Top 100 Kids Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best kids quotes ever written, picked out of the full kids archive on QuoteForever. You will find Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Adam Sandler and Alison Sweeney among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

Music's totally eclectic now. I saw a DJ the other day, he was on Virgin radio over here, and he said he played "Going Underground", the Jam song, on his breakfast show. Then he got a text from some young kid asking if was a new band. I think a lot of people these days, younger people as well, are aware of all sorts of music, really. If you're into the Libertines you probably also have to be aware of the Beatles, or the Kinks. I think there's a better, possibly greater appreciation for all music, of all eras, I think.

2

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

3

I'd never imagined myself writing at all until I was almost 30. And horror films weren't to my taste, at least the super popular (slasher-y) ones of the day back then. The first novel I ever loved as a kid was Frankenstein, and I was always a crazy Hitchcock and Polanski fan... but I never saw myself - a square spazzy girl from the suburbs - writing anything that would horrify anyone. Or so I thought.

4

I don't pay attention to the number of birthdays. It's weird when I say I'm 53. It just is crazy that I'm 53. I think I'm very immature. I feel like a kid. That's why my back goes out all the time, because I completely forget I can't do certain things anymore - like doing the plank for 10 minutes.

5

Some of these kids just don't plain know how good they are: how smart and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time.

6

In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.

7

I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.

8

Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.

9

Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.

10

I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid, but my father always told me - occasionally while striking me - that I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. And I think there's great truth in that.

11

This is the culture you're raising your kids in. Don't be surprised if it blows up in your face.

12

Every parent wants to do what's best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I'm going to get my kid the best education I can get.

13

You want to have two guys making out in front of your 4-year-old? It's OK with them. A guy smoking a joint, blowing the smoke into your little kid's face? OK with them. And I'm not exaggerating here. This is exactly what the secular movement stands for.

14

I loved 'Saturday Night Fever' when I was a kid. I couldn't believe people talked that way. It was just a whole new culture I didn't understand. I snuck into it. It was an R-rated film. So it holds a special place.

15

India is my kid sister.

16

Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family. I've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.

17

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

18

I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.

19

I don't think there's ever a right time to have kids. I'm actually pretty glad it's happened quite young.

20

As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time.

21

When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it's not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.

22

As a kid, I really loved 'Jane Eyre,' I used to fantasise that the past was so much better and my lifetime was crap.

23

I'm not a perfect mom, but I'm perfect for my kids.

24

The kids who leave their favorite authors behind do not in fact leave us utterly abandoned, but in due time drive children of their own to the bookstore and the post office.

25

First, we parents have to back up school authority and quit making excuses for our kids when they misbehave.

26

You know . . . a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace.

27

Isn't a kid alive who doesn't dream about rewarding her folks, or punishing them.

28

The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result.

29

I paused for a light at Hamilton and TWlfth and noticed the Nissan was running rough at idle. Two blocks later it backfired and stalled. I coaxed it into the center of the city. Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! A Trans Am pulled up next to me at a light. The Trans Am was filled with high school kids. One of them stuck his head out of the passenger-side window. "Hey lady," he said. "Sounds like you got a fartmobile." I flipped him an Italian goodwill gesture and pulled the ball cap low on my forehead. (Three to get Deadly)

30

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

31

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

32

When I was a kid in San Diego, I would read fashion magazines and Interview magazine, and all of that really inspired me to create a persona. So by the time I moved to New York, in the early '80s, I'd learned how to create a persona, and I knew what my persona would be.

33

That kid's got an arm like Uncle Fester at an exhibition of Pre-Colombian... um, Christ, I lost it. I was going for something thick. So what's with the beard, Grizzly Fouts?

34

Why is it parents think they help their kids by pretending things are better than they are?

35

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.

36

I didn't grow up a theatre kid, going to theatre camps. I played sports, and that was my main direction. But luckily, I never had to choose between sports and theatre.

37

What fuels me is that there are a lot of people coming to Broadway and to the show [Aladdin] for the first time. Lots of kids and lots of adults and it's usually the kids were it's a special moment for them.

38

I became a writer through drawing first and then a comic book obsession - Marvel Comics, in particular. I invented a world of superheroes starting in third grade with my classmate, Wai-Kwan Wong. In a classroom of forty kids, let's just say there was a lot of undirected time. But this was good because I was a dreamy boy.

39

I don't know what drives me to succeed. I know I want to always do the best I can. I never was like that as a kid.

40

I'd like to have a kid, and I'd like to be driving around. I know a kid is going to be a big part of my life. I can trust my kid. I know my kid would be in the backseat of my car, and when I say You wanna get some ice-cream? he's going to be happy. My brother has kids. I see that trick work, the ice cream trick.

41

[Oscar Wilde's Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that's why I guess it's semi-autobiographical.

42

I've never been part of anything so great as those three kids.

43

Moral values have been thrown out the window. Christianity is out the window. And that's wrong. Parents should be at home, teaching kids right from wrong, making sure they get a great education so they can be a success in life.

44

They don't really focus on that history here in America. I remember growing up as a kid, history class was very washed-over. They didn't really get into the gritty bits of slavery. It's a very, very small section in the history books. It's not something they really touch on directly with American curriculums.

45

I'd do anything to have more kids. But that's probably not gonna happen now.

46

They were never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind. They were afraid of us-the ones who lived.

47

I was crazy for music as a high school kid and a college kid.

48

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

49

I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and someone who went on to join The Cure. That was all in one class of 30 kids.

50

I save my dreams and hopes for my kids. When I'm making a wish under a bridge or tunnel, it's always for them.

51

We talk a lot on 'Biggest Loser' about how fitness is a natural antidepressant, how it burns off stress. What I like about running is that it gives me time alone. I'm always busy, with people at work, with my kids. I love getting out for a run by myself and just listening to my music.

52

I don't know where I would be without music. Even if I wasn't a musician, I think music is God. In a lot of ways, it's my saving grave. It's been my religion since I was a little kid.

53

I still feel like a kid sometimes myself so hard to believe that I'm a mom. Now I'm an adult! It only took 38 years!

54

While they are kids, my children must do as I say.

55

Well I’ve been doing it for about twenty years, I did films when I was a little kid, when I was about six or seven, I was in films and I had this really high voice, I did a series called Dinobabies, that was my first one. And then after that I did Madeline, yeah so it just kind of happened and then never went away. Then everyone said your voice is going to change and you’ll be out... No, no, still on helium.

56

By the time kids are 15, they're drunks and they're drug addicts and they're getting chicks pregnant. The parents wonder, "What did I do wrong?" What you did wrong was, you were never there. You had the kid as a status symbol, that's what went wrong. And you're paying the price for it.

57

America always seemed to me this foreign land that I imagined I could escape to if I needed to get away - and I think that came both from the fact that I was born there and from watching so many American movies when I was a kid. I was brought up on American films.

58

As you get older and as your situation changes, it becomes different. Yes, I have to provide for my family, so if there's a chance that I'm not going to be able to provide for my family, who is always number one, my kids are always number one, then yeah, maybe it's not the same. But like I said, everybody's boiling point is different and you get to that point differently and you're at peace with it.

59

Outside from with my older brother - and this would have stopped about age 12 - I haven't been in a physical fight in my life. We used to punch each other, but that was little kid punching. You're too scared to hit anybody really.

60

I remember kind of doing early acting and thinking, "God, they don't paint behind the sets." It's a bit of a shame, really - "Oh, what's on the other side of this wall? Oh, you can see the plywood." I was really disappointed. I just thought that these things were real, from watching things as a kid.

61

When I was growing up I never babysat. I was considered to 'punk rock' to be trusted with kids.

62

When I was growing up I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn't have parents. It's not a humanitarian thing, because I don't see it as a sacrifice. It's a gift. We're all lucky to have each other.

63

My political mission is as acute as ever. For me, in addition to kind of looking at the world and trying to engage in my society politically, having the kid around sort of makes me check in with myself. I think you're all busy trying to fix the world, but what about yourself?

64

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.

65

Before I was going to be an actress, I was going to be a veterinarian! I thought I was one as a child. I was the kid who was like, 'Daddy! I want a kitty! It needs a mommy!' And my dad was such a sucker. Every time I would beg, with tears flying down my face, about how this animal needs love, needs a home. He would cave.

66

How presumptuous of someone to think the world is interested in a half-dozen or eight or 10 of their kids.

67

I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.

68

It's wrong I think, morally and annoying in general, to try to get a kid to be a foodie, so I never even suggested, "Hey baby it's good, maybe you should try it." That never worked for me.

69

I hated old people as a young kid who thought he knew anything about punk rock. I just thought old people sucked and I thought their opinions sucked.

70

About a month ago some kids in my neighborhood were playing hide-and-go-seek and one of them ended up in an abandoned refrigerator. It's all anybody talked about for weeks. I said, 'Who cares? How many kids you know get to die a winner?

71

Look, I want what's good for everybody. I want to promote good state education for all. I want to raise standards for all kids, irrespective of race and class but why can't they all just do what I say when I know I'm right?

