A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Children Deceive Grown Little Need Themselves Unlike Ups

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

It is only grown-ups who want children to be children; children themselves always want to be real people.

Jill Paton Walsh

Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.

Jonathan Kozol

Perhaps life is actually more confusing and unknowable to an adult than a child, but grown-ups have learned to deceive themselves and act as if they understand what's going on; and some are elected to high office on the basis of their ability to create this impression.

Michael Leunig

Babies choose to lackadaisically notice the quirkiest of details - unlike us grown ups, who choose instead to focus on what we believe is most essential to us. As a result, babies have a greater expanded consciousness than us grown-ups!

Karen Salmansohn

People like to make children into little grown-ups.

Mara Wilson

Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.

T. H. White

I saw my parents as model grown-ups, and their manner, their silence, informed my sense of what adulthood looked and felt like. Grown-ups behaved rationally and calmly. Grown-ups worked during the day and came home at night and sat down for drinks and passed the evening quietly.

Caroline Knapp

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Everyone things children are sweet as Necco Wafers, but I've lived long enough to know the truth: kids are rotten. The only difference between grown-ups and kids is that grown-ups go to jail for murder. Kids get away with it.

Jennifer L. Holm

With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

Elizabeth Bowen

Children know so little, they must learn quickly to imitate grown-ups whenever they feel unsure in a situation.

Francesca Marciano

My work in books, films and talks lies almost wholly with children, and I have very little time to give to grown-ups.

Enid Blyton

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.

Fred Rogers

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

Neil Gaiman

David Sedaris wrote in one of his books that people like to make children into little grown-ups, which to him is about as funny as a dog in sunglasses.

Mara Wilson

Oh, grown-ups cannot understand, And grown-ups never will, How short the way to fairyland Across the purple hill.