“Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.”

A paraphrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table" in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 29 (1872), p. 231: "I like children, — he said to me one day at table. — I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them".
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children." by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107
United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935

Related quotes

George Bernard Shaw photo

“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly tell our children that honesty is the best policy.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

"Rungs of the Ladder" http://books.google.com/books?id=HLpRc3rm5b8C, BBC Radio broadcast, 11 July 1932
1930s

Bob Marley photo

“Tell the children the truth.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
James Frey photo
William Faulkner photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1092. Children and Fools tell Truth.”

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

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

Jon Bon Jovi photo

“After All I've Done For you, you're lying. Wouldn't it be nice to tell the truth?”

Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician

Shot Through The Heart
Music, Bon Jovi (1984)

Béla Lugosi photo

“Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 23-25
Context: The Adlerians, in the name of “individual psychology,” take the side of society against the individual. … Adler’s later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. “Our science … is based on common sense.” Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.

Related topics