Top 233 Quotes & Sayings by Fred Rogers - Page 4

I don't want to eat anything that has a mother

I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.

What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness. A person with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pediatrician is more than a medical doctor. You're MUCH more than your job description or your age or your income or your output.

Fame is a four-letter word; and like tape or zoom or face or pain or life or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.

To say that you are being carried is a declaration of enormous faith and hope.

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.

I don't think anyone can grow unless he's loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.

Love is at the root of all healthy discipline. The desire to be loved is a powerful motivation for children to behave in ways thatgive their parents pleasure rather than displeasure. it may even be our own long-ago fear of losing our parents' love that now sometimes makes us uneasy about setting and maintaining limits. We're afraid we'll lose the love of our children when we don't let them have their way.

If your trusted and people will allow you to share their inner gardern...what better gift?

Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring, it is an active noun like struggle.

It is one of the paradoxes of parenting, and often a painful paradox, that even as our children need us for love and trust, they also need us for honest differing. It's not only over limits and rules...[but also] about what we represent in the way of culture, traditions, and values. We owe it to our children to let them know what we believe, and if they differ with us, we owe it to them to be honest adversaries, for it is through this honest confrontation that children can grow into adults who have a firm sense of their place in the sequence of the generations.

I got into television because I hated it so. And I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.

Often out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak.

My friendship with Mitzi was like the friendship that many children have with their pets. My mother and father thought it was "good for me" to have a dog for a companion. Well it was good for me, but it was only many years after she died that I began to understand how good it was, and why.

More and more I've come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. Whether the other be an adult or a child, our engagement in listening to who that person is can often be our greatest gift. Whether that person is speaking or playing or dancing, building or singing or painting, if we care, we can listen.

Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you're thinking or feeling unless you share it.

One of the most important things a person can learn to do is to make something out of whatever he or she happens to have at the moment.

The very best reason parents are so special . . . is because we are the holders of a priceless gift, a gift we received from countless generations we never knew, a gift that only we now possess and only we can give to our children. That unique gift, of course, is the gift of ourselves. Whatever we can do to give that gift, and to help others receive it, is worth the challenge of all our human endeavor.

I think it's very important - no matter what you may do professionally - to keep alive some of the healthy interests of your youth. Children's play is not just kids' stuff. Children's play is rather the stuff of most future inventions.

What do you think it is that drives people to want far more than they could ever use or need? I frankly think it's insecurity. How do we let the world know that the trappings of this life are not the things that are ultimately important for being accepted?

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

Parents find many different ways to work their way through the assertiveness of their two-year-olds, but seeing that assertiveness as positive energy being directed toward growth as a competent individual may open up some new possibilities.

It's the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.

[I]f we can bring our children understanding, comfort, and hopefulness when they need this kind of support, then they are more likely to grow into adults who can find these resources within themselves later on. (from the introduction)

The child is in me still and sometimes not so still.

I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.

If you like to make things out of wood, or sew, or dance, or style people's hair, or dream up stories and act them out, or play the trumpet, or jump rope, or whatever you really love to do, and you love that in front of your children, that's going to be a far more important gift than anything you could ever give them wrapped up in a box with ribbons.

One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things--combinations that may yield new formsof expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It's exactly what children's play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children's play is so important a part of childhood--and beyond.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

It is our continuing love for our children that makes us want them to become all they can be, and their continuing love for us that helps them accept healthy discipline--from us and eventually from themselves.

The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.

It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.

I don't believe that children can develop in a healthy way unless they feel that they have value apart from anything they own or any skill that they learn. They need to feel they enhance the life of someone else, that they are needed. Who, better than parents, can let them know that?

In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of — moments when we human beings can say, “I love you” ... “I'm proud of you” ... “I forgive you” ... “I'm grateful for you” ... “Whether you win anything or not, you still have great value.” That's what eternity is made of: invisible, imperishable good stuff.

Very early in our children's lives we will be forced to realize that the "perfect" untroubled life we'd like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don't want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.

Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains ofgrowth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents.

Love isn't a perfect state of caring.

I have really never considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit.

For children, play is exceedingly seriously & important

Anything mentionable is manageable.

When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won't be just our child's feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well-from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.

Vermont is a small state which makes an enormous difference.

Our children are extensions of ourselves in ways our parents are not, nor our brothers and sisters, nor our spouses.

For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a "solution" to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another.

Feelings about money -- saving and spending, holding back and letting go -- start very early in our lives. Stingy people have often been forced to give when they were very, very young, when they weren't ready. And generous people have often been really appreciated when they were very young.

Development comes from within. Nature does not hurry but advances slowly.

There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility--for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents' decision to live apart.

I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families: It's not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.

Parenting forces us to get to know ourselves better than we ever might have imagined we could--and in many new ways. . . . We'll discover talents we never dreamed we had and fervently wish for others at moments we feel we desperately need them. As time goes on, we'll probably discover that we have more to give and can give more than we ever imagined. But we'll also find that there are limits to our giving, and that may be hard for us to accept.

Most of us, I believe, admire strength... Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words like aggression or even violence.

The real drama of life is never centerstage. It's always in the wings.