Children Quotes - Page 20

Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world.

Working with UNICEF made me grow up and recognize how fortunate I am.

I see no greatness in my self...I'm a simple-minded, child-like, insipid sort of moronic and kind of akward feeling adolescent.

Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.

Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time, with eyes of a child, fresh with wonder.

A child who has been taught to respect the laws of God will have little difficulty respecting the laws of men.

I never tried to be Jay Z or Big Poppa, I'm underground like them dead children buried in Gaza

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, But our worst crime is abandoning the children, Neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, His blood is being made, And his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer 'Tomorrow.' His name is 'Today.'

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child, the knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe,--the knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making.

We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.

Children must have at least one person who believes in them. It could be a counselor, a teacher, a preacher, a friend. It could be you. You never know when a little love, a little support will plant a small seed of hope.

Save the Children is often told that its aims are impossible - that there has always been child suffering and there always will be. We know. It's impossible only if we make it so. It's impossible only if we refuse to attempt it.

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs lifesaving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children.

The truly wise talk little about religion and are not given to taking sides on doctrinal issues. When they hear people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in the church, they turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. They have no time, they would say, for that kind of thing. They have enough to do in trying to faithfully practice what is beyond dispute.

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

What a child digs for becomes his own possession.

Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.

When I travel around the world, I see that poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent? The Earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.

I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you're the one talking.