A Quote by Enrique Penalosa

In Bogotá, our goal was to make a city for all the children. The measure of a good city is one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can safely go anywhere. If a city is good for children, it will be good for everybody else. Over the last 80 years we have been making cities much more for cars' mobility than for children’s happiness.
If we’re going to talk about transport, I would say that the great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can go safely everywhere.
Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs lifesaving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children.
As Public Advocate for the City of New York, I will be working with the Administration for Children's Services and others to bring about necessary reforms - and ensure that our city meets its most solemn responsibility - protecting the welfare of our children.
What has been happening the last four years in City Hall is that they have been closing recreation centers, closing libraries. We have not looked after our children in City Hall.
Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.
I've been in New York for 14 years. I would never leave for good. The city is so much more alive than so many other places, and I think it is fodder for performers. You see so much; research is thrown at you everywhere you go. There was a rat on the subway train recently - you saw the video online - that's fantastic! That's something that is so specific to this city, the way you are pushed up against humanity, and the animal kingdom, whether you want to be or not. It's a stimulating city - physically, intellectually, culturally. It never ceases to thrill me.
Let's decide that we must live in a safe city where we educate our children and make sure everyone has an opportunity to prosper in this great city.
Much of the pressure contemporary parents feel with respect to dressing children in designer clothes, teaching young children academics, and giving them instruction in sports derives directly from our need to use our children to impress others with our economic surplus. We find "good" rather than real reasons for letting our children go along with the crowd.
Our inner cities are almost at an all-time low, run by the Democrats for sometimes more than a hundred years, chain unbroken. So they have no jobs. They have horrible education. They have no safety or security and I say to the African-American community, what the hell do you have to lose? I will fix it. I will fix it. I will make it good. I'll bring back our jobs. We'll have good education. We'll have great safety in the inner city.
From their teenage years on, children are considerably more capable of causing parents unhappiness than bringing them happiness. That is one reason parents who rely on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.
I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.
Like traditional upper class families, there are nannies and servants, and the children, you know, come in to say good-night before they go to bed. There's very little private time with the children in the early years. Actually, there's much more private time with the children in the 20s.
We know that education is everything to our children's future. We know that they will no longer just compete for good jobs with children from Indiana, but children from India and China and all over the world.
I think any good literature, whether it's for children or for adults, will appeal to everybody. As far as children's literature goes, adults should be able to read it and enjoy it as much as a child would.
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
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