Quotes about adult
page 5

Warren Farrell photo

“The most frequent way men are raped by adult women is "birth control rape."”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 335.

Mitt Romney photo
James Comey photo

“I have been registered Republican for most of my adult life. Not registered any longer.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Comey, James (July 7, 2016). Hillary Clinton Email Investigation. C-SPAN. Event occurs at 01:43:06. Retrieved July 7, 2016. http://www.c-span.org/video/?412315-1/fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-hillary-clinton-email-probe&live
2010s

Joel Fuhrman photo
Eliezer Yudkowsky photo

“An adult male human that attempts to mate frequently but spends most of its time alone.”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

Referring to "Platypus Man"
Platypus Man

Kurt Lewin photo

“The scope of time ahead which influences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. The change can be partly described as a shift in scope. Instead of days, weeks, or months, now years ahead are considered in certain goals. Even more important is the way in which these future events influence present behavior. The ideas of a child of six or eight in regard to his occupation as an adult are not likely to be based on sufficient knowledge of the factors which might help or interfere with the realization of these ideas. They might be based on relatively narrow but definite expectations or might have a dream or playlike character. In other words, "ideal goals" and "real goals" for the distant future are not much distinguished, and this future has more the fluid character of the level of irreality. In adolescence a definite differentiation in regard to the time perspective is likely to occur. Within those parts of the life-space which represent the future, levels of reality and irreality are gradually being differentiated.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1939) "Field theory and experiments in social psychology" in: American Journal of Sociology. Vol 44. p. 879.
1930s

Robert T. Bakker photo
Roger Scruton photo
R. Venkataraman photo

“Adult franchise is the most powerful instrument devised by man for breaking down social and economic injustice and destroying barriers of caste, creed and religion. It has given the right to the people to choose a government through the democratic process of elections.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, p. 183.

Nicholas Murray Butler photo
Anu Partanen photo
David Icke photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Jenna Jameson photo
Margaret Mead photo

“The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in Educational Psychology (2000) by Anita E. Woolfolk, p. 212
2000s

Lee Kuan Yew photo
Frances Kellor photo
Mel Gibson photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“What [is] the prevailing attitude today among those who call themselves religious but vigorously advocate tolerance? There are three main options, ranging from the disingenuous Machiavellian--1. As a matter of political strategy, the time is not ripe for candid declarations of religious superiority, so we should temporize and let sleeping dogs lie in hopes that those of other faiths can gently be brought around over the centuries.--through truly tolerant Eisenhowerian "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply religious belief — and I don't care what it is" --2. It really doesn't matter which religion you swear allegiance to, as long as you have some religion.--to the even milder Moynihanian benign neglect--3. Religion is just too dear to too many to think of discarding, even though it really doesn't do any good and is simply an empty historical legacy we can afford to maintain until it quietly extinguishes itself sometime in the distant and unforeseeable future.It it no use asking people which they choose, since both extremes are so undiplomatic we can predict in advance that most people will go for some version of ecumenical tolerance whether they believe it or not. …We've got ourselves caught in a hypocrisy trap, and there is no clear path out. Are we like families in which the adults go through all the motions of believing in Santa Claus for the sake of the kids, and the kids all pretend still to believe in Santa Claus so as not to spoil the adults' fun? If only our current predicament were as innocuous and even comical as that! In the adult world of religion, people are dying and killing, with the moderates cowed into silence by the intransigence of the radicals in their own faiths, and many afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe for fear of breaking Granny's heart, or offending their neighbors to the point of getting run out of town, or worse.If this is the precious meaning our lives are vouchsafed thanks to our allegiance to one religion or another, it is not such a bargain, in my opinion. Is this the best we can do? Is it not tragic that so many people around the world find themselves enlisted against their will in a conspiracy of silence, either because they secretly believe that most of the world's population is wasting their lives in delusion (but they are too tenderhearted — or devious — to say so), or because they secretly believe that their own tradition is just such a delusion (but they fear for their own safety if they admit it)?”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Lily Tomlin photo
William Saroyan photo
Sam Harris photo
Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia photo
Jean Piaget photo
John Green photo
Dylan Moran photo
Fran Lebowitz photo
Anthony Kennedy photo

“The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U. S. 914 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=99-830 (28 June 2000) (detailing what he deemed a constitutionally protected alternative to partial-birth abortion).

