Smart Children Quotes & Sayings

Young children who constantly hear "person" praise ("you're so smart to do this well") as opposed to "task" praise ("you did that well") are more likely to believe that intelligence is fixed rather than expandable with hard work. — Ken Bain

The high IQ has become the American equivalent of the Legion of Honor, positive proof of a child's intellectual aristocracy ... It has become more important to be a smart kid than a good kid or even a healthy kid. — Sam Levenson

I may not be a role model, but at least I'm raising really smart children. — Colleen Hoover

The idea behind the book is very simple.

Every day we see young children completely absorbed in some video device like a smart phone and completely oblivious to the social world surrounding them.

The idea is this: one-way communication interferes with social experiences and development.

If this interference occurs during the first two years of life in the right infant, the outcome will be a child with ASD. — Leonard Oestreicher

When he was a kid, it used to feel like his parents disappeared when the got drunk. As the levels of their glasses went down, he could sense them pulling away from him, as if they were together on the same boat, slowly pulling away from the shore where Oliver was left stranded, still himself, still boring, sensible Oliver, and he'd think, Please don't go, stay here with me, because his real mother was funny and his real father was smart, but they always went. First his dad got stupid and his mum got giggly, and then his mum got nasty and his dad got angry, and so it went until there was no point staying and Oliver went to watch movies in his bedroom. He'd had his own VCR in his bedroom. He'd had a privileged upbringing, had never wanted for anything. — Liane Moriarty

What if not just women, but both men and women, worked smart, more flexible schedules? What if the workplace itself was more fluid than the rigid and narrow ladder to success of the ideal worker? And what if both men and women became responsible for raising children and managing the home, sharing work, love, and play? Could everyone then live whole lives? — Brigid Schulte

A failing grade does not denounce a child to fail in life. An IQ is what I would call an 'inadequate question', it may state our brain capacity or tell us how smart we are, but it does not predict our future. Happy Character Traits and positive Reinforcements will help a child succeed better than a number that means nothing — Davis Carlson

We are children of the Earth ... respect your mother. — Ralph Smart

Charity only works when smart, innovative, compassionate people in the field are supported from home. The World of Children Award raises money and visibility for change makers, people doing the real work. We are a conduit for funding and resources only; all of our operating costs are covered by our generous board of governors. — Stephanie March

Love Darren? Of course not. Love is for fools not smart enough to see the path in front of them. That's the difference between you and I, Ryiah. I see the truth and accept Darren for what he is. You just see what you want to see. It's why I will wear the crown and bear his children while you are left wondering why you were never good enough. — Rachel E. Carter

Green is a smart choice - good for an imaginary girl or an imaginary boy. And the season isn't at all relevant with imaginary children. < — Rainbow Rowell

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon. — Christopher Smart

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money! — D.H. Lawrence

I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if adults cannot enjoy a children's book properly there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This of course, is just a smart way of saying I don't want to grow up. — Colin Thompson

If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be really smart, tell them more stories. If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them even more stories. — Albert Einstein

Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do. — Marvin Minsky

Language allows us to talk about the past and plan the future. We can teach children about things that are not present. And above all, we can bring people with different backgrounds and different knowledge together to discuss our problems. This actually gives me hope. I still think we are smart enough to not destroy planet Earth, our only home. — Jane Goodall

By the time most people pick up a parenting book, it is far too late. Most of the things that matter were decided long ago - who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.) But it isn't so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are — Steven D. Levitt

Would you like some more pancakes? Annie asked. I could tell that Annie was a smart girl. I hate to eat on the job. But I must keep up my strength. — Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were. — Haruki Murakami

Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop. — Jeannette Walls

I feel like now I have an amazing wife, a super smart child and the opportunity to create in two major fields.Before I had those outlets, my ego was all I had. — Kanye West

She's wonderful and soulful. She has a sly sense of humor. I've seen her deliver a funnier joke with a single silent raise of her eyebrow than many stand up comedians. She guards a very sensitive heart. Any human suffering brings her to tears. She's smart. Talk down to her and find yourself mentally slapped. She's an excellent judge of character, and seems to know an original spirit from a forgery every time. Cross boundaries with her...in any improper way and suffer the wrath of a lion. ... She's principled and firm. Rude behavior doesn't materialize in her presence. She's a grown-up who fully sees and knows children as citizens, and people, and souls. And because she respects children, all children seem to respect her. — Shonda Rhimes

We argued most of the way home. I thought it would be nicest for Hal to take his two dollars in to Mother first, bu Muriel didn't think so. She always wanted to do things as if it were a play. "That wouldn't be any good," she said. "If Hal goes in first and gives her the money, she'll start crying right away. But if you give her yours first, she'll just say we were smart children to make so much money. And then I'll give her mine, and she'll say, 'Why, why ... where in the world did you get so much money?' And then Phillip can give her his, and she'll look like she thought maybe we'd robbed a bank. And then when Hal gives her his, we'll all want to cry."
It worked just the way she thought it would. — Ralph Moody

Empowering women by allowing them to choose when and how many children to have is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. — Mike Quigley

In my family, I'm the middle of three, and I'm like a lot of middle children. I was one of those kids that floated from group to group. I liked being able to be included in all the groups - the bad kids, the smart kids. — Eileen Myles

