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I'm a quote hoarder. Whether it's some profound saying from some brilliant historical figure or an awesome line from The Simpsons, I adore quotes. I find some inspirational, some funny, some sad, and some just plain weird. Sometimes placing a very well-thought-out quote plainly visible to me helps serve as a constant reminder of things I want to improve.
When it comes to kids, there are a million quotes out there too. I dug up some of my favorites, along with many others I loved, from fun quips to solemn social commentary. Enjoy!
- "Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate." — Anonymous
- "The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation." — Ray L. Wilbur
- “Children are great imitators of others' behavior. When they are surrounded by people who love them and respond to them respectfully, and with empathy, they respond this way to others, too.” — Tamara Parnay
- "Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." — Unknown
- "Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories." — John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
- "To bend bamboo, start when it is a shoot." — Malaysian Proverb
- "It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things." — Anne Sullivan
- "The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth." — Maria Montessori
- "It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snow-blower, or vacuum cleaner." — Ben Bergor
- "Let us be the ones who say we do not accept that a child dies every three seconds simply because he does not have the drugs you and I have. Let us be the ones to say we are not satisfied that your place of birth determines your right to life. Let us be outraged, let us be proud, let us be bold." — Brad Pitt
- "Children and drunks always speak the truth." — Proverb
- "Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them." — Oscar Wilde
- "With children … it is a face that most parents criticize children more than they laud our congratulate them. We tend to be quick to criticize, slow to praise. We should be careful to keep the praise and the expectations far ahead of the criticism." — Unknown
- "Your top job as a new parent is to love your baby like crazy. After showering her with affection, your next two important jobs are to feed her and to calm her when she cries." — Harvey Karp
- “Of all things love is the most potent.” –Maria Montessori
- "You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance." — Franklin P. Jones
- "Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them." — Lady Bird Johnson
- "The best way for a man to train up a child in the way he should go is to travel that way himself." — Unknown
- "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." — James Baldwin
- "Children are a great comfort to us in our old age, and they help us reach it faster too." — John Ruskin
- "The soul is healed by being with children." — Proverb
- "No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure." — Emma Goldman
- "Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves." –Marcelene Cox
- "When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child." — Sophia Loren
- "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout." — Jonathan Swift
- "Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong." — Shakespeare
- “A child enters your home and for the next twenty or so years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. Then the child departs, leaving the house so silent you think you are going mad.” — John Andrew Holmes
- "Children need models rather than critics." — Joseph Joubert
- "You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way." — Barbara Bush
- "There is no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." — Nelson Mandela
- "Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression." — Dr. Haim Ginott
- “Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” –Maria Montessori
- "It's not 'empty nest syndrome' until all of their crap is our of your basement." –via a bumper sticker
- "Children will not remember you for the material things you gave them but for the feeling that you cherished them." — Richard L. Evans
- "Childhood: The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth — two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age." — Ambrose Bierce
- "So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world." — Isadora Duncan
- "Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them, all of it has always been big stuff." — Catherine M. Wallace
- "It is the nature of the child to be dependent, and it is the nature of dependence to be outgrown. Begrudging dependency because it is not independence is like begrudging winter because it is not yet spring. Dependency blossoms into independence in its own time." — Peggy O’Mara
- "It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." — Frederick Douglass
- "Most parenting information out there puts parents in a very narcissistic role. The focus is on meeting the parent's needs only. The parent's needs for quiet, uninterrupted sleep, compliance, and obedience. If children learn what they live, this speak volumes as to why so many in our culture are so self-focused. A culture of peace and respect starts with living in partnership with our children." — Dayna Martin
- "If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?" — Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- "Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child." — Alice Miller
- "There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "The most effective form of birth control I know is spending the day with my kids." — Jill Bensley
- "Alas! Regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come nor care beyond today." — Thomas Gray
- "Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist." — Michael Levine
- "At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent." — Golda Meir
- "One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade." — Chinese proverb
- "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 LeShan
- "Making the decision to have a child — it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body." — Elizabeth Stone
Which one is your favorite? What other quotes do you know and love?
Image via Christie Haskell
