Harry Belafonte Quotes

Nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children.

UNICEF has repeatedly called on governments to ensure basic services for children and this includes providing food where the need exists.

How great it would be for us all to have the pride of knowing that we, as a country, are one of the best countries to be a child.

Where America has got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but it's got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people. In other words, if people have health care as a right, as do the people of every other major country, then there's less worry about growth. If people have educational opportunity and their kids can go to college and they have child care, then there's less worry about growth for the sake of growth.

We can say with some assurance that, although children may be the victims of fate, they will not be the victims of our neglect.

We need to see each child as a gift to be welcomed, cherished, and protected.

The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state.

Each and every child in this country is valuable because they are our future as a society. We cannot afford to lose a single child to ill-health, under-education, abuse, addiction, jail, or gun violence. America's highest goal should be for every child to grow up to be a successful young adult -- healthy, educated, free, secure, and a good citizen.

In this great country of ours, it is inexcusable that so many children grow up in poverty and despair. The well-being of our children must be the national priority and the responsibility of every individual.

I have always admired organizations that help children grow and learn, and organizations that protect and shelter children when no one else does. And I wanted to draw attention to these organizations and recognize the contributions they were making to the country and to our children in particular.

The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe.

Children are entitled to life. We conceive them and so we owe them our care and our protection. This may not be a dictate of law anymore, but it is a dictate of love.

I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader's ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow.

Amidst protestations of 'Who can be against the children?' too few people are FOR children when it really matters.

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.

A child is a child in any country, whatever the politics. Let's get down to basics. That's what a child forces you to do. Nothing else much matters, there is no complicated diplomacy, when a child is starving. It's simple. And we'd better do something about it. For our sakes, too. That is, if we want to continue to call ourselves human.

Conceit of the anti-gay law in Russia is to protect children, then the people who have the most to fear are LGBT parents. And sure enough, in conjunction with the homosexual propaganda law, they instituted a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples, or single people from countries where same-sex marriage is legal. That has very scary potential for any LGBT person with adopted kids, because Russian courts practice this particular legal concept called "annulment of adoption." So an adopted child is never exactly the same as a biological child, even if he or she was adopted ten years ago.

What I want for children in our country and around the world is safe, stable and loving homes.

The community must assume responsibility for each child within its confines. Not one must be neglected whatever his condition. The community must see that every child gets the advantages and opportunities which are due him as a citizen and as a human being.

I believe we need affordable child care. I believe we need flexibility. I believe we need institutional reform and public policy reform.

All children should be loved, protected, nurtured --emotionally and intellectually-- respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated.

There is nothing more precious to a parent than a child, and nothing more important to our future than the safety of all our children.

Everyone keeps talking about fixing and returning America - making America great. But yet, nobody ever seems to focus on the fact that you're not going to make any country great if you don't address its children.