The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
—David Friedman
When all is said and done, the act of being a parent involves a set of radically unselfish and often incomprehensibly inconvenient activities. Two adults who could otherwise employ their time and resources in pleasurable activities of various kinds elect to seek housing and provide food and other facilities for completely dependent organisms whose personal schedules, furthermore, could not be at greater variance with adult ones, and who will involve their parents literally for decades in a compromise between a program of work or pleasure and the requirements of their offspring. It is not altogether remarkable that parents may have one child, if only in error or because of confused expectations of bliss. What is truly remarkable is that most parents have more than one child.
—Lionel Tiger
Because children see parents as authority figures and gods, they think that the way you treat them is the way they deserve to be treated: “What you say about me is what I am” is a literal truth to your child. Consequently, when children are treated with respect, they conclude that they deserve respect and hence develop self-respect.
—Stephanie Marston
The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
—Katharine Whitehorn
I began to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them—children, duties, visits, bores, relations: the things that protect married people from each other.
—Edith Wharton
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.
—Clarence Darrow
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant—and let the air out of the tires.
—Dorothy Parker
Children are all foreigners.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.
—Evan Esar
My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt.
—George Bernard Shaw
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.
—Gaston Bachelard
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, avoiding our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
—Garrison Keillor
Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
—James Baldwin
Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.
—John Ruskin
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.
—Harry S. Truman