John Steinbeck Quotes

Bringing up children is not a real occupation, because children come up just the same, brought or not.

One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

The first 3 years of a person’s life determines the next 80 years.

I have five kids, and people can say 'nature versus nurture,' but it is nature! Nurture has so little to do with it. I have five kids, and there are five totally different people in my house.

Parents who indulge themselves 'in moderation' may have children who indulge themselves to excess.

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.

So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

Parenthood is an amazing opportunity to be able to ruin someone from scratch.

He's not responsible for what he's doing, cause his mother made him what he is.

Good heredity and environment are necessary. You cannot compare the child of a savage with the child of a civilized person.

And Grandmother Hall really imagines that she can raise Eleanor and her two brothers differently than these children were raised. And if she is very strict and everything is very regimented and ordered and disciplined, that they will become the perfect children who her own children did not become.

Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.

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

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we'd had.

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

No child is bad from the beginning, they only imitate their atmosphere.

Geniuses are just people who had good mothers.

I am only as good as my children are.

All good qualities in a child are the result of environment, while all the bad ones are the result of poor heredity on the side of the other parent

The prospect of being a father made me ask myself a question. How do you know what kind of adult your child will turn out to be? And how much can you control that?

Things parents say to children are oftentimes not heard, but in some cases you pick up on things that your parent would like to see you have done.