African proverb:

It takes a village to raise a child.

Ambrose Bierce:

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.

Anna Quindlen:

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

Anne Frank:

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Annie Sullivan:

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Bill Cosby:

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.

Bill Vaughn:

A three-year-old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.

Bureau of Social Hygiene study, 1928:

It is very difficult and expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother and father did to you while you were putting your first six birthdays behind you.

Chinese proverb:

One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade.

Clarence Darrow:

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.

Colette:

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

Dorothy Parker:

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air out of the tires.

Eda LeShan:

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.

Elizabeth Stone:

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.

Ellen Galinsky:

Cultural expectations shade and color the images that parents-to-be form. The baby product ads, showing a woman serenely holding her child, looking blissfully and mysteriously contented, or the television parents, wisely and humorously solving problems, influence parents-to-be.

Erma Bombeck:

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression

Florida Scott-Maxwell:

No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

Franklin P. Jones:

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

Garrison Keillor:

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

George Bernard Shaw:

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

George W. Bush:

I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.

George Washington Carver:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

Golda Meir:

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.

Groucho Marx:

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Harry S Truman:

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Herbert Hoover:

Children are our most valuable natural resource.

Hodding Carter:

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis:

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.

James Baldwin:

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

James Baldwin:

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

Jane Nelson:

Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?

Jill Bensley:

The most effective form of birth control I know is spending the day with my kids.

John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John J. Plomp:

You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.

Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children. / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

Koran:

Wealth and children are the adornment of life.

Leo Rosten:

You can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them -- no matter how old or impressive they may be -- as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much -- we simply grow taller. O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

Louis Pasteur:

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.

Lydia Maria Child:

Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!

Marian Wright Edelman:

If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.

Marian Wright Edelman:

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.

Marian Wright Edelman:

The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction?

Marilyn French:

To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.

Mark Twain:

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.

Mark Twain - attributed in error:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Maureen Hawkins:

Before you were conceived I wanted you
Before you were born I loved you
Before you were here an hour I would die for you
This is the miracle of life.

Michael Levine:

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.

P. J. O'Rourke:

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

Pablo Picasso:

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pamela Glenconner:

Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.

Pearl S. Buck:

I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.

Rabbinical saying:

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rachel Carson:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

Roger Lewin:

Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn:

The golf links lie so near the mill
      That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
      And see the men at play.
            [from "Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]

Sidonie Gruenberg:

Home is the place where boys and girls first learn how to limit their wishes, abide by rules, and consider the rights and needs of others.

Sidonie Gruenberg:

To value his own good opinion, a child has to feel that he is a worthwhile person. He has to have confidence in himself as an individual.

St. Francis Xavier:

Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterward.

Theodore Hesburgh:

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Thomas Moore:

Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.

Unknown:

- from the Institute for Stork Research and Science
Two different theories exist concerning the origin of children: the theory of Sexual reproduction, and the theory of the stork. Many people believe in the theory of sexual reproduction because they have been taught this theory at school. In reality, however, many of the world's leading scientists are in favor of the theory of the stork. If the theory of sexual reproduction is taught in schools, it must only be taught as a theory and not as the truth. Alternative theories, such as the theory of the stork, must also be taught.

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Unknown:

Some children's answers to church school questions - from the Church of England:

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Victoria Wagner:

A young child is, indeed, a true scientist, just one big question mark. What? Why? How? I never cease to marvel at the recurring miracle of growth, to be fascinated by the mystery and wonder of this brave enthusiasm.

William Shakespeare:

It is a wise father that knows his own child.