Bill Hicks photo
Sherilyn Fenn photo
Paul Ryan photo
Dennis Prager photo

“[A] child smacking an adult across the face is not funny. It is, in fact, one of the last things society should tolerate.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Dennis Prager. "The Doritos Ad Was Not Funny" http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2010/02/16/the_doritos_ad_was_not_funny/page/full at townhall.com, 16 February 2010.
2010s

Ann Druyan photo
Howard Bloom photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Albert Einstein photo

“How it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about it, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In Carl Seelig's Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956), Seelig reports that Einstein said this to James Franck, p. 71 http://books.google.com/books?id=VCbPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22how+it+happened%22#search_anchor.
I sometimes ask myself how did it come that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilities.
Variant translation which appears in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 27 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications

Edmund White photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Richard Ford photo
Charles Tart photo
Steve Kilbey photo
Donnie Dunagan photo
Aron Ra photo
A. R. Rahman photo

“I'm always fascinated by the innocence of children and the baggage that we carry as adults which manipulates our decisions.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

Infinite Love, 16 December 2013, Official website of ARRahman http://www.arrahman.com/infinitelove.aspx,

Larry Niven photo
Williemgc photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I believed in merger and unity of the two territories.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

August 9, 1965, when Lee announced the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, as quoted in The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance, Terence Chong
1960s

Neil Gaiman photo

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

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

Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“Keep working boys, but the sooner you forget about needing a paycheck, the easier your adult life will be.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

“As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.”

June Jordan (1936–2002) Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist

"Life After Lebanon" (1984), later published in On Call : Political Essays (1985), and Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)

Irving Kristol photo
Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira photo

“When we are young we believe to be adults; when we are adults we believe to be young.”

Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira (1949) Brazilian singer

Jornal Hoje, Rede Globo, June 9, 2007

William Alcott photo
Robert Parish photo

“Meadowlark inspired me to play for a long time. I thought, 'If he could do it, I can do it.' The legacy that Meadowlark leaves is something that every child and adult can benefit from.”

Robert Parish (1953) American basketball player

Quoted in Trust Your Next Shot: A Guide to a Life of Joy by Meadowlark Lemon (Ascend Books, 2010), p. III https://books.google.it/books?id=_UT_2hRSc9wC&pg=PR3.

Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Thomas Szasz photo
Camille Paglia photo
Peter Medawar photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo

“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.... But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

As quoted in Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism (1987) by Amir Taheri, pp. 241-3.
Disputed

Christine O'Donnell photo

“What's next? Orgy rooms? Menage a trois rooms? All this coedness is outside normal life. Most average American adults don't use coed bathrooms — if they had the option of a coed bathroom at a public restaurant, they wouldn't choose it.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Taming Animal House; Students find ways to keep morals in college life.
2003-09-18
Washington Times
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3130739/Taming-Animal-House-Students-find.html
on coed dormitory rooms

Włodzimierz Ptak photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Antoni Tàpies photo
Lisa Kudrow photo
Charles Darwin photo
Donald Barthelme photo

“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”

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

"Me and Miss Mandible".
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Adam Gopnik photo
Roger Ebert photo
Margaret Mead photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Otto Neurath photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Gene Wolfe photo
Rachel Trachtenburg photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
E. Lee Spence photo

“As a child, everyone dreams of finding treasure. There’s romance and drama. But as an adult most people aren’t going to spend their lives trying to find it.”

E. Lee Spence (1947) German anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, historian, photojournalist and academic

Diving Into Sunken-Treasure Investing http://www.cnbc.com/id/39342234, CNBC Special Report by Shelly K. Scwartz, Published: October 18, 2010.

Elton Mayo photo
Roger Ebert photo

“Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of Magnolia (1999), in review for Great Movies (27 November 2008) http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-magnolia-1999
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go. It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between most of the major characters all simultaneously singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmKghTvj0E Aimee Mann's "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, Magnolia seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where fate and destiny lie. They have been joined by their actions and their choices.
And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension. Frogs have rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to Exodus 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to fears, shames, sins.
Magnolia is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.