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Our Children Quotes

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Our Children Quotes

“It must be emphasized that as a father, you are always teaching. For good or ill your family learns your ways, your beliefs, your heart, your ideas, your concerns. Your children may or may not choose to follow you, but the example you give is the greatest light you hold before your children, and you are accountable for that light.”

“We do live in an unsafe world. That's the truth. I'm dealing with that now, with my seven-year-old. He's grappling with the fact that the world is unsafe, and that there are people who do harmful things. I don't think there's anything wrong with presenting that idea. We can't lie to our children and pretend that the world is perfect, and everybody's happy, and everybody's out there to do good. It's just part of a bigger conversation.”

“Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their children's minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are.”

“Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child's mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in Colonial days in America, if you proposed that kind of idea, they'd burn you at the stake, you mad person! It's a mad idea!”

“I think that parents ought to get some idea of how the so- called "experts" have changed their advice over the decades, so that they won't take them deadly seriously, and so that if the parent has the strong feeling, "I don't like this advice," the parent won't feel compelled to follow it. . . . So don't worry about trying to do a perfect job. There is no perfect job. There is no one way of raising your children.”

“Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child.”

“The one thing about kids is that you never really know exactly what they're thinking or how they're seeing. After writing about kids, which is a little bit like putting the experience under a magnifying glass, you realize you have no idea how you thought as a kid. I've come to the conclusion that most of the things that we remember about our childhood are lies. We all have memories that stand out from when we were kids, but they're really just snapshots. You can't remember how you reacted because your whole head is different when you stand aside.”

“Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.”

“Teach your children to listen carefully and to speak thoughtfully. The best way to teach this is to listen carefully and speak thoughtfully to your children, from the time they are babies. Take their questions and ideas seriously... learning to speak and listen as if our words matter is fundamental to education. Dialogue is not the same as mindless chatter. Above all, listen, listen, and listen to your kids.”

“Once parents have a clear idea of their important parenting goals, beliefs, and values, they can then think about specific situations and identify the outcomes they would like to achieve in these situations. How can you be the parent you want to be whether or not your children are behaving as you would prefer?”

“Our children lost our direction because they have been compromised. They have found freedom at the ballot box, and then they have taken on plastic chains around their minds and souls and mortgage their future on credit cards. They have to learn better - they have to learn the value of ideas and health as opposed to wealth.”

“Our children may save us if they are taught to care properly for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones, drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea.”

“I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.”

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”