Adult Expectations Quotes

I've been sitting at the grown-ups' table my whole life.

You cannot hold a child accountable to the same standards that you hold an adult accountable to.

There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.

The educator wants the child to be finished at once and perfect. He forces upon the child an unnatural degree of self-mastery, a devotion to duty, a sense of honour - habits that adults get out of with astonishing rapidity.

Feminism isn't about hating men. It's about challenging the absurd gender distinctions that boys and girls learn from childhood and carry into their adult lives.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.

When you were a child you had dreams of becoming somebody as an adult. Have you lived up to your dreams?

I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.

I worry whether it's not really the best way to live one's life - trying to fulfill the dreams you had as a child. Maybe it's quite a backwards approach.

When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.

I don't think I'm being forced to grow up too fast; I would rather people treat me like an adult.

Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.

Parents who press their children to succeed do so in hopes of preparing them for an adulthood of high achievement.

Emotionally, my ambition is not yet sated. Emotionally, I still feel like a kid at the adult's table, yearning for recognition. I'm not sure where this all comes from but it is how I feel.

Was he smart enough? Introspective enough? Was it just enough to love him, or should I attach myself to someone who seemed farther ahead of me, someone smarter and more ambitious than me, who'd be sure to carry me along into the version of adulthood I thought I should be striving for?

He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.

Whenever I hear someone describe something as a 'kids movie' or a 'family movie,' it immediately has a negative connotation in my mind because I think, 'Well, as an adult, I wouldn't go see it by myself, because it's purely for children and it holds nothing for me and it's simplistic and it's kind of easy.'

...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making the children to everything that constitutes the true surprise of life.

When we accept any discipline for ourselves, we try to avoid everything except that which is necessary for our purpose; it is this purposefulness, which belongs to the adult mind, that we force upon school children. We say, "Never keep your mind aler.

I was determined to have a spotless house when I grew up.

I would say that awards are for children. Because children need a tangible representation of their achievement. And as adults, you have to settle for the respect and admiration of your peers.

When you're doing something you're not used to, you kind of realize that you're still a kid: even though the whole world around you sees you as an adult and you're expected to act like an adult, you still haven't actually grown up.

Basically, the last 30 minutes of 'Goodfellas,' that was my neighborhood... literally. There were people on my street who did nothing but just wash their car all day and wait for a package, and that's what I thought being an adult was.