72

I know, I'm like a kid. Maybe I was a bit too spoilt growing up. Everything just came like I wanted it to.

73

I grew up on movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. You probably saw it more recently, but as a kid I grew up on them so I loved those kinds of movies.

74

They started something here, and the kids are keeping the ball rolling.

75

As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol.

76

We know that every father has a personal responsibility to do right by their kids - to encourage them to turn off the video games and pick up a book; to teach them the difference between right and wrong; to show them through our own example the value in treating one another as we wish to be treated. And most of all, to play an active and engaged role in their lives.

77

...as parents, we have to find the time and the energy to step in and help our children love reading. We can read to them, talk to them about what they're reading, and make time for this by turning off the television set ourselves. Libraries are a critical tool to help parents do this.

78

It's a generational project just to get America to live up fully to its ideals and to have the kind of society where everybody has a shot, and every kid is getting a good education, and people are getting living wages, and they have decent retirement.

79

[The White House staff] start bringing in their kids, who you think should be babies and now are in second grade or something, and you've watched them grow up. So I think what ends up happening is you end up maintaining those networks and those contacts, but the concentrated interactions and experience that you have here, I don't think, I don't expect you can duplicate anyplace else.

80

I don't want to exaggerate; having as many African American men as we've had in the criminal-justice system, and the amount of time it takes for the damage done by that to wash through our society and our communities, the disadvantages born out of kids being undiagnosed with mental-health problems early, or not getting the kind of exposure to reading and math when they're 4 or 5 or 6 years old, that carries a cost.

81

I think what grows the economy is when you get that tax credit that we put in place for your kids going to college. I think that grows the economy. I think what grows the economy is when we make sure small businesses are getting a tax credit for hiring veterans who fought for our country. That grows our economy.

82

When you've got little kids, and you're tucking them in. When you open a door and they're in their pajamas and they're, you know, wrestling with you and asking you, you know, to read to them and stuff, [The white House] starts feeling like home pretty quick. Not to mention having a mother-in-law upstairs, and the dog, and now two.

83

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.

84

I've always loved adventure stories that involve brilliant kids using their brains to beat systems that seem unbeatable.

85

When I was a little kid, I was the first kid in my neighborhood to have a pet alligator.

86

I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

87

If we invest in jobs for our kids and do our best to keep them in school, we will end up saving a whole lot of lives and whole lot of money.

88

Money, financial matters were to help people, to help them survive, not to have a bigger house or a bigger car and that sort of thing, because I hear that from so many kids, they often don't know why their father won't spend more time with them.

89

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

90

High school wasn't so bad though because, by then, I had worked out that there were far more nerdy kids and poor kids than there were rich, popular kids, so, at the very least, we had them outnumbered.

91

If it hadn't been for the rise of the working woman's wardrobe, I never would have found the time to sneak a kid in.

92

My parents used to park us kids at the public library in downtown Honolulu every Saturday. They'd leave us there at 8 A.M. and pick us up at 4 P.M. - so between those hours, you'd better find something to do! I sat upstairs in the picture room and went through opera, ballet, and theater books. I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes - they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn't have much of a social life.

93

I loved my kids. And I loved my house, and I loved a lot of things about my life in the 1950s. But there were a lot like me in that era, very overeducated housewives.

94

Women today have choices and demand choices, choices to have kids or not and the reproductive technology thereto. And it is a fact [that] most women continue to chose to have children.

95

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner - that's way harder than what I have to do.

96

I think I know how to raise a kid. You just play catch with 'em. You just talk about life, and you distract them by throwing the ball. They don't even notice that you're filling up their heads with your theories.

97

One barrier to being a great parent is the mistaken belief that we are raising kids.

98

In the philanthropy game, you're going for different outcomes: saving childhood lives, having kids grow up - because they don't have malnutrition or disease - that they achieve their full potential. We take for Warren [Buffett] things that, because he's very intelligent about the world but doesn't get to go out in Africa and see what we see, we've taken and say to him where we stand and it's basically a very positive report that his gift has made a phenomenal difference.

99

We're still missing about a dozen vaccines that will make a huge difference. For adults, we've got HIV and TB are still huge; for kids malaria is still killing a half million kids a year out of that 6 million. We probably need some vaccines, but we need a little more data to make sure we're getting the vaccines that will save the most lives.

100

We're creating this alliance, GAVI, that has helped buy the vaccines that were in the rich world but not getting to the poor kids, getting a very cheap price and figuring out the cold chain, getting the delivery right, and then funding research for new vaccines. A lot of them are coming along. We've got a meningitis vaccine out, got that through large parts of Africa. That has been a huge success.

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