Top 9 Quotes by Thomas Lickona

Children are 25 percent of the population but 100 percent of the future. If we wish to renew society, we must raise up a generation of children who have strong moral character. And if we wish to do that, we have two

Children are 25 percent of the population but 100 percent of the future. If we wish to renew society, we must raise up a generation of children who have strong moral character. And if we wish to do that, we have two responsibilities: first, to model good character in our own lives, and second, to intentionally foster character development in our young.

Thomas Lickona

Strong, Children, Character

Thomas Lickona (2004). “Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action.

Thomas Lickona

Integrity, Heart, Character

Thomas Lickona (2009). “Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility”, p.51, Bantam

Character consists of the moral awareness and strength to know the good, love the good and do the good.

Thomas Lickona

Good Love, Character, Moral Strength

Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways.

Thomas Lickona

Character, Challenges, Vices

One's character is one's habitual way of behaving. We all have patterns of behavior or habits, and often we are quite unaware of them. When Socrates urged us to Know thyself, he clearly was directing us to come to know our habitual ways of responding to the world around us.

Thomas Lickona

Character, World, Patterns

Manners will become important to children only if they are important to their parents.

Thomas Lickona

Family, Children, Parent

Thomas Lickona (2012). “Raising Good Children: From Birth Through The Teenage Years”, p.84, Bantam

We need to be in control of ourselves - our appetites, our passions - to do right by others. It takes will to keep emotion under the control of reason.

Thomas Lickona

Passion, Needs, Emotion