John Taylor Gatto Quotes

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been found that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery..

They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do?

If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them to do as Chairman Mao said. It was not possible to tell them anything else.

In the matter of the maintenance and rearing of children the Anarchists would neither institute the communistic nursery which the State Socialists favor nor keep the communistic school system which now prevails. The nurse and the teacher, like the doctor and the preacher, must be selected voluntarily, and their services must be paid for by those who patronize them. Parental rights must not be taken away, and parental responsibilities must not be foisted upon others.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

The child of three or four is saturated with adult rules. His universe is dominated by the idea that things are as they ought to be, that everyone's actions conform to laws that are both physical and moral - in a word, that there is a Universal Order.

THE most widespread form of child abuse in the United States is parents sending children to the government to be educated.

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.

Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Go back to bed America... you are free to do as we tell you... you are free to do as we tell you.

The People adore authority.

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.

The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.

The Obedience of Children to their Parents is the Basis of all Government, and set forth as the measure of that Obedience which weowe to those whom Providence hath placed over us.

In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.

By learning to yield to the loving authority of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life — his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers.

The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children.

There's nothing more political than sex. The church has had its hand on our crotch for more than 2,000 years, and the government is moving in that direction.

Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.

My child, it will be better for you if you accept my decisions without complaint. Do not ask me to defend my actions or to explain why one person is favored and another seems slighted. The answers to these questions go far beyond your comprehension.

People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness.