Samuel Butler

For every why he had a wherefore.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

The money men make lives after them.

We’re all mad here.

The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We’d go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I’ve always been a big animal person.

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That’s what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep… Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.

You can’t cheat kids. If you cheat them when they’re children they’ll make you pay when they’re sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that’s finally when they’re old enough to stand up to you and say, ‘What a hypocrite you’ve been all this time. You’ve never given me what I really wanted, which is you’.

I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

The more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

Once you’re grown up you can’t come back.