Early Childhood Development Quotes

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.

Right now some future general is lying in his crib trying to get his big toe in his mouth. Such was probably the case of our guest of honor tonight.

President Obama is highly concerned with education. He's a champion on early-childhood development strategies. So I like the work he's doing, and I support it, and I realise that he's one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.

The roots of a child's ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child's having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return. If a child finds this during the first years of life, he or she can grow up to be a competent, healthy person.

One of the best investments we can make is to give our kids the ingredients they need to develop in the first five years of life.

When my daughter Sabrina was 2 years old, the pediatrician told me it was time she quit using a pacifier because that could make her teeth crooked and even cause infections in her ears.

We need to provide higher quality and innovative early childhood development programs all throughout Latin America.

Both the IDB and Fundacion ALAS believe that the future of prosperity and equality that we hope for has to start today with higher investment and higher quality in Early Childhood Development programs throughout the region.

Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.

My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.

If we expose kids to books and art, nothing but good can come from it.

You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.

I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children's future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.

My father was from the South and turned me into a news junkie at a very early age. I would sit and watch TV with him.

I enjoy what I do every minute of the day, even when the going gets tough. When I first began writing, I used to work at a desk in the bedroom, of a small development house. My three sons all under the age of 3 would come running in and out of the room every minute.

It's better to build a peaceful child than re-build a violent adult.

Success starts in the household and with education.

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

My mum didn't really let me watch TV until I was about 5 years old.

I always tell my dad he was training me to be a pro before he even knew it.

Begin early to teach, for children begin early to sin.

I was playing the piano when I was three, writing songs when I was ten. I had a lot of experience before I got to college. I knew I wanted to be a singer, so anyone who met me, I didn't let too much time pass before I showed my talent.

I started my own Pies Descalzos/Barefoot Foundation when I was 18. We provide education to vulnerable children in Colombia and other developing countries. I am an avid believer that education - and especially early childhood development - is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.