Change For Kids Quotes & Sayings

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story. — Donald Miller

I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in American society. I continue in that spirit. By the time we reach adulthood, we are closed and set in our attitudes. The chances of a poet reaching us are very slim. But I can open a child's imagination, develop his appetite for poetry, and more importantly, show him that poetry is a natural part of everyday life. We all need someone to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. That's the poet's job. — Arnold Adoff

Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin. — Whitney M. Young

When school districts are measured by how much confidence, worth and hope their graduates have acquired while in school, when the role of education becomes more about nurturing students and a love for learning than standardized test scores, when the term "honor" student stands more for a child's character than than their grades, then schools will again take their role as a place for effective change in America. Until then education will continue to be run by paper chasing, pride driven central office administrators and educational bureaucrats trying to prove their worth to politicians who don't even know our kids. Let our teachers care, let our children thrive. Let our teachers teach. — Tom Krause

You know for years, I've heard financial experts stress the importance of teaching your kids about money, but it wasn't until I saw my own son's perspective change that I became a true believer. — LZ Granderson

My post-child period resulted in one instant change: I write shorter books for kids. — Berkeley Breathed

When I was training for the Chicago Marathon, I would eat a cup of cereal after an 18-mile long run, and then I'd have to get out the door with nothing but a granola bar in my hand. I can't change my busy schedule with my kids, but I can work harder to improve in this area. I think it's a part of training that most of us find difficult. — Summer Sanders

It must stink to know everyone's future but your own. (Danger)
You've no idea. It's actually cruel in my opinion. But then maybe it doesn't matter after all since futures can and do change. Something as simple as you're supposed to turn right down a street one day ... and in your bones you know it, and yet for reasons no one understands, you decide to debunk fate and go left. Now instead of meeting the spouse of your dreams and having a house full of kids, you get flattened by an ice-cream truck and spend the next five years in physical therapy. And all because you exercised free will and turned the opposite way on a whim. (Alexion) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The difference between a good educator and a great educator is that the former figures out how to work within the constraints of traditional policies and accepted assumptions, whereas the latter figures out how to change whatever gets in the way of doing right by kids. 'But we've always ... ', 'But the parents will never ... ', 'But we can't be the only school in the area to ... ' - all such protestations are unpersuasive to great educators. If research and common sense argue for doing things differently, then the question isn't whether to change course but how to make it happen. — Alfie Kohn

Why not start figuring out ways to change the way we treat each other? The way we talk to each other, the way we talk about each other. To love each other. You know it starts off with self-love. We have to love ourselves before we can love anybody else.

And the media from day one, from when you were little ass kids, they teach you not to love yourself. They take something out of you and they try to sell it back to you...Something that you've been fighting for your entire life that's taken from you as a child. That you always had inside of you. That's self-love.

That's why I love you so much, cause as everybody knows, I love me so much. — Kanye West

I'm more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives. — Seymour Simon

I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettlingly to me. — Stephen Chbosky

As a kid, I would do all of the plays at my school, and I was notorious for being in five numbers in one show. I'd go onstage, run backstage for a wardrobe change, and then go back out onstage. I'm always trying to do more than I should but when I got my lucky break (or whatever it's called), I was prepared because I studied and worked really hard for it. — Chrissie Fit

Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they're not prepared to live life on their own? — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Okay, so there's just you. Your goals, your career, your crew, your prospects, and your God. All together, chillin'. Before the house, the apartment, the kids, the boyfriend, the wedding, the night you crossed over with your frat brothers, there's that pivotal point of asking your heart, Who am I, really? What do I really like? Do I want to change for someone else? Is my soul mate right now, somewhere, finishing this sentence and completing my thoughts? — Kirk Franklin

When people say that kids change your life, it's no small feat what they do. I've stressed about competition my whole life, but the minute I held my son Blaise in my arms for the first time, those stresses diminished. — Amanda Beard

Julie: And now you've added me to your messaging list. How times change. By the way I'm having a little get-together for my birthday next week and I was wondering if you would like to come.
Rosie: Who else is going?
Julie: Oh just some other kids that I used to scare the hell out of 20 years ago. We love to gather and reminisce about the days gone by.
Rosie: Seriously.
Julie: No, just a few friends, a few members of my family for a few drinks and a few nibbles for a few minutes to mark the occasion and then you can all leave me alone.
Ahern, Cecelia (2005-02-01). Love, Rosie (p. 330). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition. — Cecelia Ahern

You can't help but change when you have a kid, and for me it was just a sense of I didn't feel like anything was missing in my life and it wasn't. It all came at just the right time, and now if I am absent from my son, I do feel like something is missing. — Chris Pratt

In the very first debate I was asked am I a moderate or a progressive and I said I'm a progressive who likes to get things done. Cherry picking a quote here or there doesn't change my record of having fought for racial justice, having fought for kids rights, having fought the kind of inequities that fueled my interest in service in the first place going back to my days in the Children's Defense Fund. — Hillary Clinton

Kids are a huge sacrifice; they change everything - but I'm ready to work for things of greater importance than going out to meet someone for dinner at 10 o'clock at night. — Katherine Heigl

People fall out of love, or get married for the wrong reasons. People change. The older generation - they got married and had a kid when they were 20. How do you know who you are when you're 20? — Kellan Lutz

Futures can and do change, something as simple as you're supposed to turn right down a street one day ... In your bones u know it, and yet for reasons no one understands, you decide to debunk fate and go left. Now instead of meeting your spouse of your dreams and having a house full of kids, you get flattened by an ice-cream truck and spend the next 5 years in physical therapy recovering from the injuries; or worse you die from it. And all cause you exercised free will and turned the opposite way on a whim. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

So what should I be doing?" "I don't know. Something. Working. Seeing people. Running a scout troop, or running a club even. Something more than waiting for life to change and keeping your options open. You'd keep your options open for the rest of your life, if you could. You'll be lying on your deathbed, dying of some smoking-related disease, and you'll be thinking, 'Well, at least I've kept my options open. At least I never ended up doing something I couldn't back out of.' And all the time you're keeping your options open, you're closing them off. You're thirty-six and you don't have children. So when are you going to have them? When you're forty? Fifty? Say you're forty, and say your kid doesn't want kids until he's thirty-six. That means you'd have to live much longer than your allotted three-score years and ten just to catch so much as a glimpse of your grandchild. See how you're denying yourself things? — Nick Hornby

If we wish for our country to have an exponentially brighter future, one of the things we need to change is the popular perception some kids have towards school. School is not a prison, it is not a night club, it is not a fight club; school is for learning, learning is the thing that begins the process of separating us from the animals. — Joshua Neik

I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we'd started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He'd go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I'd give anything to go back to the day before 9/11 - but all we can do is move forward. — Tucker Elliot

The residents blamed the "Gahmen", naturally. Since the explosion of social media, those "Gahmen" guys have been blamed for everything from HDB flat prices to the price of oil, climate change, the shortage of Hello Kitty dolls and kids not clearing their trays away at hawker centres. — Neil Humphreys

For all of the hurtling towards climate change, there's also a lot more understanding of it than there was when we were kids. They don't call environmentalists tree huggers any more, so there's hope! — Ewan McGregor

I would like very much to see the American people saying to our Republican colleagues and some Democratic colleagues: Excuse me. Don't force my kids to have a lower standard of living in order to give tax breaks to the richest people. What the President and all of us should be doing is going out and saying to those people: Call the Members of the Senate, call the Members of the House and say: Excuse me. How about representing the middle class and working families, for a change, rather than the wealthiest people. That is what democracy is about. — Bernie Sanders

