Life is a near-death experience.
Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the overemphasis on promoting minor achievements of children by parents.
George Carlin's quote humorously suggests that true self-esteem in a child comes from their ability to recognize their own achievements without needing external validation from their parents. It calls out the tendency of some parents to boast about their children's minor accomplishments, implying that authentic confidence doesn't require constant promotion from others, particularly for trivial matters like scholastic achievements.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about parenting styles, one might say, 'As George Carlin pointed out, we should encourage self-esteem in our kids without boasting about every little thing they do.'
More from George Carlin
All quotes →If you've got a cat and a leg, you've got a happy cat. If you've got a cat and two legs, you've got a party.
This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.
Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.
Intelligence tests are biased toward the literate.
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
Similar quotes
Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records - who's read what - and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.
While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.
I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages.
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world.
Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.