Adults Quotes - Page 14

• To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They've got their heads screwed on a lot better.

  Amy Winehouse

  Kids, Thinking, Honest

  8 Copy quote

• True respect means taking other people's beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are totally, utterly and disastrously wrong.

  Julian Baggini

  Mean, Intelligent, Thinking

  "Respect for you and your crazy beliefs" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. December 2, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm an adult. Discipline me and I'll bury you alive. - Roger

  Douglas Coupland

  Discipline, Alive, Roger

  Douglas Coupland (2008). “JPod”, p.414, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're taught to find the antecedents to our adult failures in childhood traumas, and so we spend our lives looking bacwards and pointing fingers, rather than bucking up and forging ahead. But what if your childhood was all a big misunderstanding? An elaborate ruse? What does that say about failure? Better yet, what does that say about potential?

  Heidi Julavits

  Childhood, What If, Doe

  Heidi Julavits (2004). “The Effect of Living Backwards”, p.12, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Children, Blow, Talking

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.25, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Children, Growing Up, Believe

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.44, Ultramarine Publishing

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Law, Space, Events

  Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft (2004). “Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark”, p.14, Wildside Press LLC

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a child hits a child, we call it aggression. When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility. When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault. When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.

  Haim Ginott

  Children, Parenting, Discipline

  121 Copy quote

• He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.

  Julian Barnes

  Relationship, Fear, Hate

  Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: "We worked hard at it.

  Randy Pausch

  Couple, Long, Together

  5 Copy quote

• The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.

  Andre Breton

  Children, Mind, Mysterious

  Andre Breton, Mark Polizzotti (1997). “Anthology of Black Humor”, p.104, City Lights Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Destiny

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• Kids who don't eavesdrop on adult conversations are doomed to a childhood of ignorance.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Ignorance, Kids, Childhood

  Kelley Armstrong (2010). “Men of the Otherworld”, p.174, Vintage Canada

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth.

  Mortimer Adler

  Way, Complexity

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.265, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.

  Mortimer Adler

  Wise, Simple, Able

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.265, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Welcome to adulthood." Cob said. "Every child finds a day when the realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like everyone else. After that day, you are an adult. Like it or not.

  Peter V. Brett

  Children, Welcome, Realizing

  8 Copy quote

• In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, Parent, Today

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1990). “The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary”, Open Court Publishing Company

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Two, Childhood

  16 Copy quote

• Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Children, Pieces, Paper

  11 Copy quote

• When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

  Harper Lee

  Children, Tkam, Ems

  "To Kill a Mockingbird". Book by Harper Lee, 1962.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.

  Anne Lamott

  Prayer, Honesty, Kids

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.92, Anchor

  196 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I notice is that every adult or child I give a new set of Crayolas to goes a little funny. The kids smile, get a glazed look on their faces, pour the crayons out, and just look at them for a while....The adults always get the most wonderful kind of sheepish smile on their faces--a mixture of delight and nostalgia and silliness. And they immediately start telling you about all their experiences with Crayolas.

  Robert Fulghum

  Children, Kids, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• And you've actually watched it yourself?' I asked. 'Willingly?' Sure. I had to see it, you know? Besides we should be safe. Only one in twenty viewers actually had a bad reaction. And it was mostly kids who were affected. I mean younger than you guys. I think the average age was about ten.' That made me feel somewhat better. But that was a kid's show,' said Jen. 'Maybe it affects everyone, but not that many adults were watching.' That made me feel less better. I wanted my protective bangs back.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Mean, Kids, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Death, Home, Practice

  "1984: Spring". Book by Arthur C. Clarke, 1984.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Believe, Cake

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.32, Penguin UK

  56 Copy quote

  Show source