This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Adolescence begins when children stop asking questions – because they know all the answers.
Adolescence | Children |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Wisdom |
Goldie Hawn, fully Goldie Jeanne Hawn
We humans have the capacity to change the world with acts of love and kindness. Let’s start by teaching our children the importance of compassion.
Capacity | Change | Children | Compassion | Kindness | Love | World |
Children who are not spoken to by… responsive adults will not learn to speak properly. Children who are not answered will stop asking questions. They will become incurious. And children who are not told stories and who are not read to will have few reasons for wanting to learn to read.
The school system can’t make up for family failure. The total education of our children is a cooperative effort requiring community solidarity. Apathetic parents who foster a permissive home atmosphere create a problem for everyone.
Children | Education | Effort | Failure | Family | Parents | System |
If you can’t hold children in your arms, please hold them in your hearts.
Children |
Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we’d had.
Children | Opportunity | Parents |
The best inheritance a parent can give to his children is a few minutes of their time each day.
Children | Day | Inheritance | Time | Parent |
We have surrendered our responsibility to shape the inner life of our children to others.
Children | Life | Life | Responsibility |
No man has a moral right to use his property, a creature of God, against the children of God. Racial discrimination even in the use of purely private property, is immoral at least as transgressing the supreme law of charity.
One great Reason why many Children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports and trifle away all their time insipidly is because they found their Curiosity baulk’d and their Enquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and Respect and their Questions answered, as they should, to their Satisfaction, I doubt not but they would have taken more Pleasure in Learning and improving their Knowledge, wherein there would be still Newness and Variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same Play and Playthings.
Children | Curiosity | Doubt | Kindness | Knowledge | Learning | Play | Pleasure | Reason | Respect | Time | Respect |
T. B. Maston, fully Thomas Buford Maston
Segregation in the church violates something that is basic in the nature of the church. How can a church exclude from “the church of God” those who are children of God? How can it, as “the body of Christ,” withhold the privilege of worship from those who have been brought into union with Christ.
Body | Children | Church | God | Nature | Worship | Privilege |
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
It is taken for granted in adult society that we cannot all be generalists skilled in every area of learning and mastery. Nevertheless, we apply tremendous pressure on our children to be good at everything. Every day they are expected to shine in math, reading, writing, speaking, spelling, memorization, comprehension, problem solving, socialization, athletics, and following verbal directions. Few if any children can master all of these “trades.” And none of us adults can. In one way or another, all minds have their specialties and their families.
Athletics | Children | Day | Good | Learning | Reading | Society | Writing | Society | Following |
Robert M. Linder, fully Robert Mitchell Linder
Supported by the authority of all institutions, parenthood has come to amount to little more than a campaign against individuality. Every father and every mother trembles lest an offspring, in act or thought, should be different from his fellows; and the smallest display of uniqueness in a child becomes the signal for the application of drastic measures aimed at stamping out that small fire of noncompliance by which personal distinctness is expressed. In an atmosphere of anxiety, in a climate of apprehension, the parental conspiracy against children is planned.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Authority | Children | Conspiracy | Display | Father | Individuality | Little | Mother | Thought | Child |