Quotes about child
page 27

Jerry Seinfeld photo

“Do you know the first thing I said as a child, before I said "Mama" or "Dada"? I said "Leave me alone!"”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

(laughs) Is that not the mantra of stand-up comedy?
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

“Not only does having a child really increase your carbon footprint, but we are living on an earth where there are a lot of organisms — human, non-human — that are in desperate need of care. And so, for me, if people want to care for children, for animals, whatever, there are cries for care everywhere. I’m asking us to reflect on this idea that we need to reproduce.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

“In terms of carbon footprint, the worst thing you can do is have a child. And it’s the one taboo that nobody wants to speak.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Why this professor's climate-crisis solution is rankling Twitter: 'The worst thing you can do is have a child' https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-professor-climate-crisis-solution-rankling-twitter-155305526.html (13 February 2020) Yahoo!Life

James K. Morrow photo
Alice Meynell photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Edith Sitwell photo
Alice Meynell photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Empathy is a virtue which, when it only goes from parent to child, and is not required of the child, becomes a vice.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 138

Warren Farrell photo

“Exercise helps build the muscle of a child’s brain even more effectively than studying.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 94

Lila Downs photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Ernest Becker photo

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Thuraya AlArrayed photo

“Every day
When the enchanted times child shares my solitude
She lifts me with fatal calmness
Out of the orbit of the four seasons
Through the worn out doors
Searching for the fifth Season
Where dreams should have poured.”

Thuraya AlArrayed (1948) Saudi poet and writer

The Doors ;the Game of Times
Source: Patty Paine, ‎Jeff Lodge, ‎Samia Touati (2011). Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry. p. 255

Boris Johnson photo

“£60,000,000 I saw was being spaffed up the wall on some investigation into historic child abuse. What on earth is that going to do to protect the people now?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Boris Johnson: Money Spent Investigating Historical Child Abuse Is "Spaffed Up The Wall" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_FSqfXyUFk, LBC, 14 March 2019
2010s, 2019

Elizabeth Martinez photo
Prevale photo

“The greatest inheritance that a parent can leave to their child is the memory of his love, otherwise the rest has no value.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La più grande eredità che un genitore possa lasciare al proprio figlio è il ricordo del suo amore, altrimenti il resto non ha alcun valore.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“It's Christmas every time you smile at a child, holding his hand. It's Christmas every time you recognize your limits, your mistakes. It's Christmas every time you stay silent to hear each other. It's Christmas every time you give your sweetness with love. It's Christmas every time you listen to the song of the heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) È Natale ogni volta che sorridi a un bimbo, tenendogli la mano. È Natale ogni volta che riconosci i tuoi limiti, i tuoi errori. È Natale ogni volta che rimani in silenzio per ascoltare l'altro. È Natale ogni volta che doni con amore la tua dolcezza. È​ Natale ogni volta che ascolti la canzone del cuore.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“You are never too adults to ensure that you do not keep the child inside each of us.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Non si è mai troppo adulti per far sì che non si conservi il bambino che è dentro ognuno di noi.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“When it is a child you ask a lot of questions and ask for answers. When you are an adult you avoid many questions, to avoid unnecessary answers.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Quando si è bimbi si fanno tante domande pretendendo altrettante risposte. Quando si è adulti si evitano molte domande, per evitare inutili risposte.
Source: prevale.net

George MacDonald photo

“Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)

Mary Ruwart photo

“I was always determined to find just the right book for that one child who maybe was a reluctant reader. I knew there was a book to turn him on to reading. I just had to find it. I do have a special place in my heart for kids who maybe have trouble reading or who just don't want to for various reasons. It's always my goal to write books that will somehow entice them to want to read.”

Debbie Dadey (1959) American children's writer

Children's author Debbie Dadey visiting downtown library to sign books, brainstorm. https://lancasteronline.com/features/entertainment/children-s-author-debbie-dadey-visiting-downtown-library-to-sign/article_bf6e4607-f0ba-5e73-a88f-64c9cb876bb2.html (July 29, 2013)

Chiaki Mukai photo
Jason Tanamor photo
Jason Tanamor photo

“Driving down child mortality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was in no way a single project, but it can be seen as a unified human accomplishment—maybe even our greatest human achievement, at least for pediatricians and parents.”

