Quotes about child
page 26

Reza Pahlavi photo

“The current regime is, by any measure, the standard-bearer and global poster child for militancy, brute autocracy and corruption. If they are in fact students of my father, his ultimate act of refusing suppressive bloodshed in favor of exile should be their test.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Deborah Solomon, New York Times: Questions for Reza Pahlavi http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=379&page=4, The New York Times, June 26, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

Laura Ingalls Wilder photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“Let the child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
Henry Fielding photo
Henry Fielding photo
Sophia Loren photo
Francois Mauriac photo
Teal Swan photo
George Adamski photo
Lucy Parsons photo
Isabel Quintero photo

“It is an American story. And it’s a Mexican story. I’m the child of immigrants. Being the child of immigrants is always this liminal space of, where do I fit in? It is complex. And the older I get, the more complex it becomes. I was born here. What I celebrate is the America that I grew up in—it’s very brown, it’s very Mexican…”

On her book My Papi Has a Motorcycle in “Q & A with Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña” https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/80000-q-a-with-isabel-quintero-and-zeke-pe-a.html in Publishers Weekly (2019 May 9)

Liu Cixin photo

“As a child, I witnessed a great deal of violence and persecution as well as social unrest during The Cultural Revolution...This experience has made me understand the complexity of human nature and society—I’ve realized that the future of human civilization is also full of danger and uncertainty. Such understanding is manifested in my science fiction novels…”

Liu Cixin (1963) Chinese science fiction writer

On how his childhood experiences shaped his writings in “In the Author’s Universe: Interview with Sci-Fi Author Cixin Liu” https://vocal.media/futurism/in-the-authors-universe-interview-with-sci-fi-author-cixin-liu in Vocal (2016)

Ernest Becker photo

“At first the child is amused by his anus and feces, and gaily inserts his finger into the orifice, smelling it, smearing feces on the walls, playing games of touching objects with his anus, and the like. This is a universal form of play that does the serious work of all play: it reflects the discovery and exercise of natural bodily functions; it masters an area of strangeness; it establishes power and control over the deterministic laws of the natural world; and it does all this with symbols and fancy. With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes the denial of what the anus represents: that in fact, he is nothing but body so far as nature is concerned. Nature’s values are bodily values, human values are mental values, and though they take the loftiest flights they are built upon excrement, impossible without it, always brought back to it. As Montaigne put it, on the highest throne in the world man sits on his arse. Usually this epigram makes people laugh because it seems to reclaim the world from artificial pride and snobbery and to bring things back to egalitarian values. But if we push the observation even further and say men sit not only on their arse, but over a warm and fuming pile of their own excrement—the joke is no longer funny. The tragedy of man’s dualism, his ludicrous situation, becomes too real. The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents not only physical determinism and boundness, but the fate as well of all that is physical: decay and death.”

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Ernest Becker photo

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Alessandro Cagliostro photo

“Mark this, my child, that I have tried to have this place fit for a queen, with nothing lacking for your comfort. So calm your folly. Live here as you would do in your convent cell.”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

Kirstin Valdez Quade photo
Cory Booker photo

“Working Americans would tell you that the dignity of work is being stripped … they are working harder than their parents and falling further behind … while their salaries may moderately have gone up, what has gone up more is the cost of prescription drugs … child care … college …”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

2019
Source: [Marshall, Karen, Deady, Brendan, Cory Booker Tests Message Of Collaboration And Economic Equality In First Visit To New Hampshire, https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2019/02/19/senator-cory-booker-tests-message-of-collaboration-and-economic-equality-in-first-visit-to-new-hampshire, WGBH News, 2019-03-15]

Donald J. Trump photo
María Irene Fornés photo

“Having a play directed by someone else is like going to a religious school when you’re a child, you listen and obey…”

María Irene Fornés (1930–2018) American writer

On the loss of creative control if you’re not directing in “María Irene Fornés by Allen Frame” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/maria-irene-fornes/ in BOMB Magazine (1984 Oct 1)

Lauretta Bender photo

“She does not believe that Wonder Woman tends to masochism or sadism. Furthermore, she believes that even if it did-you can teach either perversion to children-one can only bring out what is inherent in the child. However she did make the reservation that if the woman slaves wore chains (and enjoyed them) for no purpose whatsoever, there would be no point in chaining them.”

