James Dobson Quotes

Let the child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.

Children must be rendered reasonable, but not reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them to obey, and unreasonable for them to dispute.

Resistance - that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!

A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children, without first doing his duty by them, excites nothing but contempt.

It's very important that we instill some respect for the parents. In America especially, the kids are unruly, screaming at Mommy and Daddy, running the show.

You have to discipline your children, or they won't respect you, law enforcement or God or anyone else.

We all learn submission because we all have 'bosses', whether we're presidents of companies or not. The easiest place to learn it is in family.

My mother would thump me sharply on the head with a thimble or a spoon if I became too noisy with the whistle when I was playing I was a steamboat captain. She had no sense of the dignity of command.

While they are kids, my children must do as I say.

Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Parents should have perfect control over their own spirits, and with mildness and yet firmness bend the will of the child until it shall expect nothing else but to yield to their wishes.

The truth is, if we don't learn to submit to authority, we won't ever learn to submit to God.

We simply keep telling our kids that you have to listen to us, you have to do what we say, but do we take the effort of explaining it to them that why they need to listen to us?

Obedience to authority saves many skins

Arbitrary rules teach kids discipline: If every rule made sense, they wouldn't be learning respect for authority, they'd be learning logic.

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

Never talk back to a teacher. Teachers are like God. Actually, teachers are God's boss.

Rule, after you have first learned to submit to rule.

Learn obedience first. Among these Western nations, with such a high spirit of independence, the spirit of obedience is equally strong. We are all of us self-important, which never produces any work. Great enterprise, boundless courage, tremendous energy, and, above all, perfect obedience; these are the only traits that lead to individual and national regeneration. These traits are altogether lacking in us.

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

Give obedience where 'tis truly owed.

Parents, do you wish to see your children happy? Take care, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to, -to do as they are bid.... Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control.

Learn to obey before you command.

Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! Thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word.