Quotes on Children

I have decided to tell the story of my life as best I can, so that my children can separate the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture.

I'm going to insist on making sure that we've got decent funding, that we've got enough teachers, that we've got computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve.

I must say that the biggest lesson you can learn in life, or teach your children, is that life is not castles in the skies, happily ever after. The biggest lesson we have to give our children is truth. We're all built with illusions. And they break.

If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1.

What occurred to me on [‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’], and also with the passing of her mother, is that there's going to come a time when I'm not going to get to be with this person anymore. I'm not going to get to be with my children anymore. Or friends, people I love and respect. And so, if we have a flare-up, it evaporates now. I don't want to waste time being angry at someone I love.

What's done to children, they will do to society.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicisation of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanisation of politics.

I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it's such an extraordinary part of our lives.

I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.

I've met people who are baffled by children, as though they were never children themselves.

I no longer knew whether it was raindrops or my own tears that were flowing down my cheeks, and I hated to have to drag along this relic of a sniveling child.

There are not schizophrenics. There are people with schizophrenia and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker.

I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. Bu t my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.

There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst.

Youth is a perpetual intoxication; it is a fever of the mind.

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.

Often the only thing a child can remember about an adult in later years, when he or she is grown, is whether or not that person was kind to him or her.

Play is the work of the child.

I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring.

My goal is to get peace and my goal is to see education of every child.

Marriage is treated by all civilized societies as a peculiar and favored contract. It is in its origin a contract of natural law . . . . It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic.