Quotes About Youth

There is no virtue in being uncritical nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.

For the young, food is from Venus; farming is from Mars

These ecstatic moments of delight or fear, or both, "radioactive jewels buried within us, emitting energy across the years of our lives," as Chawla eloquently puts it, are most often experienced in nature during formative years.

Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today's kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren't outside.

thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies.

Another Swarthmore parent added, "Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors.

As an adult, giving presentations at local high schools, I noticed that I can get teenagers to focus and calm down by showing images of the natural world. Being close to nature saved my life.

To me, still being considered a kid, it can't be too much to ask. We should have the same rights as adults did when they were young.

As far as physical fitness goes, today's kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren't outside.

For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality.

Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.

Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.

My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct. (On campus radicals)

You see these bums, you know, blowing up campuses ... storming around about this issue. (On student protesters against Vietnam War)

The young guns on your team will always want to write things themselves because it appeases their ego, whereas your more experienced people are more likely to accept that someone else has given thought to the problem domain and has something to offer in terms of a solution.

He may have been young, but he was from Jefferson. He had already learned that, many times, sexual predators were also quite clumsy,

If you passed me walking home from school, you probably wouldn't even notice me. That's because I'm just a kid like you. I go to school like you. I get bullied like you. Unlike you, I live in Idaho. Don't ask me what state Idaho is in––news flash––Idaho IS a state. ~Michael Vey

suppose we as children are selfish by nature, judging our parents in the context not of their worlds and challenges but of our worlds and how they meet our needs. Even as we mature we rarely think of them as having been young like us.

If the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. —Madeleine L'Engle

The only promise of childhood is that it will end.

A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, Slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized.

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

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic.