This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Bring together all the children of the universe, you will see nothing in them but innocence, gentleness, and fear; were they born wicked, spiteful, and cruel, some signs of it would come from them; as little snakes strive to bite, and little tigers to tear. But nature having been of offensive weapons to man as to pigeons and rabbits, it cannot have given them an instinct to mischief and destruction." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children. If we respected the rights of children, we should educate them so as to give them the knowledge and the mental habits required for forming independent opinions; but education as a political institution endeavors to form habits and to circumscribe knowledge in such a way as to make one set of opinions inevitable. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"One generation of fearless women could transform the world, by bringing into it a generation of fearless children, not contorted into unnatural shapes, but straight and candid, generous, affectionate, and free. Their ardor would sweep away the cruelty and pain which we endure because we are lazy, cowardly, hard-hearted and stupid. It is education that gives us these bad qualities, and education that must give us the opposite virtues. Education is the key to the new world." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten. " - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"What is man without beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth." - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surrounding; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise the wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, become hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence. " - Chief Luther Standing Bear
"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
"Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind. " - Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell
"The Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once again slaves. " - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
"The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. " - Denis E. Waitley
"I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children's heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the powers of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement and by copious reading of the best authors. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"Children learn what they live. If children live with criticism,they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear,they learn to be apprehensive. If children live with pity,they learn to feel sorry for themselves. If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy. If children live with jealousy,they learn what envy is. If children live with shame,they learn to feel guilty. If children live with tolerance,they learn to be patient. If children live with encouragement,they learn to be confident. If children live with praise,they learn to appreciate. If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves. If children live with acceptance, they learn to find love in the world. If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal. If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous. If children live with honesty and fairness, they learn what truth and justice are. If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and those around them. If children live with friendliness, they learn that the world is a nice place in which to live. If children live with serenity, they learn to have a peace of mind. With what are your children living? " -
"Children learn what they live. If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive. If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves. If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy. If children live with jealousy, they learn what envy is. If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty. If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient. If children live with encouragement, they learn to be confident. If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate. If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves. If children live with acceptance, they learn to find love in the world. If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal. If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous. If children live with honesty and fairness, they learn what truth and justice are. If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and those around them. If children live with friendliness, they learn that the world is a nice place in which to live. If children live with serenity, they learn to have a peace of mind. With what are your children living?" - Dorothy Law Nolte
"Becoming responsible adults is no longer a matter of whether children hang up there pajamas or put dirty towels in the hamper, but whether they care about themselves and others -- and whether they see everyday chores as related to how we treat this planet." - Eda J. LeShan
"With children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are going to have to exist on their own merits." - Eleanor Holmes Norton
"We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear. " - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears." - Ellen Goodman
"It's a long haul bringing up our children to be good; you have to keep doing that — bring them up — and that means bringing things up with them: Asking, telling, sounding them out, sounding off yourself — finding, through experience, your own words, your own way of putting them together. You have to learn where you stand, and make sure your kids learn [where you stand], understand why, and soon, you hope, they'll be standing there beside you, with you." - Erik Erickson
"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death." - Erik Erickson
"When a person feels he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make some sense of it in terms of the lives of his children. But one is bound to fail oneself and one's children. The former because the problem of existence can only be solved by each one only for himself, and not by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualities which one needs to guide the children in their own search for an answer. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!" - Ezra Taft Benson
"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borgese on a daily basis." - Federico Fellini
"There must be a co-education of the different social classes as well as of the two sexes. I might have founded a school giving lessons gratuitously; but a school for poor children only would not be a rational school, since, if they were not taught submission and credulity as in the old type of school, they would have been strongly disposed to rebel, and would instinctively cherish sentiments of hatred." - Francisco Ferrer y Guardia
"Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell. " - François Mauriac
"What we are doing is making children more insecure as our alarmist message becomes part of everyday life." - Frank Furedi
"The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them." - Frank A. Clark
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. " - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. " - Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
"The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries." - Freeman John Dyson
"The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers. " - Gail Godwin, fully Gail Kathleen Godwin
"Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family; he feels dispensable, his wife knows he is dispensable, his children sense it." - George F Gilder
"There are no adequate substitutes for father, mother, and children bound together in a loving commitment to nurture and protect. No government, no matter how well-intentioned, can take the place of the family in the scheme of things. " - Gerald Ford, fully Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr., Orig. name Leslie Lynch King, Jr.
"The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." - Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
"Constant muscular activity was natural for the child, and, therefore, the immense effort of the drillmaster teachers to make children sit still was harmful and useless." - Granville Stanley Hall
"Normal children often pass through stages of passionate cruelty, laziness, lying and thievery." - Granville Stanley Hall
"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live." - Gustave Flaubert
"They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of men, but can they conquer? Even if they should destroy us every one, what then? Would it save them? No! For greatness is abroad, not only in us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the nature of all things, it is part of space and time. To grow and still to grow, from first to last that is Being, that is the law of life. What other law can there be?" - H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
"If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"Children are never sure of their abilities. A public attack on intelligence hits their most vulnerable spot. Virulent criticism doesn't motivate children to improve; on the contrary, it ruins their initiative. " - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"When forced to study, children use their ingenuity to get through school without learning." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss." - Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa