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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Children

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When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.

Bertrand Russell
Education, Children, Teaching

An educator should think of a child as a gardener thinks of a plant, as something to be made to grow by having the right soil and the right amount of water. If your roses fail to bloom, it does not occur to you to whip them, but you try to find out what has been amiss in your treatment of them. ... The important thing is what the children do, and not what they do not do. And what they do, if it is to have value, must be a spontaneous expression of their own vital energy.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Teaching, Thinking
"The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959".

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

Bertrand Russell
Inspirational, Children, Pain
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.3, Routledge

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker than that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.

Bertrand Russell
Wisdom, Children, Winter
Bertrand Russell (1943). “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity”

The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Desire, Dry
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.142, Booklassic

The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Bertrand Russell
Children, War, Teaching
"Why I Am Not a Christian".

The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

Bertrand Russell
Children, School, Army

I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Children, War
Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.240, Psychology Press

Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Parent, World

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Educational, Thinking
Bertrand Russell (1972). “In praise of idleness: and other essays”

There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.

Bertrand Russell
Anniversary, Children, Parent
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.11, Routledge

When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.

Bertrand Russell
Sex, Children, Lying
Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Brother, Children
Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.124, Routledge

It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants. It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a somewhat blatant nationalism.

Bertrand Russell
Country, Children, Mean
Bertrand Russell (2004). “In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays”, p.135, Psychology Press

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them. We all feel instinctively, that our children's success reflect glory upon ourselves, while their failures make us feel shame. Unfortunately, the successes which cause us to swell with pride are often of an undesirable kind.... Neither happiness nor virtue, but worldly success, is what the average father desires for his children.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Father, Pride

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Dad, Father
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Freedom versus Authority in Education"

The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Character, Men
"The Quotable Bertrand Russell".

The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible. The state is justified in insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Levels, Uniforms
Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel (1995). “Pacifism and Revolution, 1916-18”, p.261, Psychology Press

Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Children, Men
Marriage and Morals

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

Bertrand Russell
Wisdom, Children, Husband
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.553, Routledge

Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Educational, Angel
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.60, Routledge

Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child -- this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Race, Law
Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.125, Psychology Press

It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.

Bertrand Russell
Children, Law, Public Opinion
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.270, Routledge

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.

Bertrand Russell
Nature, Children, Science
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.379, Psychology Press

There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.

Bertrand Russell
Education, Children, Lying
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

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