Walt Whitman Quotes

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.

One thing I'm interested in is what shapes us: the people? The place where we live? It's both of those and more. That's what I keep coming back to.

A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.

If someone arrives, fully functional yet a tabula rasa, how does their environment influence, educate, even mold them? And if that is a nurture question, then where does that character's nature fit in? How does that manifest?

As you get older, you realise that your identity becomes more important - the environment in which you have grown is actually part of who you are just as much as your family or your school.

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.

I think anybody, not just children, is a product of a great environment. If you put them in a better environment from a sad situation, nine times out of 10, they'll go in the right direction.

A child's character develops in accordance with the obstacles he has encountered... or the freedom favoring his development that he has enjoyed.

Is not education the art of drawing out full manhood of the children under training?

Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person.

The child’s progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him.

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.

There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.

People have defining moments, i suppose, especially when they're children.

Nature only goes so far. Nurture, what you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grow up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways. And to find that, to hear that thing again all those years later and to realize that was the source, it's like, "What else has me twisted?" So now I'm going back to robots and cartoons; I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

All life events are formative. All contribute to what we become, year by year, as we go on growing. As my friend the poet Kenneth Koch once said, You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.

We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid 'blossom' into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into.

Your children's genes reflect only their potential, not their destiny. It is up to you to provide the environment that allows them to develop to their highest potential.

The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.

A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself.

The child becomes a person through work.