The observation turned into insight for LEGO. The company, says Smith- Meyer, had fallen into the trap of thinking that play habits had changed, and that LEGO must change with them. Not at all. Kids just wanted freedom to experiment on their own with the plastic bricks and to build something masterful. Or as Smith-Meyer puts it, "LEGO takes time. — Anonymous

When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things. — Laura Ruby

Play is the best natural resource in a creative economy. Kids need more of it. It is the work of childhood. We hope to intrinsically change the opinion that play is not just a luxury but an absolute necessity for kids' lives. — Darell Hammond

That's the problem today. It ain't the kids' faults. It's the parents who don't trust 'em enough to teach 'em to fend for their own. Now I ain't never been the best shooter, never raised me a prize steer, and there were a hundred guys around here who could fix a roof faster than I could change a light bulb. But the point is I learned how to do lots of different things that parents don't teach kids anymore." "My — Dan Padavona

She turns in the doorway. "Oh, and Galen?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Have your mother call me so I can get her number programmed into my phone."
"Yes, ma'am."
"You kids have a good time. I won't be home until late, Emma. But you'll be home by nine, sweetie. Won't she, Galen?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Neither Emma nor Galen say anything until they hear the car pull out of the driveway. Even then, they wait a few more seconds. Emma leans against the fridge. Galen is growing fond of hiding his hands in his pockets.
"So, what did you two chitchat about?" she asks as if uninterested.
"You first."
She shakes her head. "Uh-uh. I don't want to talk about it."
He nods. "Good. Me neither."
For a few seconds, they look at everything in the room but each other. Finally, Galen says, "So, did you want to go change-"
"That idea is fan-flipping-tastic. Be right down." She almost breaks into a run to get to the stairs. — Anna Banks

I think for real change to happen, it's going to have to come from the kids, the community, the teachers, the parents. — Eric Schlosser

You hear all these great stories about kids starting their own businesses and getting involved in their communities and politics and foundations - all kinds of things. And it's so much easier for kids to get motivated and do that. [on her belief that teens are motivated to effect change.] — Alexis Bledel

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this." — George Carlin

People perceive games as being for kids, and I think that perception is going to change. Time is going to take care of that. I mean, we've already won. Games have won; it's inevitable. — Warren Spector

People usually live up to their expectations. The kid picked first for dodgeball feels a duty to be the best, and to perform the best, and to be better than anyone else. They feel a need to execute. And, the only way they are going to achieve that is to make their body run faster, jump higher, and move quicker.
If more fat kids were chosen first for activities and sports and group/team dynamics, they would automatically start to change their lives to fit into the expectations that surround those moments. Any time a child is picked last, they know it's because people expect the least of them, and so they never actually have a need to rise above that. — Dan Pearce

She remembers the last perfect evening before everything happened, perfect even though she didn't know everything was about to change. Karaoke night. A bunch of kids from choir cheering each other on. When it was her turn, Hallelujah belted out "Total Eclipse of the Heart." She went for every melodramatic note, closing her eyes and beating her chest. She got the whole group to sing along.
She remembers Jonah taking the stage next. When he sang the opening lines to Garth Brooks's "Friends in Low Places," the room went nuts. He put on a cowboy drawl and sent the low notes reverberating through the wooden floorboards. She remembers him tipping an imaginary Stetson at her when he was done.
In a week, Hallelujah would get caught making out with Luke Willis. He would humiliate her and start spreading lies about her. She would become someone quiet and sad and resentful. But right then, performance-flushed and surrounded by friends, she couldn't stop smiling. — Kathryn Holmes

It's obvious you kids are smart-school and good teachers will do that for you-but wisdom is something altogether different. Wisdom can be gathered in your downtime. Wisdom that can change the very course of your life will come from the people you are around, the books you read, and the things you listen to or watch on radio or television. — Andy Andrews

Don't say you don't have enough time. We're all busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, "How do you find the time for all this?" And I answer, "I look for it." You find time the same place you find spare change: in the nooks and crannies. You find it in the cracks between the big stuff - your commute, your lunch break, the few hours after your kids go to bed. You might have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time if you look for it. I like to work while the world is sleeping, and share while the world is at work. — Austin Kleon

