Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [101-120] of 165 Children quotesChildren QuotesChildren Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death --- these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.~ C. S. Lewis What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artifically kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men.~ C. S. Lewis Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.~ C. S. Lewis When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.~ Walter Lippmann Within seven centuries, [the ancient Greeks] invented for itself, epic, elegy, lyric, tragedy, novel, democratic government, political and economic science, history, geography, philosophy, physics and biology; and made revolutionary advances in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, anatomy, engineering, law and war... a stupendous feat for whose most brilliant state Attica was the size of Hertfordshire, with a free population (including children) of perhaps 160,000.~ F. J. Lucas If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.~ James Madison Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible.~ Marisa Manley The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.~ Karl Marx 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.~ Karl Marx The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart.~ Mencius And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.~ H. L. Mencken We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.~ H. L. Mencken The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.~ Dr. Joseph Mengele The feelings, sentiments, values and responses of our children, or of any citizen, are none of the government's damned business. That we must support a government agency that gives itself to the emotional and ideological manipulation of citizens is infamous.~ Richard Mitchell There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education.~ Richard Mitchell We've been asleep for about 50 years. Ever since the end of World War II we just steadily handed our future and our bank accounts and now our children, handed them all over to the federal government...~ Michael Moriarty It is important therefore that in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience formed. One of the greatest blessings which the State can confer upon her children is to instill into their minds at an early period moral and religious truths. ... Thousands of unfortunate children are growing up in perfect ignorance of their moral and religious duties. Their parents equally unfortunate know not how to instruct them, and have not the opportunity or ability of placing them under the care of those who could give them instruction. The State, in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children and place them in schools where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained to virtue.~ Archibald D. Murphey At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.~ Benito Mussolini Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.~ Ogden Nash We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education.... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents.... The government must undertake the improvement of public health -- by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor -- by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.~ National Socialist Party of Germany (NAZI) Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print