Parenting Quotes by Topic

Enjoy these conscious parenting quotes! If you’d like to add one, please do in the comments.

 

Education | Parenting Quotes

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”
~ William Butler Yates

“Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals.”
~ Janusz Korczak

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
~ Mark Twain

“You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D’s in school. Well guess what, I get F’s!!!”
~ Bill Watterson

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
~ Margaret Mead

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
~ Plato

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on — because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.”
~ Noam Chomsky

“Life learning is about trusting kids to learn what they need to know and about helping them to learn and grow in their own ways. It is about respecting the everyday experiences that enable children to understand and interact with the world and their culture.”
~ Wendy Priesnitz

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
~ Albert Einstein

“If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet.”
~ Linda Darling-Hammond

“The act of placing the power over learning and life into the individual’s hands is both empowering and motivating. The ‘motivation’ people see in unschoolers is really a joy in learning that is seen far less often among the masses in school.”
~ Idzie Desmarais

 

Society | Parenting Quotes

“Children need models rather than critics.”
~ Joseph Joubert

“My hope for our children’s children is that they will have more support from their culture and from one another for slowing down, attending inwardly, and living in ways that help sustain life on earth. The work each of us does to slow our pace and draw from the Deep River [within] is part of creating that life-sustaining future.”
~ Abby Seixas

Teach your children that they need nothing exterior to themselves to be happy, no person, place or thing, and that true happiness is found within.
~ Neale Donald Walsch

 

Travel | Parenting Quotes

“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.”
~ Mohammed

 

Food | Parenting Quotes

“High-tech tomatoes.  Mysterious milk.  Supersquash.  Are we supposed to eat this stuff?  Or is it going to eat us?”
~ Annita Manning

“One should eat to live, not live to eat”
~ Benjamin Franklin

“If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?”
~ unknown

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”
~ Doug Larson

“If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it”
~ unknown

“Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food.. stay away from these.”
~ Michael Pollan

“Today, more than 95% of all chronic disease is caused by food choice, toxic food ingredients, nutritional deficiencies and lack of physical exercise.”
~ Mike Adams

 

Alternative Medicine | Parenting Quotes

“Homeopathy …. cures a larger percentage of cases than any other method of treatment and is beyond doubt safer and more economical and most complete medical science.”
~ Mahatama Gandhi

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”
~ Thomas Edison

“Most over-the-counter and almost all prescribed drug treatments merely mask symptoms or control health problems or in some way alter the way organs or systems such as the circulatory system work. Drugs almost never deal with the reasons why these problems exist, while they frequently create new health problems as side effects of their activities.”
~ John R. Lee, M.D.

“No Illness which can be treated by the diet should be treated by any other means.”
~ Moses Maimonides (1135-1204)

 

Philosophy | Parenting Quotes

“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories.”
~ unknown

 

Romance | Parenting Quotes

“People really believe that if you co-sleep with your child there is no place to have sex. To me, those kind of comments just reflect on how American’s sex lives might be lacking imagination. Are you only having sex in your bed? At night? If you and your partner are happy with that, then that is all that really matters. However, many other couples feel it is important for their sexual relationship to not limit intimacy to one specific area or room of a home.”
~ Jamie Lynne Grumet

“The word ‘romance,’ according to the dictionary, means excitement, adventure, and something extremely real. Romance should last a lifetime.”
~ Billy Graham

“I think that men know how to romance a woman and most do it well, at least for a time, otherwise women wouldn’t marry them. The problem is that most of them begin to rest on their laurels.”
~ Nicholas Sparks

“If a man lets all of my dogs sleep in the bed with us, then that is the most romantic thing. You must love my dogs in order to love me. A man who is nice to my animals and doesn’t shoo them away – well, that’s the height of romance.”
~ Salma Hayek

 

Vaccinations | Parenting Quotes

“My own personal view is that vaccines are unsafe and worthless. I will not allow myself to be vaccinated again. The bottom line is that infectious diseases are least likely to affect (and to kill) those who have healthy immune systems. I no longer believe that vaccines have any role to play in the protection of the community or the individual. Vaccines may be profitable but they are neither safe nor effective. I prefer to put my trust in building up the immune system.”
~ Dr Vernon Coleman

“Delay of DPT immunization until 2 years of age in Japan has resulted in a dramatic decline in adverse side effects. In the period of 1970-1974, when DPT vaccination was begun at 3 to 5 months of age, the Japanese national compensation system paid out claims for 57 permanent severe damage vaccine cases, and 37 deaths. During the ensuing six year period 1975-1980, when DPT injections were delayed to 24 months of age, severe reactions from the vaccine were reduced to a total of eight with three deaths. This represents an 85 to 90 percent reduction in severe cases of damage and death.”
~ Raymond Obomsawin, M.D

“Probably 20% of American children-one youngster in five— suffers from ‘development disability’. This is a stupefying figure..We have inflicted it on ourselves.. ‘development disabilities’ are nearly always generated by encephalitis. And the primary cause of encephalitis in the USA and other industrialised countries is the childhood vaccination program. To be specific, a large proportion of the millions of US children and adults suffering from autism, seizures, mental retardation, hyperactivity, dyslexia, and other shoots or branches of the hydraheaded entity called ‘development disabilities’, owe their disorders to one or another of the vaccines against childhood diseases.”
~ Harris Coulter, PhD

 

Outdoor Recreation | Parenting Quotes

“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees.”
~ Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth

“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it. Perhaps this is what Thoreau had in mind when he said, “the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.”
~ David Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia

“Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.”
~ Thomas Berry

 

Diapering | Parenting Quotes

“We have been recommending cloth diapers for over 30 years now … In the USA, when people began using disposable ones, they realised that they are also non-biodegradable. So, they would dig up a big trench and dump the diapers and cement the place. Shockingly, in one of the cases the germs spread through the groundwater; and two kilometres away from this trench, a borewell was found with water contaminated by E-coli bacteria”
~ DNA India 2012-12-26

 

Spirituality | Parenting Quotes

“Spirituality is the sacred center out of which all life comes, including Mondays and Tuesdays and rainy Saturday afternoons in all their mundane and glorious detail. . . . The spiritual journey is the soul’s life commingling with ordinary life.”
~ Christina Baldwin, Life’s Companion

 

Babywearing | Parenting Quotes

“Wearing babies is not a trend. Is it a necessary part of life for the parent who wants to be simultaneously involved and productive.”
~ babywearingquotes.com

“Feeling a child’s weight increase as she falls into a deep slumber, the fabric of the carrier hug your shoulders, a small sweaty head press against the skin of your chest, this is bliss. This is indescribable.”
~ babywearingquotes.com

 

Breastfeeding | Parenting Quotes

“A newborn baby has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three.”
~ Grantly Dick-Read

“While breastfeeding may not seem the right choice for every parent, it is the best choice for every baby.”
~ Amy Spangler

“People need to understand that when they’re deciding between breastmilk and formula, they’re not deciding between Coke and Pepsi…. They’re choosing between a live, pure substance and a dead substance made with the cheapest oils available.”
~ Chele Marmet

“I am beautiful as I am. I am the shape that was gifted. My breasts are no longer perky and upright like when I was a teenager. My hips are wider than that of a fashion model’s. For this I am glad, for these are the signs of a life lived.”
~ Cindy Olsen

 

Potty Training| Parenting Quotes

“It’s important not to force your son to stop using his diaper. If you do, he may start holding stool in, which can eventually cause constipation and discomfort. And that will make him really not want to go.”
~ Dr. Claire McCarthy

“What if toilet training was approached as a skill, like rolling over, sitting, and walking?…It’s not magic, it’s not psychology, and it’s not a trick. It’s just a motor skill that your baby needs to have an opportunity to practice.”
~ Barbara Gablehouse, M.D

 

Father | Parenting Quotes

“I have never been a material girl. My father always told me never to love anything that cannot love you back.
~ Imelda Marcos

“Fathers, be good to your daughters. You are the god and the weight of her world.”
~ John Mayor

“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”
~ Jim Valvano

 

Mother | Parenting Quotes

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”
~ Tenneva Jordan

“A mother’s love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking, it never fails or falters, even though the heart is breaking.”
~ Helen Rice

“Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.”
~ Isabel Allende

 

Siblings | Parenting Quotes

“To the outside world, we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.”
~ Clara Ortega

“Sibling relationships – and 80 percent of Americans have at least one – outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust.”
~ Erica E. Goode

“A brother is a friend given by Nature.”
~ Jean Baptiste Legouve

 

Sleeping and Cosleeping | Parenting Quotes

“Science is finally beginning to discover what babies have known all along: Babies are designed to sleep with their parents. And parents are designed to sleep with their babies.”
~ Dr Jay Gordon

“Children who cosleep are generally more independent and secure, develop close and lasting bonds to their families, and report more happiness and general life satisfaction than children who sleep alone.”
~ Dionna

“Today in many cultures the practice of cosleeping continues, with babies seen as natural extensions of their mothers for the first one or two years of life, spending both waking and sleeping hours by her side.”
~ Tami E. Breazeale

“Early work by John Bowlby noted that the mother and baby pair who were continuously together would have a secure attachment relationship
~ Tami E. Breazeale

“Attachment benefits of cosleeping are not limited to mother and child; fathers also report enjoying additional time to bond with the baby as a direct result of sharing a sleeping area”
~ Tami E. Breazeale

 

Childcare | Parenting Quotes

“The question is still asked of women: “How do you propose to answer the need for child care?” That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: “If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?”
~ Jean Baker Miller

“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
~ Stella Chess

“Your child should feel entitled to cry when you leave; crying is a natural thing for a child to do when she feels bad. The fact th at your child cries when you go doesn’t mean she will never like day care. It just means she wants you to stay.”
~ Amy Laura Dombro

“A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.”
~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

Travel | Parenting Quotes

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.”
~ Francis Bacon, Sr.

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
~ Saint Augustine

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Philosophy | Parenting Quotes

“Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings.”
~ Hodding Carter

“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”
~ Navajo Proverb

 

Personal Growth | Parenting Quotes

“Give yourself up to this moment. Dare to see it. Now look down at your feet; slip out of those invisible tethers. Then ask: Where would you take yourself right this moment if you walked toward your most heartfelt dream? What would your life look like? What would your body look and feel like? What level of energy would you have? What might be your favorite activity? What would your daily life include? Imagine happiness — the sweet glow of inner contentment, the way it tastes and smells and feels.”
~ Chris Downie

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
~ Aristotle

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
~ M Scott Peck

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
~ Thomas Szasz

 

Places | Parenting Quotes

“There is no mysterious essence we can call a ‘place’. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.”
~ J. A. Baker

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
~ Alan Alda

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“It is good to feel lost… because it proves you have a navigational sense of where “Home” is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.”
~ Erika Harris

“I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.”
~ James Baldwin

 

Money | Parenting Quotes

“A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned”
~ Benjamin Franklin

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
~ Epictetus

“Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I’d like to express my thanks – I’ve got the sun in the mornin’ and the moon at night.”
~ Irving Berlin

 

Career | Parenting Quotes

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
~ Confucius

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
~ Abraham Lincoln

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.”
~ George Lucas

“Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.”
~ Katherine Whitehorn

 

Birth | Parenting Quotes

“There is a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.”
~ Laura Stavoe Harm

“The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently has, and will have the power.”
~ Heather McCue

“The effort to separate the physical experience of childbirth from the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of this event has served to disempower and violate women.”
~ Mary Rucklos Hampton

”The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.”
~ Stephen Gaskin

 

Friends | Parenting Quotes

“A friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else.”
~ Len Wein

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”
~ Donna Roberts

“I get by with a little help from my friends.”
~ John Lennon

“Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
~ Mother Theresa

 

Extended Family | Parenting Quotes

“I’m often asked if I regret not going to Hollywood. I’m glad I didn’t go, because if I had I wouldn’t have my extended family, which is the fabric of my life. Only recently have I realized how special and unusual it is.”
~ Francesca Annis

“My son has two loving parents and an extended family, whether it’s cousins or stepmothers or boyfriends. My son is surrounded by love.”
~ Bridget Moynahan

“A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.”
~ Aesop

 

Arts and Crafts | Parenting Quotes

“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”
~ Howard Ikemoto

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