Benjamin Spock
The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.Collection: Parenting
Preschool children are virtuosos of imagination.Collection: Imagination
I think we should bring up our children with much less pressure to compete and get ahead: no comparing one child with another, at home or in school; no grades. Let athletics be primarily for fun, and let them be organized by children and youths themselves.Collection: Home
Every child senses, with all the horse sense that's in him, that any parent is angry inside when children misbehave and they dread more the anger that is rarely or never expressed openly, wondering how awful it might be.Collection: Anger
People have criticized me for seeming to step out of my professional role to become undignifiedly political. I'd say it was belated realization that day care, good schools, health insurance, and nuclear disarmament are even more important aspects of pediatrics than measles vaccine or vitamin D.Collection: Health
The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.Collection: Parenting
When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.Collection: Women
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.Collection: Happiness
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?Collection: War
There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its mother's age.Collection: Mom
I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.Collection: War
I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.Collection: War
As a peace activist, I am dismayed by the encouragement of aggressiveness and violence by television, movies, and war toys.Collection: Peace
I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.Collection: Marriage
Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.Collection: Trust
All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.Collection: Learning
In our country today, very few children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country, or God.Collection: Family
Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.
We all end up at least somewhat like our parents, especially in the way we deal with our children.
To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation.
A surprising number of scientific advances have been made and masterpieces of art created by individuals just on the threshold of adulthood.
On the average, older parents are more flexible, tolerant, understanding, and happy in child care.
Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is in the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.
Humans can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet they're potentially more vicious than any other. They are the only ones who can be persuaded to hate millions of their own kind whom they have never seen and to kill as many as they can lay their hands on in the name of their tribe or their God.Collection: Hate
Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity. Without creativity, there is no life.Collection: Creativity
The main source of good discipline is growing up in a loving family, being loved and learning to love in return.Collection: Growing Up
Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.Collection: Common Sense
A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.Collection: Selfish
Having a good time together is the essence of lovingness and the best means of increasing it.Collection: Time
Respect children because they're human beings and they deserve respect, and they'll grow up to be better people.Collection: Respect
Grandparents have the freedom to see their grandchildren uncritically.Collection: Grandchildren
Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for life.Collection: Children
Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.Collection: Common Sense
It's up to each of us to help create a better world for our children.Collection: Children
The children who are appreciated for what they are, even if they are homely, or clumsy, or slow, will grow up with confidence in themselves and happy. They will have a spirit that will make the best of all the capacities that they do have and of all the opportunities that come their way.Collection: Growing Up
If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.Collection: Children
I think that parents ought to get some idea of how the so- called "experts" have changed their advice over the decades, so that they won't take them deadly seriously, and so that if the parent has the strong feeling, "I don't like this advice," the parent won't feel compelled to follow it. . . . So don't worry about trying to do a perfect job. There is no perfect job. There is no one way of raising your children.Collection: Strong
Can we make a better world for our children? I believe we can, if enough people are concerned and get involved in changing what is wrong with society.Collection: Children
The strongest rebellion may be expressed in quiet, undramatic behavior.Collection: Teamwork
Children who grow up getting nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and some forms of cancerCollection: Children
What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.Collection: Mom
The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.Collection: Jobs
People have said, "You've turned your back on pediatrics." I said, "No. It took me until I was in my 60s to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics."Collection: People
I wanted to be supportive of parents rather than to scold them. The book set out very deliberately to counteract some of the rigidities of pediatric tradition, particularly in infant feeding. It emphasized the importance of great differences between individual babies, of the need for flexibility and of the lack of necessity to worry constantly about spoiling.Collection: Baby
I was so afraid of being bad and being caught at it.Collection: Caught
It's an ideal existence. Out in the open. Berating the president of he United States... I'm free to thwart and torment the authorities - that is to say, I can get out my hostilities - because I'm protected in my conscience by the knowledge that what I'm doing is morally right. I've never been so relaxed. I've never been so happy.Collection: Men
Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.Collection: Confidence
I love to dance and I'd love to be saying goodbye to my friends while the band was playing and they were dancing...I want them to remember I was a dancing man in my day.Collection: Dance
I've come to the realization that a lot of our problems are because of a dearth of spiritual values.Collection: Spiritual
Sex education, including its spiritual aspects, should be part of a broad health and moral education from kindergarten through grade twelve, ideally carried out harmoniously by parents and teachers.Collection: Spiritual