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.
“Are you absolutely certain that food belongs on a plate and not the floor?”
“There is no ‘let’ or ‘get’ in a non-coercive collaborative relationship.”
“Kids are not acting out, they are reaching out.”
“If you grew up in a family who habitually have contact with each other through conflict, you might have become inured to raised voices or even shouting; indeed, they may even have associations of love for you. If, on the other hand, you come from a family who shied away from any confrontation, you may be deeply uncomfortable with anger. If you felt manipulated when you were growing up, you may distrust or feel uneasy with warmth and love because you expect it to be accompanied by a sting.”
– Philippa Perry, 2019, The book you wish your parents had read (and your children will be glad that you did), p. 46
“When other people, especially our children, are unhappy, denying their difficult feelings is sometimes our default option. It can feel like the right thing to do. … But when feelings are disallowed they do not disappear. They merely go into hiding, where they fester and cause trouble later on in life. Think about this: when do you need to shout the loudest? It is when you are not heard. Feelings need to be heard.”
– Philippa Perry, 2019, The book you wish your parents had read (and your children will be glad that you did), pp. 44-45
“Distraction is a tactic favoured by parents to divert children from having whatever experience they may be having. It’s commonly used, but it’s rarely appropriate. That’s because distraction is a trick and, in the long term, being manipulated will not help your child develop a capacity for happiness. […] What message does distraction convey? Imagine you fall over and badly graze your knee. How would you feel if your partner, instead of being concerned or interested in the pain or the blood or the embarrassment, pointed out a squirrel or promised that you could play your favourite video game?”
– Philippa Perry, 2019, The book you wish your parents had read (and your children will be glad that you did), p. 62
“When the arguments for and against courses of action are assessed, it is important to remember that the choice has to be made from the available alternatives. All of them might be criticized for their imperfections, as might the status quo. Unless one of the options is perfect, the imperfections of the others are insufficient grounds for rejection. The fallacy of unobtainable perfection is committed when lack of perfection is urged as a basis for rejection, even though none of the alternatives is perfect either.”
– Madsen Pirie, 2006, How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
– William Pitt The Younger, 1783, in a speech in the House of Commons, London, England, 18th November 1783, quoted in Hansard, col. 1209
“The predominant focus is often on how to fix our kids, how to make them behave, how to get them to sleep, how to get them into a good college and guarantee success. In short, how to make them into what we want them to be. […] What happened to joy? Happiness? Exuberance? We don’t need to be so hard on them or ourselves. […] [W]e can motivate more with compassion than criticism. Really. We can shift the focus from constant doing to simply being.”
– Susan M. Pollack, 2019, Self-Compassion for Parents, Introduction, p. 1
“[T]he human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task—more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we learn how little we know—as when, in climbing a mountain; every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.
Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never know—that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1945, 1966, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath, 1961 Addendum, 11: Social and political problems, pp. 382-383
“As it happens with our children, so it does with our theories: they tend to become largely independent of their parents. And as it may happen with our children, so with our theories: we may gain from them a greater amount of knowledge than we originally imparted to them.”
– Karl Popper, 1972, 1979, Objective Knowledge, Revised edition, Chapter 3: Epistemology without a knowing subject, p. 148
“And then we must also build schools to get the children out of the way, which is the only purpose of schools.”
– Karl Popper, 1994, 1999, All Life is Problem Solving, Part 1, Chapter 4: The epistemological position of evolutionary epistemology (1986)
“[U]nlike my younger contemporaries, I think that our world and the human beings in it are both wonderful. Of course, I know there are also a lot of bad things in our world, and yet it is still the best there has ever been in history. When I say this, those listening usually treat me as if I were senile. That may well be true, but in the coming discussion I am prepared to defend myself against anyone and argue that the general moaning about the evil world in which we live—which may be called the dominant religion of our times—is in conflict with all the facts. My main thesis is that not only are we doing better economically, we are also morally better.”
– Karl Popper, 1994, 1999, All Life is Problem Solving, Part 2, Chapter 9: All life is problem solving (1991)
“In my long life I have never been bored—except at lectures, and especially those school lessons that produced a very painful numbing of the brain. I remember that the effect was particularly deadly in history and geography.”
– Karl Popper, 1994, 1999, All Life is Problem Solving, Part 2, Chapter 10: Against the cynical interpretation of history (1991)
“The prevailing ideology, which sees us living in a morally evil world, is a blatant lie. As it spreads, it discourages many young people and makes them despondent—at an age when they may not be able to live at all without some hope to support them.”
– Karl Popper, 1994, 1999, All Life is Problem Solving, Part 2, Chapter 10: Against the cynical interpretation of history (1991)
“Mankind may be wiped out tomorrow. But there are also great hopes; there are countless possibilities for a future that will be far better than the present.”
– Karl Popper, 1994, 1999, All Life is Problem Solving, Part 2, Chapter 10: Against the cynical interpretation of history (1991)
“The theory that truth is manifest—that it is there for everyone to see, if only he wants to see it—this theory is the basis of almost every kind of fanaticism. For only the most depraved wickedness can refuse to see the manifest truth; for only those who have reason to fear truth conspire to suppress it.
