the family-disease of all the children of Adam.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Vol. II, Luke XVIII: 9–14, p. 259
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Luke (1858–1859)

Family , Disease , Nature

“Russian soldiers are fighting for the money, Ukrainian soldiers, Ukrainian citizens are fighting for the future of our children - and you feel the difference between the money and the children.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

"Ukraine war: Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says it is 'a big privilege for every man' to defend Ukraine and warns Russian soldiers to 'go away'" https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-kyiv-mayor-vitali-klitschko-says-it-is-a-big-privilege-for-every-man-to-defend-ukraine-and-warns-russian-soldiers-to-go-away-12578968, Sky News, 31 March 2022

Money , Future , Fight , Feeling

“Ukraine is a peaceful country, we were never aggressive to anyone. But, right now, the situation is about our future, the future of our children - and we have to defend that.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

2022

Peace , Country , Future

“If my home country needs my life, I am ready to give my life — for my country, for my children, for the future.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

2022

Home , Life , Country , Future

“Our main concern now is to bring peace to the hearts of the people. Schools have an important role in this since classes have children of different ethnic groups and this is where they can be educated to live side by side.”

Angelo Moreschi (1952–2020) Italian Catholic Bishop

Slowly Calm Returns to Gambella After Fierce Ethnic Clashes. Concern for 16,000 People in Flight Towards Sudan http://www.fides.org/en/news/1553-AFRICA_ETHIOPIA_SLOWLY_CALM_RETURNS_TO_GAMBELLA_AFTER_FIERCE_ETHNIC_CLASHES_CONCERN_FOR_16_000_PEOPLE_IN_FLIGHT_TOWARDS_SUDAN (20 January 2004)

People , Education , School , Peace

“Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection?”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

The Gospel of Wealth 1906

Men

“Our Lord has many weak children in His family, many dull pupils in His school, many raw soldiers in His army, and many lame sheep in His flock. Yet He bears with them all, and casts none away.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Vol. III, John XX: 24–31, p. 406
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John (1865–1873)

School , Family

“We strive to build a prosperous society, which will be engaged in creative work, thanks to which citizens can have a decent rest, travel, and children have good health and receive a quality education.”

Sooronbay Jeenbekov (1958) President of Kyrgyzstan

"President Sooronbay Jeenbekov's address to the Nation in connection with the pandemic and the upcoming elections" https://mfa.gov.kg/en/Menu---Foreign-/News/News-and-Events/President-Sooronbay-Jeenbekovs-address-to-the-Nation-in-connection-with-the-pandemic-and-the-upcoming-elections (30 June 2020)

Health , Education , Travel

“Heaven sometimes speaks through the mouths of lunatics, drunkards and children.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

1042
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)

“There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The True Game, The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), Chapter 3 (p. 45)

Religion , Fools , Animals

“Now, some of you might wonder how come I have ten children, right? One of the main reasons is because I want to have my own picket line.”

Dolores Huerta (1930) American labor leader

1974 speech, in Voices of Multicultural America: Notable Speeches Delivered by African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans, 1790-1995 by Deborah Gillan Straub

“On the Death of Jim Larkin

Not with public words now can his greatness
Be told to the children, for he was more
Than a labour-agitating orator —
The flashing flaming sword merely bore witness
To the coming of the dawn. ‘Awake and look!
The flowers are growing for you, and wonderful trees,
And beyond are not the serf’s grey docks, but seas —
Excitement out of the creator’s poetry book.

When the Full Moon’s in the River the ghost of bread
Must not haunt all your weary wanderings home.
The ships that were dark galleys can become
Pine forests under the winter’s starry plough
And the brown gantries will be the lifted hand
Of man the dreamer whom the gods endow.’

And thus I hear Jim Larkin shout above
The crowd who wanted him to turn aside
From Reality coming to free them. Terrified
They hid in the clouds of dope and would not move.
They ate the opium of the murderer’s story
In the Sunday newspapers; they stood to stare
Not at a blackbird, but at a millionaire
Whose horses ran for serfdom’s greater glory.

And Tyranny trampled them in Dublin’s gutter,
Until Larkin came along and cried
The call of Freedom and the call of Pride,
And Slavery crept to its hands and knees,
And Nineteen Thirteen cheered from out the utter
Degradation of their miseries.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND1NCf1ZRFM

Sea , Death , God , Books

“…I have not even been nominated for one. But it doesn’t affect me any more. This is the great thing about getting old: things that preoccupied you when you were young cease to preoccupy you. I would have loved to have had one Oscar. Well, too bad. I have six sheep, two dogs, two children.”

Isabella Rossellini (1952) Italian actress and filmmaker

On how she never won an Oscar like her mother Ingrid in “Isabella Rossellini: ‘Ageing brings a lot of happiness. You get fatter – but there is freedom’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/13/isabella-rossellini-ageing-brings-a-lot-of-happiness-you-get-fatter-but-there-is-freedom in The Guardian (2020 Oct 13)

Dogs , Love

“A wonderful relationship consists of two people who manage to become children again. Living and loving each other as teenagers in one way: purely.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Una meravigliosa relazione è composta da due persone che riescono a tornare bambini. Vivere ed amarsi da adolescenti, in un unico modo: puramente.
Source: prevale.net

People , Way , Love