Korczak Quotes & Sayings

When your life is over, the world will ask you only one question: 'Did you do what you were supposed to do?' — Korczak Ziolkowski

Back in 1948, a monomaniac called Korczak resolved to impose Crazy Horse's likeness upon a mountain. It took 50 years to complete the head, which measures 90ft from crown to chin. By comparison, the four presidents at Mt Rushmore seem modest. — Clive Sinclair

To reform the world - means to reform upbringing... — Janusz Korczak

My greatest fault is that I am no longer a child — Janusz Korczak

Life is a circus ring, with some moments more spectacular than others. — Janusz Korczak

Don't try to become a teacher overnight with psychological bookkeeping in your heart and educational theory in your head. — Janusz Korczak

Life never gives more than partial liberation. Achievement can never be more than fragmentary. — Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. x. "adhesions, — Diane Ackerman

The lives of great men are like legends-difficult but beautiful, — Janusz Korczak

I am a butterfly drunk with life. I don't know where to soar, but I won't allow life to clip my beautiful wings. — Janusz Korczak

When does the loneliness of old age begin? — Janusz Korczak

I have found that the people who shout their opinion the loudest are usually the ones most insecure in their position.
I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.
It's not that there wasn't anything to say. It's that there was too much and words were poor substitutes for our feelings.
But Korczak's greatest legacy is not a public one, the massive stone mountain that he conquered, but the mountain he first conquered in himself-a mountain that he climbed alone-in this we can all empathize. (about the sculptor of Crazy Horse) — Richard Paul Evans

There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek [within] the undiscovered part of yourself. (emphasis added) — Janusz Korczak

If I had means, I would like to spend half a year in Palestine in order to contemplate what has been, and half a year in Poland in order to preserve what remains. — Janusz Korczak

I have signed a pact with life: we will not get in each other's way — Janusz Korczak

I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me. Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man. — Janusz Korczak

The child
a skilled actor with a hundred masks: a different one for his mother, father, grandmother or grandfather, for a stern or lenient teacher, for the cook or maid, for his own friends, for the rich and poor. Naive and cunning, humble and haughty, gentle and vengeful, well behaved and willful, he disguises himself so well that he can lead us by the nose. — Janusz Korczak

I never realized that a child is capable of remembering so well and of waiting so patiently — Janusz Korczak

Each person carries an entire world within himself, and everything exists twice: once the way it is, the other the way he perceives it with his own eyes and feelings. — Janusz Korczak

My lands are where my dead lie buried. — Korczak Ziolkowski

If you are watching fanatically over the morality of your children you may yourself be not completely in order. — Janusz Korczak

A hundred children, a hundred individuals who are people
not people-to-be, not people of tomorrow, but people now, right now
today. — Janusz Korczak

I am well versed in reading the pages of war. — Janusz Korczak

Whatever has been achieved through pressure and violence is unstable, unreliable and incorrect. — Janusz Korczak

You will go on blundering, for only he who does nothing avoids errors. — Janusz Korczak

The soul of a child is as complicated and full of contradictions as our soul is. — Janusz Korczak

We climb mountains because the valleys are full of cemeteries. The secret of survival is to climb, even in the dark, even when the climb seems pointless. The climb, not the summit, is the thing. And the great don't just climb mountains, they carve them as they go. Korczak — Richard Paul Evans

Uh, oh. This room is big but not big enough to share with angry, smoking dragons. — Eunice Korczak

Take a look at the world and laugh — Janusz Korczak

Dare to dream ... something will always come of it — Janusz Korczak

Life bites like a dog. — Janusz Korczak

Man feels and ponders death as though it were the end, when in fact death is merely the continuation of life. It is another life. You may not believe in the existence of the soul, yet you must acknowledge that your body will live on as green grass, as a cloud. For you are, after all, water and dust. — Janusz Korczak

Are decent people in positions of leadership eternally condemned to Calvary? — Janusz Korczak

To demand that others should provide you textbook prognoses is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. — Janusz Korczak

Children, being small and weak, have little market value. — Janusz Korczak

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be - The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future. — Janusz Korczak

The court does not fly off the handle. It does not shout abuse. It speaks calmly. — Janusz Korczak