Yet the theory that truth is manifest not only breeds fanatics—men possessed by the conviction that all those who do not see the manifest truth must be possessed by the devil—but it may also lead, though perhaps less directly than does a pessimistic epistemology, to authoritarianism. This is so, simply, because truth is not manifest, as a rule. The allegedly manifest truth is therefore in constant need, not only of interpretation and affirmation, but also of re-interpretation and re-affirmation. An authority is required to pronounce upon, and lay down, almost from day to day, what is to be the manifest truth, and it may learn to do so arbitrarily and cynically. And many disappointed epistemologists will turn away from their own former optimism and erect a resplendent authoritarian theory on the basis of a pessimistic epistemology.”
– Karl Popper, 1962, Conjectures and Refutations, Introduction, VI, pp. 8-9
“[…] the simple truth is that truth is often hard to come by, and […] once found it may easily be lost again.”
– Karl Popper, 1963, Conjectures and Refutations, Introduction, p. 8
“‘Always regard every man as an end in himself, and never use him merely as a means to your ends.’ The spirit of Kant’s ethics may well be summed up in these words: dare to be free; and respect the freedom of others.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 9: Emanuel Kant: The philosopher of the Enlightenment, p. 306
“If I thought of a future, I dreamt of one day founding a school in which young people could learn without boredom, and would be stimulated to pose problems and discuss them; a school in which no unwanted answers to unasked questions would have to be listened to; in which one did not study for the sake of passing examinations.”
– Karl Popper, 1992 [1974], Unended Quest, p. 40
“[F]reedom is no mere ideology but a way of life which makes life better and more worth living.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 8: On culture clash, pp. 273-282
“To avoid misunderstandings I wish to make it quite clear that I use the terms ‘liberal’, ‘liberalism’, etc., always in a sense in which they are still generally used in England (though perhaps not in America): by a liberal I do not mean a sympathizer with any one political party but simply a man who values individual freedom and who is alive to the dangers inherent in all forms of power and authority.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 11: Public opinion and liberal principles, note 1, p. 366
“[M]y answer to the traditional question of epistemology, ‘How do you know that? What is the source or the basis of your assertion? Upon what observations is it founded?’ is: ‘Of course I am not saying that I know anything: my assertion was only meant as a conjecture, a hypothesis. Nor should we worry about the source, or the sources, from which my conjecture may have sprung: there are many possible sources, and I am by no means aware of them all. In any case, origin and pedigree have very little to do with truth. But if you are interested in the problem that I tried to solve by my tentative conjecture, then you can help me. Try to criticise it as severely and as objectively as you can! And if you can devise an experiment which you think might refute my assertion, then I am prepared to do everything in my power to help you to refute it.’”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 2: On knowledge and ignorance, XI, pp. 123-124
“Thus life proceeds, like scientific discovery, from old problems to the discovery of new and undreamt-of problems.”
– Karl Popper, 1972, Objective Knowledge, p. 146
“Only intellectual rogues are immodest.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 8: On culture clash, pp. 273-277
“Tradition is—apart from inborn knowledge—by far the most important source of our knowledge.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 3: On the so-called sources of knowledge, p. 49
“Behind the ideas of orthodoxy and of heresy the pettiest of vices lie hidden; those vices to which the intellectuals are particularly prone: arrogance, smugness verging on dogmatism, intellectual vanity.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 14: Toleration and intellectual responsibility, I, p. 427
“The inductivist or Lamarkian approach operates with the idea of instruction from without, or from the environment. But the critical or Darwinian approach only allows instruction from within—from within the structure itself.
In fact, I contend that there is no such thing as instruction from without the structure, or the passive reception of a flow of information that impresses itself on our sense organs. All observations are theory-impregnated. There is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation.
[…]
We do not discover new facts or new effects by copying them, or by inferring them inductively from observation, or by any other method of instruction by the environment. We use, rather, the method of trial and the elimination of error. As Ernst Gombrich says, ‘making comes before matching’: the active production of a new trial structure comes before its exposure to eliminating tests.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1994, The Myth of the Framework, Chapter 1: The Rationality Of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 7-9
“We are fallible, and prone to error; but we can learn from our mistakes.”
– Karl Popper, 1972, Objective Knowledge, p. 265
“[…] it is of the utmost importance to give up cocksureness, and become open to criticism.”
– Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath, p. 387
“If two parties disagree, this may mean that one is wrong, or the other, or both: this is the view of the criticist. It does not mean, as the relativist will have it, that both may be equally right. […] As two wrongs don’t make a right, two wrong parties to a dispute do not make two right parties.”
– Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume 2, p. 387
“[…] we are all equal in our infinite ignorance.”
– Karl R. Popper, 1984, In Search of a Better World, Chapter 2: On knowledge and ignorance, XI, p. 40
“‘[M]ost generally there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.’”
– Eleanor H. Porter, 1913, Pollyanna, Chapter VII: Pollyanna and punishments
“‘At nine o’clock every morning you will read aloud one half-hour to me. Before that you will use the time to put this room in order. Wednesday and Saturday forenoons, after half-past nine, you will spend with Nancy in the kitchen, learning to cook. Other mornings you will sew with me. That will leave the afternoons for your music. I shall, of course, procure a teacher at once for you,’ [Aunt Polly] finished decisively, as she arose from her chair.
Pollyanna cried out in dismay.
‘Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven’t left me any time at all just to—to live.’”
– Eleanor H. Porter, 1913, Pollyanna, Chapter VI: A question of duty
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