Childhood is the age span ranging from birth to puberty. Profoundly inspirational childhood quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
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Famous Childhood Quotes
There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. ― Elizabeth Lawrence
Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that. ― Ally Condie
A child miseducated is a child lost. ― John F. Kennedy
If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. ― Tom Stoppard
Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them. ― Dr. euss
A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard. ― Eliphas Levi
Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good. ― Katherine Anne Porter
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood. ― Jane Yolen
A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching. ― A. Bartlett Giamatti
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. ― Deepak Chopra
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. ― Patrick Rothfuss
An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life. ― Author Unknown
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is. ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ― Markus Zusak
All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind. ― Martin H. Fischer
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day. ― John Milton
[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are. ― Jim Henson
An investment in knowledge pays the best dividends. ― Benjamin Franklin
Childhood is a promise that is never kept. ― Ken Hill
Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. ― C. S. Lewis
Around here, we don’t look backwards for very long… We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. ― Walt Disney
The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give. ― Ellen Glasgow

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy. ― Neil Gaiman
Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education…to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. ― John Adams
Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes. ― Malcolm De Chazal
As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. ― Carl Gustav Jung
Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. ― Japanese Proverb
Childhood is a short season. ― Helen Hayes
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. ― Tom Robbins
Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves. ― Ernest Dimnet
When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood. ― Sam Ewing
I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway. Let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves. ― C. JoyBell C.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. ― Margaret Mead
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection. ― Sigmund Freud
Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. ― Roald Dahl
Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. ― Chinese Proverb
How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, when I found recollection presents them to view! Samuel Woodworth
“Don’t you find it odd,” she continued, “that when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow, they act offended if you even try.” ― Ethan Hawke
Do you know the secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
There was a place in childhood that I remember well, and there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell. ― Samuel Lover
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. ― Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. ― She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair. ―
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. ― Nicole Krauss
Don’t just teach your kids to read, teach them to question what they read. ― Teach them to question everything. ― George Carlin
Childhood means simplicity. ― Look at the world with the child’s eye – it is very beautiful. ― Kailash Satyarthi
For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be. ― John Connolly
Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. ― Martin H. Fischer

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance. ― Claus Moser
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. ― Edward Everett
Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them! Max Muller
Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well. ― George R. R. Martin
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. ― Flannery O’Connor
We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future. ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. ― She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe. ― N. K. Jemisin
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. ― Will Durant
Education is a vaccine for violence. ― Edward James Olmos
Education is not filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. ― William Butler Yeats
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in afterlife the images first presented to it. ― The first thing continues forever with the child. The first joy, the first sorrow, the first success, the first failure, the first achievement, the first misadventure. ― Samuel Smiles
and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful. ― Ruskin Bond
Gym should be illegal. It’s humiliating. ― Laurie Halse Anderson
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today. ― Orson Scott Card
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ― John Dewey
Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. ― William Butler Yeats
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. ― G. K. Chesterton
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. ― Robert Frost
Childhoods never last. But everyone deserves one. ― Wendy Dale
… so, one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated. ― Ransom Riggs
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it’s always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window. ― Audrey Niffenegger
Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. ― George Washington Carver
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. ― Nelson Mandela
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. ― Albert Einstein
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. ― B. F. Skinner
A happy childhood? is the worst possible preparation for life. ― Kinky Friedman
Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual. ― Alfred Hitchcock
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages. The delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide. Far too many people misunderstand what putting away childish things means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I’m with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don’t ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child’s awareness and joy, and be fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. ― Madeleine L’Engle

Childhood should be carefree, playing in the sun; not living a nightmare in the darkness of the soul. ― Dave Pelzer
Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Education is… doing anything that changes you. ― George B. Leonard
Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke. ― Julian Barnes
I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents. ― Sherman Alexie
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose. ― P. G. Wodehouse
Play is the highest form of research. ― Albert Einstein
Education should be exercise; it has become massage. ― Martin H.Fischer
Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ― William Haley
There is no land like the land of your childhood. ― Michael Powell
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. ― Anne Lamott
Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ― G. M. Trevelyan
All of us are products of our childhood. ― Michael Jackson
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. ― We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more. ― J. M. Barrie
Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be. ― Rita Pierson
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog. ― Mark Twain
What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever. ― Mary Jo Putney
It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless. ― L. R. Knost
Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing. ― Santa Claus
It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God. ― Scott Dikkers
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Friendship is a horizon – which expands whenever we approach it. ― E. R. Hazlip
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre. ― Gail Goldwin
He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ― Victor Hugo
Childhood lasts all through life. ― Gaston Bachelard
You can go other places, all right – you can live on the other side of the world, but you can’t ever leave home. ― Sue Monk Kidd
I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me. ― Roald Dahl
Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood. ― Pablo Neruda

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better. ― Maya Angelou
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ― Mark Twain
I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That’s what I call a liberal education. ― Tallulah Bankhead
Childhood is like being drunk. Everyone remembers what you did, except you. ― unknown
That’s what makes it so right. Your eyes—your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That’s the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you’ve seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become. ― Bree Despain
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship. ― Aeschylus
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. ― Chinese Proverb
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. ― Derek Bok
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. ― Robert G. Ingersoll
How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood. ― Harold Ramis
Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, “We told you not to tell. ” But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on. ― Anne Lamott
Later, when you’re grown up, you realize you never really get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that’s it. ― Mindy Kaling
It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants, and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ― Author unknown
Learning is never done without errors and defeat. ― Vladimir Lenin
There are things about your childhood you hold into, because they were so much part of you. The places you went, the people you knew. ― The Wonder Years
But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things. ― Carson McCullers
Nonsense. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older, and then before you know it, they’re grown. ― J. M. Barrie
Learning never exhausts the mind. ― Leonardo Da Vinci
Childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons. ― Jerry Smith
My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm. ― Gillian Flynn
The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood. ― Richard Paul Evans
People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn’t want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you’d be married and you’d own a farm with about a million chickens on it. ” They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could. ― Heather O’Neill
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ― Mahatma Gandhi
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. ― Albert Einstein
Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open. ― James Dewar
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think — rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. ― Bill Beattie
Childhood is the light of our life, we must keep it safe within our hearts. ― Marinela Reka
You know, it’s pretty easy reading this book to see why I was angry and confused for all those years. I lived my life being told different stories: some true, some lies and I still don’t know which is which. Children are born innocent. At birth we are very much like a new hard drive – no viruses, no bad information, no crap that’s been downloaded into it yet. It’s what we feed into that hard drive, or in my case “head drive” that starts the corruption of the files. ― Nikki Sixx
The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole. ― Markus Zusak
When we suffer anguish, we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together. ― John Berger
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. ― Robert Maynard Hutchins
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ― Abraham Flexner
Learning is more than absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding. ― William Arthur Ward
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. ― Benjamin Franklin
We see how early childhood experiences are so important to lifelong outcomes, how the early environment literally becomes embedded in the brain and changes its architecture. ― Andrew S. Garner
I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy, old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length. ― Laurie Halse Anderson
To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child. ― Henning Mankell
No man who worships education has got the best out of education…. Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete. ― K. Chesterton
Once you have learned to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. ― Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers. ― Steven Spielberg
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. ― Ezra Pound
Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults. ― Abraham Lincoln
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself. ― Chinese Proverb
Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. ― William Arthur Ward