Quick Quotes of Note

On Children...

Today I am thinking about my children. I am thinking about my responsibility to love them, care for them, and help mold their behavior. I am also thinking about what a blessing they are, and how being with them also helps to unleash my own imagination.



Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. Anonymous

Every child is born a genius. Richard Buckminster Fuller

The soul is healed by being with children. Fyodor Dostoevsky

"We shall not achieve any significant change in society until we focus not only on what it means to be a parent, but also on what it means to be a child."
Doreen Goodman,Founder of What About The Children?

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy."
Oscar Wilde

"The biggest disease this world suffers from is people feeling unloved."
Lady Diana Frances Spencer,Princess of Wales

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."
Mother Theresa

"To those born into the gaze of loving eyes,life is beautiful.To those welcomed by tender voices,life is peaceful.To those embraced with gentle hands,life is secure.To those born into a world of compassion,life is good beyond all measure."
Author unknown,adapted by Leigh Schroeder Salvage

"Love is patient, love is kind."
1 Corinthians 13:4

"As we grow up, we have an ability to let go of immediate needs for the sake of long term goals. Children don't have such vision. Children live here and now. They need to feel that they have power, that they are important, that they can choose, and that the environment and people around them care about them and respond to them."
Naomi Aldort,Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves (forthcoming book)

"Childhood is that state which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle instead of an opportunity."
Kathy Williams

"There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children."
Marianne Williamson

"Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow."
Thomas Bray,18th century Anglican minister

"It's so sad how abusive our world has become. I think the majority of people in this world have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, what happiness is possible when there is love."
Duen Hsi Yen,Director, Malama Learning Facility

"Kids who have their needs met early by loving parents ... are subjected totally and thoroughly to the most severe form of 'discipline' conceivable: they don't do what you don't want them to do because they love you so much!

"If you haven't cluttered the airwaves between you and your child with a thousand stupid 'don'ts' over your Royal Doulton china, or not eating their dessert before the main course, or not finishing their spinach, or not doing this or that, then those few situations where it really matters because of safety and impropriety don't need anything approaching the connotation of 'discipline' to ensure appropriate behavior."
Dr. Elliott Barker,Director, Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
Galileo Gallilei

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift - our personal association, which means so much to them - we give grudgingly."
Mark Twain

"One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child."
Randall Jarrell

"Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you."
William Arthur Ward

"If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children."
Mahatma Gandhi

"Peace in society depends upon peace in the family."
Augustine

"If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From these roots grow fear and alienation - or love and trust."
Suzanne Armsfrom the video Giving Birth: Challenges & Choices

"It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather... I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized."
Haim Ginott,Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers

"Kindness in thought leads to wisdom. Kindness in speech leads to eloquence. Kindness in action leads to love."
Lao-Tsuc. 604 - c. 531 B.C.