First, I hope you see them. This is harder than it sounds; you have to learn to see hurt people, because they figure out how to act invisible. Kindness needs recipients. The whole world is filled with lonely and left-out and humiliated and sad kids, and seeing them is the first step. Because they are just as precious as you. If you can learn this during the Family Years, it will change your life, because you'll develop eyes for pain, which is exactly how Jesus walked around on this earth. If your mercy radar is strong now, God can do anything with you later. — Jen Hatmaker

I would like my kids to inherit a world where people succeed because of merit and hard work, not entitlement, and where people accept others for what they are and not try to change them. — Guy Kawasaki

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me. — Matt Kemp

I would have rather had a dad with change jingling in his pocket; one who would have spent the last forty minutes of the world raking leaves for his kids to jump in, so that they perished in one loud, bright instant, giggles still bubbling up from their bellies, never suspecting a thing.
Yeah, well. Tough luck, rich boy. — S.A. Bodeen

If you want to be an architect of change by raising great kids, God bless. If you want to do it by raising money for your kid's school, great. If you want to build a garden - whatever it is. Women like myself - they're complicated, and they have a lot of different interests and qualities within them. — Maria Shriver

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony. — Ron Koertge

There are millions of kids who, naturally, if we could only remember how it is - you know, you resent authority, you are impatient for change, you want to fix things up. — Thomas Foran

Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it ... others have done so ... That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn't aware of his habit, and so he doesn't bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people's lives - how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money - those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work. — Charles Duhigg

Just when you think you've got your kids figured out, they change on you. For somebody who's controlling, you can't control it. Of course, I don't think I'm controlling, but that's what I've been told! — Michelle Pfeiffer

Kids want to be grown ups, adults want to be young and careless again.
Single people desperately want a relationship, but those who are in one still complain almost all the time and wish for freedom.
The poor want money, the rich want more of it.
This means that changing your situation doesn't prevent you from suffering, doesn't make your desires go away.
So you need to change something on the inside. — Lidiya K.

I do a lot of inspirational talks for kids, to motivate them to change their lives and give them hope. — Adam Beach

We cannot change the politics issue until we change the culture around it; until we talk about what parents do for their kids as an act of love. That's a cultural conversation. — Jose Antonio Vargas

I can't help but be a different person now that I've had kids. That really does change your whole perspective on life for the better. — Jennifer Lopez

As an advocate for kids for over twenty years, I have watched things change since I was in school. Thankfully, this book made me face what I intuitively knew was real but pretended wasn't: The youth of our culture have been deeply wounded by our collective neglect and adult-driven self-focus. Young people need adults to understand what they are going through and people to care about them without a personal agenda. This book was very helpful to me, and my attitude toward teens will never be the same. — Doug Fields

Well I've been doing it for about twenty years, I did films when I was a little kid, when I was about six or seven, I was in films and I had this really high voice, I did a series called Dinobabies, that was my first one. And then after that I did Madeline, yeah so it just kind of happened and then never went away. Then everyone said your voice is going to change and you'll be out ... No, no, still on helium. — Andrea Libman

My father used to say that when he was growing up the water was clear and there were tons of fireflies everywhere ... He felt sorry for the kids growing up today ... But it is really beautiful ... Time will just keep on passing ... we'll get old ... and look back on the past. I hope we can always say ... how great things were. — Fuyumi Soryo

There's an evolution from, today we tell computers to do stuff for us, to where computers can actually do stuff for us. For example, if I go and pick up my kids, it would be good for my car to be aware that my kids have entered the car and change the music to something that's appropriate for them. — Sundar Pichai