Lauretta Bender (1897–1987) American neuropsychiatrist

As attributed by Dorothy Roubicek in The Secret History of Wonder Woman https://books.google.com/books?id=b3GBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT264&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q=like%20being&f=false by Jill Lepore, (Oct. 23, 2014), p. 240.
Attributed

Bernie Sanders photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Albert Einstein photo

“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralisation of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”

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

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

Albert Einstein photo

“As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Peter Kropotkin photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Frantz Fanon photo
William Quan Judge photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Enoch Powell photo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“No child should ever be separated from their parent. No child should ever taken from their family. No woman should ever be locked up in a pen when they have done no harm to another human being.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

AOC quoted by The Hill, Twitter, https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1146082350725337089 (2 July 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), July 2019

Paul R. Ehrlich photo

“In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialize, and exploit every last bit of the planet—a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilization depends.”

Paul R. Ehrlich (1932) American scientist and environmentalist

"An ecologist's perspective on nuclear power", Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report vol. 28, no. 5-6 (May-June, 1975) https://fas.org/faspir/archive/1970-1981/May-June1975.pdf, page 5.

I. F. Stone photo
William Logan (author) photo
Annie Besant photo
Annie Besant photo
Sajid Javid photo

“When it comes to gang-based child exploitation it is self-evident to anyone who cares to look that if you look at all the recent high-profile cases there is a high proportion of men that have Pakistani heritage.”

Sajid Javid (1969) British politician

'Wrong to ignore' ethnicity of grooming gangs - Javid https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46684638, BBC News, 26 December 2018
2018

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“The child’s desire to have distinctions made in his ideas grew stronger every day. Having learned that things had names, he wished to hear the name of every thing supposing that there could be nothing which his father did not know. He often teased him with his questions, and caused him to inquire concerning objects which, but for this, he would have passed without notice. Our innate tendency to pry into the origin and end of things was likewise soon developed in the boy. When he asked whence came the wind, and whither went the flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limitation of his own powers, and wished to understand how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what things he may hope ever to give account of to himself or others. The anger of the child, when he saw injustice done to any living thing, was extremely grateful to the father, as the symptom of a generous heart. Felix once struck fiercely at the cook for cutting up some pigeons. The fine impression this produced on Wilhelm was, indeed, erelong disturbed, when he found the boy unmercifully tearing sparrows in pieces and beating frogs to death. This trait reminded him of many men, who appear so scrupulously just when without passion, and witnessing the proceedings of other men. The pleasant feeling, that the boy was producing so fine and wholesome an influence on his being, was, in a short time, troubled for a moment, when our friend observed, that in truth the boy was educating him more than he the boy.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Book VIII – Chapter 1
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Bernhard Riemann photo
Vālmīki photo
Christian Dior photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo

“As a mere fourteen-year-old child he composed songs in all the 72 Melakartha Raagas, which form the very backbone of the South Indian System of Raaga Music.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Prince Rama Varma in: Murali And Me: A tribute by Prince Rama Varma http://www.webindia123.com/music/musicians/murali1.htm, Webindia123.com.

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo

“The other special moments that I can recall is when I used to ride piggyback on him as a child.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

My daddy, His Highness, the Maharaja of Mysore

Premchand photo

“For children, father is a luxurious item, - just like beans for the horse…. but mother is everything for the child. The child cannot bear separation from his mother even for a minute.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

In his novel Ghar Jamai quoted in page= 92.
Portrayal of Women in Premchands Stories A Critique

Rukmini Devi Arundale photo
Shaun Micallef photo
Iain Banks photo
Colin Wilson photo

“Now he saw the problem with great clarity. If he lived here, life would be pleasant and safe. But it would also be predictable. A child could be born here, grow up here, die here, without ever experiencing the excitement of discovery. Why did Dona question him endlessly about his life in the burrow and his journey to the country of the ants? Because for her, it represented a world that was dangerous and full of fascinating possibilities. For the children of this underground city, life was a matter of repetition, of habit.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