Perri Klass (1958) American pediatrician and writer

[Introduction, A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future, https://books.google.com/books?id=fNjVDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=unified&f=false, 13 October 2020, W. W. Norton, 978-0-393-61000-0] (ebook)

Henry Ward Beecher photo
George Foreman photo
Chulpan Khamatova photo

“I was born in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, during the Soviet-era when there wasn’t any Tatar language…and without any Muslim tradition. I was a Soviet child without my past, without my family roots, because at the time it was forbidden to explain anything.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

As quoted in "Russia’s Chulpan Khamatova on Stalinist Backlash Over ‘Zuleikha’ (EXCLUSIVE)" in Variety (10 June 2020) https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/chulpan-khamatova-communist-backlash-zuleikha-1234627594/

P. L. Travers photo

“When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

From "I Never Wrote for Children," by P. L. Travers, in the New York Times Magazine, July 2, 1978.

P.G. Wodehouse photo

“When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Prevale photo

“The teachings of a parent are fundamental during the adolescence of a child, so that he will one day be ready to face the most difficult test: life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli insegnamenti di un genitore sono fondamentali durante l'adolescenza di un figlio, affinché lui un giorno sia pronto ad affrontare la prova piú difficile: la vita.
Source: prevale.net

John Steinbeck photo
Harry Graham photo

“When Grandmamma fell off the boat,
And couldn’t swim, and wouldn’t float,
Maria just sat by and smiled -
I almost could have slapped the child!”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Indifference
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899)

Isabel Allende photo

“Thank God – because what are you going to write about if you don’t struggle as a child? I don’t think that you become creative because you have struggled, no, but creative people are fuelled by anger and passion, and haunted by demons and memories.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

On how her miserable childhood may have inadvertently affected her writing in “The incredible life of Isabel Allende” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10589928/The-incredible-life-of-Isabel-Allende.html in The Telegraph (2014 Jan 28)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Alfred Stieglitz photo

“Nearly right is child's play.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Sarah Greenough, Washington: National Gallery of Art. 2000, pp. 26–53; as quoted on Wikipedia

“I think it's wrong, particularly for clergymen, to protect a child molester. This is a step backwards.”

Beverly White (1928–2021) American politician

As quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune https://archive.ph/9bzsC (February 26, 1988)
Stated in response to legislation which would allow confessions from child abusers to the clergy to remain confidential

Éric Zemmour photo

“To call your child Mohammed is to colonize France”

Éric Zemmour (1958) French essayist

Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness" https://palnws.be/2021/09/macron-haalt-uit-naar-zemmour-onze-identiteit-is-niet-gebouwd-op-bekrompenheid/

Beatrice Mtetwa photo

“I have, even as a child, always been a firm believer in fairness and always strive to be even-handed in my dealings with everyone,”

Beatrice Mtetwa (1957) Zimbabwean human rights lawyer

Source: Beatrice Mtetwa: Zimbabwe’s Frontline Defender Of Human Rights https://www.newzimbabwe.com/beatrice-mtetwa-zimbabwes-frontline-defender-of-human-rights/

Daniel Kahneman photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider what should be saved.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 88, Epilogue

Liu Wen (model) photo

“My parents are very supportive of me, I’m their only child, of course, so I always have to call them before I leave and when I arrive somewhere. Sometimes I still don’t think they really understand what I’m doing! I think they’re just happy that I’m happy and I love my job.”

Liu Wen (model) (1988) Chinese model

Source: "Liu Wen Talks Style, Diversity And What It Means To Be China’s First Supermodel" in Marie Claire https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/fashion-news/liu-wen-interview-china-s-first-supermodel-talks-style-diversity-and-her-mango-campaign-15375 (3 March 2016)

Simisola Kosoko photo

“As soon as you know you want a child, you have a baby fever when you see a cute baby.”

Simisola Kosoko (1988) Nigerian singer and songwriter

Source: https://amp/s/www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/simi-speaks-with-pulse-nigeria-interview/wjmypg8.amp Simi during an Interview with Pulse Nigeria

“We must stand up for equality, justice and human dignity because it is vital to each and every one of us all – woman, man and child”

Funmi Falana Nigerian lawyer, women's rights activist

Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/12/funmi-falana-tells-nigerians-to-defend-their-human-rights/ Funmi Falana speaking during a walk to commemorate the International Human Rights Day

Oby Ezekwesili photo

“Education has always been known as the pathway to progress. The early child education will be integrated.”

Oby Ezekwesili (1963) Nigerian accountant, politician, human rights activist, convener of bring back our girls (Chibok girls) and pres…

Source: https://independent.ng/2019debate-30-powerful-quotes-from-oby-ezekwesili-reactions-to-questions/

“We will not stop until every Nigerian girl-child has found their voice and found their pocket.”

Ibukun Awosika (1962) Nigerian business magnate

Source: https://theafricadebate.com/news-2018/2018/an-interview-with-ibukun-awosika Speaking in an interview about herself (April 18 2018)

Adolf Hitler photo

“We have undertaken to give the German people an education that begins already in youth and will never come to an end. It starts with the child and will end with the 'old fighter.' Nobody will be able to say that he has a time in which he is left entirely alone to himself.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Nuremberg Party Rally (14 Sept. 1935) Quoted in Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1931-1945, Chronicle of a Dictatorship, Max Domarus (ed.), Vol. 2, London, p. 701.

“I'm not sure I was very good as a kid. It was a craft that I learned. However, I was very enthusiastic as a child and you get better over the years!”

Ryan Gage (1983) English actor

Source: Ryan Gage On His Blossoming Career and Exciting New Projects! https://www.iconvsicon.com/2014/11/28/on-the-rise-ryan-gage-on-his-blossoming-career-and-exciting-new-projects/ (2014)

Edgar Guest photo
Laurence Tribe photo
Tara Westover photo
Thomas Hardy photo
Victoria Woodhull photo

“Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

In an article in the West Virginia Evening Standard (1875) expressing her moral opposition to abortion

Joe Biden photo

“The idea that we're going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard”

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

Biden reacts to leaked draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-reacts-leaked-draft-supreme-court-opinion-abortion/story?id=84467397
2022, May 2022

Joe Biden photo
Joe Biden photo

“Look, as a father and a grandfather — and I’m sure we all feel the same way — I understand how difficult this shortage has been for families all across the country. There is nothing more stressful than the feeling like you can’t get what your child needs — what he or she needs.”

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

2022, June 2022, Remarks by President Biden During Virtual Meeting on Accelerating Infant Formula Production Through Operation Fly Formula

Alexard Esther photo

“I needed to change my ways and set an example for my child as an Haitian parent.”

Alexard Esther (1996) Alexard Esther also know as Jenny Queen is a Haitian short story writer, novelist, chronicler, screenwriter and …
Olena Zelenska photo
Wei Jingsheng photo

“For a child who found herself transported overnight to other side of the world, where she knew no one other than her parents, books were my salvation.”

Qian Julie Wang (1987) Chinese-American writer and civil rights lawyer

"An Interview With Qian Julie Wang" in Penguin Random House https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/articles/qian-julie-wang-interview/

Joe Biden photo

“Imagine what it’s like to look at your child who needs insulin and have no idea how you’re going to pay for it. What it does to your dignity, your ability to look your child in the eye, to be the parent you expect to be.”

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

Remarks of President Joe Biden – State of the Union Address As Prepared for Delivery (March 1, 2022) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/01/remarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-as-delivered/
2022, March 2022, State of the Union Address

Ramakrishna photo
Elizabeth Martinez photo

“The articulation of concerns common to almost all women, such as health, child care, domestic violence, rape and reproductive rights, is much more frequent than it was two decades ago.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

Jean Ingelow photo
Dolores Huerta photo

“It is sad for us to report this, but the clock has been turned back and California agriculture, with the exception of a handful of contracts that we still hold, we now have the labor contractor, the crew leader system back again, we now have child labor back again.”

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

Jane Austen photo

“The pride of any mother is to give birth to a responsible and successful child.”

Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657
Works, Pride and Prejudice

Zafar Mirzo photo
Prevale photo

“Every woman, from becoming and feeling like a real mother, fights every day like a warrior in the name of love for her child with strength, courage and making great sacrifices; so that she always manages to give him serenity, happiness, security and will to live.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Ogni donna, dal diventare e sentirsi una vera madre, lotta ogni giorno come una guerriera nel nome dell'amore per il proprio figlio con forza, coraggio e facendo grandi sacrifici; affinché riesca sempre a donargli serenità, felicità, sicurezza e voglia di vivere.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“In art, to create something unique, one must experience the joy of a child, the exhilaration of a teenager, the insecurity of an adult, and the experience of an elderly person.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In arte, per creare qualcosa di unico, bisogna provare la gioia di un bambino, l'euforia di un adolescente, l'insicurezza di un adulto e l'esperienza di un anziano.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“Every single word a parent addresses to their child comes from their heart. They are words of love, they are aids to face the greatest challenge: life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Ogni singola parola che un genitore rivolge al proprio figlio viene dal suo cuore. Sono parole d'amore, sono aiuti per affrontare la sfida più grande: la vita.
Source: prevale.net