I don't kid myself in thinking that I'm on the front lines. I know the people who are on the front lines. I mean there are people in some freakin' significant places making on-the-ground social front line change. I've marched. I've put feet on the ground for what I believe and what I'm against with no compromise. And there are people who are risking a whole hell of a lot more than me to make change, that's for damn sure. — Ben Harper

I'm not concerned about your comfort zone or readiness for change. I'm concerned about the kids who just entered Kindergarten. — Ian Jukes

Adam Brown's zest for life led him down a few dark alleys and more than one dead end. Kind-hearted and wild, Adam led a life that lacked direction. God, a woman, and the U.S. Navy gave it to him. FEARLESS is a love story ... several love stories: a man for his woman, a warrior for his team, parents for kids, and soldiers for their country. There is no greater love than that a man lay down his life for his friends. Be warned - reading FEARLESS will change the way you see the world. — Stu Weber

My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long [run], it will make some sort of change somewhere. — Jake Gyllenhaal

For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change. — Mike McCurry

I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less that we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal. If you don't find a way to break the chain and change in some way, then you wind up, as the rhyme goes: a murder of one, for sorrow. — Adam Duritz

A book--a real book--is one choice, taken from a pile, opened and entered as its own singular, separate world. Once chosen, you are not holding the constant opportunity to alter or improve your choice, or simply change it just for the sake of restless change. You are there, now, without the relentless pressure of the fact that you could always be, and maybe you should be, maybe you'd be happier or more productive or different, doing something else. It's a choice I hope my kids will decide to make, often. — K.J. Dell'Antonia

We need to look at what Europe is doing to get better and try to get better ourselves. We need to make some changes and that can only be good for the game. Tolstoy once said, 'Everybody wants to change the world, but they don't want to change themselves.' So we all have to change our thinking and focus on getting our kids better. — Herb Brooks

If we're going to change the world for the better, kids need to know that they can by feeling good about who they are and helping others. — Dorothy Koomson

I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind of change, though. — Marjane Satrapi

I had great, great times as a Little League coach. People were talking about me quitting acting, and they would say, What about your creative juices? Coaching is creative, because you could take a kid who thought he wasn't any good and, within four minutes, change his mind. And I didn't have to wait six months for them to put music to it. — James Caan

Anyone who has raised more than one child knows full well that kids turn out the way they turn out - astonishingly, for the most part, and usually quite unlike their siblings, even their twins, raised under the same flawed rooftree. Little we have done or said, or left undone and unsaid, seems to have made much mark. It's hubris to suppose ourselves so influential; a casual remark on the playground is as likely to change their lives as any dedicated campaign of ours. They come with much of their own software already in place, waiting, and none of the keys we press will override it. — Barbara Holland

We need to get to kids who have no idea what we do. We need to open the doors wide and let them in. There are many undiscovered voices out there - voices that, against all odds, can rise up and enrich this culture and perhaps change the very nature of the marketplace for the better. — Dan Wieden

It wasn't so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it's just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change. — Michelle Obama

'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend. — Rebecca Stead

I change the channel to another movie. An old one, but new to me. And, ironically, a thin, gorgeous blonde - Meg Ryan, maybe - rides her bike on a country road. She smiles like she has no cares in the world. Like no one ever judges her. Like her life is perfect. Wind through her hair and sunshine on her face. The only thing missing are the rainbows and butterflies and cartoon birds singing on her shoulder.

Maybe I should grab my bike and try to catch up with Mom, Mike, and the kids. They can't be going very fast. I would love to feel like that, even if it's just for a second - free and peaceful and normal.
Suddenly, there's a truck. It can't be headed toward Meg Ryan. Could it? Yes. Oh my God. No! Meg Ryan just got hit by that truck.

Figures. See what happens when you exercise? — K.A. Barson

Maybe the adults around me were too cynical and old to do anything to help innocent people like Mrs. Kahn or Charlie, or the black kids who were called nigger at school, or the girls Tim Miller groped on the bus. Maybe they were numb enough to blame the system for things they were too lazy to change. — A.S. King