Quotes on Children

Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.

EUGENE IONESCO, Present Past / Past Present

Stay a child while you can be a child.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM, Into the Woods

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

ERMA BOMBECK

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.

YODA, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.

RAY MERRITT, Full of Grace

The more we shelter children from every disappointment, the more devastating future disappointments will be.

FRED G. GOSMAN, How to Be a Happy Parent ... In Spite of Your Children

I learn things from my kids constantly. Most of their knowledge comes from Snapple caps.

JIMMY KIMMEL, TV Guide, June 12-18

Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.

STEPHANIE MARTSON, The Magic of Encouragement

The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.

MARIANNE E. NEIFERT, Dr. Mom's Parenting Guide

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

ERMA BOMBECK

Not having children makes less work—but it makes a quiet house.

SUSAN GLASPELL, Trifles

If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.

G.K. CHESTERTON, "A Defence of Baby-Worship"

If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

P.D. JAMES, The Children of Men

Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.

MONTAIGNE, Essays

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, quoted in Pearls of Wisdom

We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.

HENRY FORD, My Life and Work

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all well and put them to bed.

ANONYMOUS, nursery rhyme

Children need models more than they need critics.

JOSEPH JOUBERT, Pensées

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.

GEORGE ELIOT, Silas Marner