William Bennett Quotes

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.

I've always kind of lived my life to be as much as possible a positive role model for children.

Kids are great imitators. Give them something great to imitate.

What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.

You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.

But an adult if he is to provide proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars.

The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil...

Refrain from doing ill; for one all powerful reason, lest our children should copy our misdeeds; we are all too prone to imitate whatever is base and depraved.

If what you preach and what you do are inconsistent, your children will spot hypocrisy faster than anybody and do the opposite.

Implanting spiritual ideas in children is very important. Many people live their entire lives according to the concepts that are implanted in them in childhood. When children learn they will get the most attention and love through doing constructive things, they will tend to stop doing destructive things. Most important of all, remember that children learn through example. No matter what you say it is what you do that will have an influence on them.

Children become like the things they love.

The question for the child is not Do I want to be good? but Whom do I want to be like?

We must become the people we want our children to be.

The future success of our Nation depends on our children's ability to understand the difference between right and wrong and to have the strength of character to make the right choices. To help them reach their full potential and live with integrity and pride, we must teach our children to be kind, responsible, honest, and self-disciplined. These important values are first learned in the family, but all of our citizens have an obligation to support parents in the character education of our children

All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by.

In the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.

Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?

Behind every successful child is an adult who believed in him.

Never lie under any circumstances.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

The deeds of the children are a testament to the upbringing they received from their parents.

Often the only thing a child can remember about an adult in later years, when he or she is grown, is whether or not that person was kind to him or her.

How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.