This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nothing destroys the potential for parents to have a close relationship with their children as disciplining through excessive fear. When children are still young, parents should be aware that one day their children will become independent. Parents who frequently use fear as a weapon create negative feelings in their children. When they grow up, those children are likely to rebel against their parents and go their own way." - Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe
"Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends." - Jacques Delille
"What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let us say from young people, this information about the sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing interest in such matters prematurely, before it spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by concealment of this kind the development of the sexual instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in the civilized social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should consider everything connected with sex as something despicable and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish to keep them apart as long as possible? I am really at a loss so say which of these can be the motive for the customary concealment from children of everything connected with sex. I only know that these arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that I find it difficult to pay them the compliment of serious refutation." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
"A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents, it is not created by external advantages, it is no necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents or station; but it is the result of one’s own endeavors." - Joel Hawes
"Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children." - Jane Howard, fully Elizabeth Jane Howard
"Conduct thyself towards thy parents as thou wouldst wish thy children to conduct themselves towards thee." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"When a person is born, he finds the world in a certain organized fashion. As he grows up, he tries to adjust himself to the assumptions that are accepted in the world. He views each event that occurs with the same perspective as the other people of his generation. These perspectives originated in the past and have been handed down from parents to children. These assumptions are taken for granted to such an extent that most people react to the accepted perspective of the world as if they were laws of the universe that cannot be changed. They are accepted as reality and are not challenged. Only a small minority of people obtain the necessary wisdom to look at the world with complete objectivity. They take a critical look at teach and every thing and try to understand everything as it really is instead of accepting the general prevalent outlook. Those who try to investigate the origin of every perspective will perceive everything in a much different light than is commonly accepted." - Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach
"The God-given rights of parents are not understood or are ignored by our secularist educators and by many school administrators who, in the delusion of sovereignty, act as though they, not the parents, have complete control of the education of the child." - John T. McNicholas, fully John Timothy McNicholas
"Before we are predators, prey, lovers, parents and suckling infants, let alone fellow citizens, we are living creatures actively embedded in the world." - Brian O’Shaugnessy
"If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father’s vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practiced in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before they children’s faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents backs." - Francis Quarles
"There is a mistaken notion prevailing among some parents that discipline is the same thing as punishment. It is not. Discipline comes from a Latin word meaning "to teach." The best discipline is that which teaches, not the kind that hurts." - J. C. Wynn
"We are the people our parents warned us about." - Youth Movement Slogan NULL
"Be more prudent for your children than perhaps you have been for yourself. When they, too, are parents they will imitate you, and each of you will have prepared happy generations who will transmit, together with your memory, the worship of your wisdom." - Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier
"The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them." - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
"Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach those of their parents." - Paul Copperman
"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
"Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends." - Abbé Jacques Delille
"Parents represent the last stand of the amateur. Every other trade and profession has developed standards, has required study and practice and licensing before releasing the students into his work. Only one profession remains untutored and untrained -- the bearing and rearing of our children." - Evelyn Mills Duvall
"I learned the way a monkey learns - by watching its parents." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"If there are quarrels between the parents or if their marriage is unhappy, the ground will be prepared in their children for the severest predisposition to a disturbance of sexual development or to neurotic illness." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"To be sure, if it is the purpose of educators to stifle the child’s power of independent thought as early as possible, in order to produce that ‘good behavior’ which is so highly prized, they cannot do better than deceive children in sexual matters and intimidate them by religious means. The stronger characters will, it is true, withstand these influences; they will become rebels against the authority of their parents and later against every other form of authority. When children do not receive the explanations for which they turn to their elders, they go on tormenting themselves in secret with the problem, and produce attempts at solution in which the truth they have guessed is mixed up in the most extraordinary way with grotesque inventions; or else they whisper confidences to each other which, because of the sense of guilt in the youthful inquirers, stamp everything sexual as horrible and disgusting." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The children who go to bed hungry in a Harlem slum or a West Virginia mining town are not being deprived because no food can be found to give them; they are going to bed hungry because, despite all our miracles of invention and production, we have not yet found a way to make necessities of life available to all of our citizens - including those whose failure is not lack of personal industry or initiative, but only an unwise choice of parents." - James William Fulbright
"A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external advantages; it is no necessary appendage of birth; wealth, talents, or station; but it is the results of one's good principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable action." - Josiah Johnson "J." Hawes
"One of the most valuable habits a parent can have is that of explaining. Many parents think their children are too young to understand explanations, yet it is surprising how much a child will absorb if he is given a chance. And even if he does not understand completely, he will at least sense that someone cares enough to explain" - Elizabeth R. Hogan
"The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents is because it helps me to forgive their children." - Louis Johannot
"To love our parents is the first law of nature." - Valerius Maximus
"One of the most difficult lessons parents have to learn is this one: Children are only loaned for a brief term of infancy and childhood. Soon they become people, strangers in the home, and instead of children to be directed they are grown-ups to be studied, understood and accepted. The acceptance is never quite complete on either side, but affection will bridge the gap if it is permitted to do so." - Angelo Patri
"Next to God, thy parents." - William Penn
"We should honor our teachers more than our parents, because while our parents cause us to live, our teachers cause us to live well." - Philoxenus of Mabbug, aka Aksnāyā NULL
"It is not enough for parents to understand children. they must accord children the privilege of understanding them." - Milton R. Sapirstein
"Children are unlikely to follow exactly in their parent's footsteps, but children will travel more easily over bridges which the parents use regularly." - Goodwin Watson
"Schoolmasters and parents exist to be grown out of." - John Wolfenden, fully John Frederick Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden
"Teachers are greater benefactors than parents." - Xystus I or Pope Sixtus I NULL
"There are no illegitimate children- only illegitimate parents." - Leon R Yankwich, fully Leon Rene Yankwich
"It’s a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children." - Ama Ata Aidoo, fully Christina Ama Ata Aidoo
"The inner and unconscious ideal which guides [the parents’] lives is precisely what touches the child; their words, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feeling even, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship, that it is which his instinct divines and reflects." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"Parents belong to the world of the past; children belong to the world of the future. Both share the world of the present, but neither can enter or fully understand the other’s world and time. It is easier to communicate across miles than across years. We meet and laugh awhile; we separate and grieve awhile. And then we remember." - Joseph A. Bauer
"The sexual act takes on qualitative significance and value which transcends the other meanings the sexual act can have, when lovers use the act purposely to become parents. For now the two lovers express their faith in love itself, in the possibilities open to their children within the social order and in this world." - Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci
"Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning." - T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton
"How good a parent you were is determined by your grandchildren. If I have not taught my children how to be good parents – principally by example – then I have not fulfilled my responsibility." - S. Truett Cathy