Motivational Quotes

Children

We inevitably doom our children to failure and frustration when we try to set their goals for them.

- Lair, Dr. Jess

Best Quotes about Children

That's the funny thing about havin'a kid. They come with their own set of problems; make everything else you were worried about seem kinda silly.

Greg Garcia

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

Whitehorn, Katharine

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Angelou, Maya

Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.

Howe, Edgar Watson

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Keillor, Garrison

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

Jones, Franklin P.

In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.

Ruskin, John

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.

Dobson, Dr. James C.

10.

A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to hear children's speech only as a foreign language, or as a lie. Children have been treated. as congenital fibbers, fakers and fantasisers.

Campbell, Beatrix

11.

What's more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?

Smith, Logan Pearsall

12.

In all our efforts to provide advantages we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured, and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history.

Shan, Eda J. Le

13.

Children are curious and are risk takers. They have lots of courage. They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous. A child initially trusts life and the processes of life.

Bradshaw, John

14.

Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.

Wilder, Thornton

15.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Canetti, Elias

16.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Behn, Aphra

17.

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.

Chase, Alexander

18.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Gore Vidal

19.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

20.

There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it --benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.

Spolin, Viola

21.

People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.

Bill Watterson

22.

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

23.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

24.

A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.

Harrison, Jane

25.

We've had bad luck with our kids -- they've all grown up.

Morley, Christopher

26.

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Decter, Midge

27.

Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. He needs guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.

Davis, Bette

28.

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Pope, Alexander

29.

Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

30.

Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.

Saki

31.

Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.

Waitley, Denis

32.

Children are living jewels dropped unsustained from heaven.

Pollok, Robert

33.

Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections.

Ruskin, John

34.

Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.

Dobson, Dr. James C.

35.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Baldwin, James

36.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

FeNelon, Francois

37.

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.

Dorothy Parker

38.

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

Rich, Adrienne

39.

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.

Phyllis Diller

40.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home a pleasant atmosphere and let the air out of the tires.

Parker, Dorothy

41.

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

Bachelard, Gaston

42.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

Updike, John

43.

Facing a mirror you see merely your own countenance; facing your child you finally understand how everyone else has seen you.

Daniel Raeburn

44.

If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.

Polanski, Roman

45.

The planting of trees in the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

Wilder, Thornton

46.

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

Larkin, Philip

47.

It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snow-blower, or vacuum cleaner.

Bergor, Ben

48.

For many children, joy comes as the result of mining something unique and wondrous about themselves from some inner shaft.

Cottle, Thomas J.

49.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

50.

You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.