And this, he suddenly realized, was the heart of the problem. Habit. Habit was a stifling, warm blanket that threatened you with suffocation and lulled the mind into a state of perpetual nagging dissatisfaction. Habit meant the inability to escape from yourself, to change and develop . . .

pp. 132-133
Spider World: The Desert (1987)

Woodrow Wilson photo

“There are two beings who assess character instantly by looking into the eyes,—dogs and children. If a dog not naturally possessed of the devil will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience; and if a little child, from any other reason than mere timidity, looks you in the face, and then draws back and will not come to your knee, go home and look deeper yet into your conscience.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“ Young People and the Church http://books.google.com/books?id=iu4nAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA310&dq=%22There+are+two+beings%22“ (13 October 1904)
1900s
Variant: If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience.

John Muir photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Teal Swan photo
Emily Brontë photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Richard Dawkins photo
William Wordsworth photo

“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802); the last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.

Peter Hammill photo

“Re-awakening isn't easy when you're tired.
Don't push me: I was taught self-expression
when I was a child”

Peter Hammill (1948) British musician

"Re-awakening" on Fool's Mate (1971)

Rob Pike photo

“Syntax highlighting is juvenile. When I was a child, I was taught arithmetic using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisenaire_rods colored rods]. I grew up and today I use monochromatic numerals.”

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2012) in golang-nuts https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/hJHCAaiL0so/kG3BHV6QFfIJ group at groups.google.com, Oct 28 2012

N. K. Jemisin photo
David Sedaris photo

“I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, 'All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalog.'
The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word 'pony' or 'television set,' so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, 'What do you say to Santa?'
The child says, 'Thank you, Santa.'”

It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to the fingerprints.
Essay, "Santaland diaries" - p.233-234, 235
Barrel Fever (1994)

Neil Gaiman photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Raewyn Connell photo
Jean-François Revel photo

“Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time... and offers the only possible escape for mankind today.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, Chapter 5 (1980)
1970s

Victor Hugo photo
Dylan Moran photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Anna J. Cooper photo
Immanuel Kant photo
Robert Spencer photo

“Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

Frontpage Mag - Hamas-linked CAIR Rep. Arrested for Pedophilia http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/258279/hamas-linked-cair-rep-arrested-pedophilia-robert-spencer (10 June 2015)
2010s

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Cecil Rhodes photo

“The native is to be treated as a child and denied franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism, such as works in India, in our relations with the barbarism of South Africa.”

Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa

Magubane, Bernard M. (1996). The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South Africa, 1875–1910. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. ISBN 978-0865432413.

Lucy Liu photo

“I think that art helps evaluate some of the psychology of yourself as a child, and to illuminate some things you may never have understood.”

Lucy Liu (1968) American actress and model

On the power of art in “Lucy Liu on making art to find a sense of belonging” https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lucy-liu-artsy/index.html in CNN (2019 Nov 28)

Robert Graves photo
R. K. Narayan photo
Jackson Browne photo
Tomi Adeyemi photo

“…I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. Children of Blood and Bone is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.”

Tomi Adeyemi (1993) American author

On her primary motivation to write Children of Blood and Bone in “Tomi Adeyemi: ‘We need a black girl fantasy book every month’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/10/tomi-adeyemi-interview-children-of-blood-and-bone-sarah-hughes in The Guardian (2018 Mar 10)

Bhanu Choudhrie photo
Monier Monier-Williams photo

“For what purpose then, has this enormous territory been committed to England? .... that every man, woman and child from Cape Comorin ot the Himalaya mountains, may be elevated, enlightened, Christianised.”

Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899) Linguist and dictionary compiler

Source: Modern India and the Indians, 1878. in Shourie, Arun (1994). Missionaries in India: Continuities, changes, dilemmas. New Delhi : Rupa & Co, 1994

“Treat a child like a witch and you’ll have one.”

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 12, “Village Circe” (p. 152)

John Wyndham photo

“Nobody, nobody but a child, or a child-minded person, expects life to be fair.”

The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), ch 9 - p.70 [Angela] [Page numbers per the Penguin Books paperback, 1982 reprint.]