In case it is not obvious, whilst many of these quotations are consistent with Taking Children Seriously, many of them are not. Sometimes it is just interesting that that person said it, or it is interesting for some other reason.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
– Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dahlberg, first Baron Acton), Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1887, in Louise Creighton, 1904, ‘Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, vol. 1, ch. 13
“[M]any adults look back on their school years as a sort of nightmare.”
– Alfred Adler, 1930, The Education of Children, Introduction, p. 11
“This constant correcting and nagging seems to be a widely spread malpractice in the education of children. The dire result is that such children carry with them for years a feeling of degradation and inferiority.”
– Alfred Adler, 1930, 2015, The Education of Children, Chapter 7, p. 121
“Corporal punishment brutalizes the child. … Corporal punishment implies that a rational human being is on the level of an animal. Its underlying thought is: you can be controlled only through your animal instincts; you can be moved only by an appeal to your bodily feelings. It is a practical denial of that higher nature which exists in every human being, and this is a degrading view of human character. A child which is accustomed to be treated like an animal is apt to behave like an animal.”
– Felix Adler, 1922, The Punishment of the Child, p. 17
“We tend to control children with coercion and we don’t think about how it would feel to be treated that way or what bad effects it might have. But by the time they are let loose from their homes at 18 years of age, many children have no idea how to deal with not being controlled or how to relate to others without coercion.”
– Roshan Ali, 2024, How to raise a boy: I believe in taking my child seriously. You should too, in The India Express | archive
“The child may imitate a powerful Mother or Father and equate being of worth with being powerful.
Mother cannot win a power contest with her child, for if she defeats him she has taught him that power is important. Also, the fact that Mother enters into a struggle for power tells the child that power is important. If she loses in the power struggle her child defeats her and this becomes a payoff that reinforces him to value power.”
– G. Hugh Allred, 1968, Mission For Mother, p. 122
Return to alphabetical index of Quotations pages
Taking Children Seriously, ‘Quotations A’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/quotations-a