Kayn began to speak as if she were reading his obituary. "I can see the paper now; it would read something like this; Kevin Smith was a wonderful boy so smart and good looking but a little clumsy. Had he simply tied up his shoes he would have never tripped down the stairs and found himself impaled on a janitor's broom. Remember kids; tie your shoes; safety first." (The Children of Ankh series) — Kim Cormack

Many of our newly smart would rather be found murdering their children than being kind to their parents. They would prefer to be damned for rudeness than to be snickered at for courtesy. — Irwin Edman

Adults trying to protect children from reality, right? And adults always trying to fill children with fantasy - the tooth fairy, Santa, make-believe games, etc. But kids are really smart, I think they know from an early age about death, this void and hole they are immediately traveling toward. — Shane Warren Jones

I looked around the store and what I saw was not very encouraging. There were rows and rows of violent toys ... aisle after aisle of training devices for recreational slaughter. No wonder our world was such a mean and violent place ... if we teach children that killing is fun, can we really be surprised if now and then someone is smart enough to learn? — Jeff Lindsay

It's more complicated than that. I know them. They're not evil or cruel. They're not even smart. Hurting them, it's like hurting children. — Suzanne Collins

Children are like the zombies I once saw in a film at Dad's. We have to do as we're told and obey like our brains have got eaten. — Kate Hamer

He preferred smart questions to smart answers. — Yoko Ogawa

After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I've ever seen: Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. How can that be? Don't children love to be praised? Yes, children love praise. And they especially love to be praised for their intelligence and talent. It really does give them a boost, a special glow - but only for the moment. The minute they hit a snag, their confidence goes out the window and their motivation hits rock bottom. If success means they're smart, then failure means they're dumb. That's the fixed mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

We are spiritual children of God the Father. We preach it. We sing it. But do we really understand it? Sometimes it's easy to tell others they are loved, but not so easy to believe it of ourselves - not because we don't think God loves His children, but because we may feel undeserving of His love. The adversary loves to remind us who we are not. Not pretty. Not smart. Not strong. But God would not have sacrificed His Son to save us if we aren't worth saving. — Toni Sorenson

All new schools ... should be models for sustainable development: showing every child in the classroom and the playground how smart building and energy use can help tackle global warming ... Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power. — Tony Blair

Considerable social science research has found that constant praise of children can backfire, because it so often consists of telling children how smart they are, not of praising children for the things they actually do. As a result, many children become protective of their image of being smart and are reluctant to take chances that might actually damage that image. — Charles Murray

I'd always ask my grandma, who was so, so smart, why she didn't work, and she would explain that her parents didn't approve of her working after she had children. She didn't feel like she had choices. — Reese Witherspoon

Sean may have had his problems, but he was a smart kid - the day's lesson was not lost on him, I'm certain. It wasn't lost on me: It doesn't matter how good you are at flag signals if no one is watching - the distress call is only as good as the person looking out for it."

~"Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk — Marc Parent

Children tease each other because you're short or you're tall or you're a redhead or because you're ugly or because you're smart or because you're dumb or all kinds of differences and as parents we have to deal with that and strengthen our children to be comfortable with themselves and also to show empathy and acceptance towards others. — Heather Wilson

I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood? — Fran Lebowitz

I've always said that you were too smart to have a profession. Smart people are hopeless in the face of anything actual. They are terrible cooks. They cannot dress themselves. They are children who need guidance and protecting. — Heidi Julavits

Weird behavior is natural in smart children, like curiosity is to a kitten. — Hunter S. Thompson

There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member ofthe human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to dress up like daddy. — Robert Benchley

Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children. — Shirley Maclaine

Wickedly Dangerous translates a terrifying figure from folklore , the Baba Yaga, into the smart, resourceful, motorcycle-riding Barbara Yager, who travels with her dragon-disguised-as-a-dog best friend, righting wrongs and helping those in need. But when she stumbles into a town whose children are vanishing, and meets the haunted young sheriff trying to save them, what was a job becomes very personal. This is urban fantasy at its best, with all the magic and mayhem tied together with very human emotions, even when the characters aren't quite human. — Alex Bledsoe

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. — Alice Walker

My theory is that there is a finite amount of intelligence in a family, and you're supposed to gradually transfer it to your children over a period of many years. This is why your parents started to get so stupid just at the time in your life when you were getting really smart. — Dave Barry

Oh no, princess. I would never carry out anything which could harm your being. This was just something I was told to say. I'm not sure what is planned, if, you go against their wishes. But, I'm sure you're smart and won't test them. — Chayada Welljaipet

Both Elizabeth [Smart] and Ruby [Jessop] were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped and "kept captive by polygamous fanatics." The main difference in the girls' respective ordeals ... is that "Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months," while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamist fanatics "since birth." Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth's abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby ... "was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges brought against anyone" involved. — Jon Krakauer

children who are praised for "being smart" often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks. — Daniel H. Pink

She watched the children and he watched her face as she tried to process everything she had just learned. She was innocent; that was true. But there was intelligence in those large eyes. She picked up things very, very quickly. It was more than Aladdin could usually say about those who weren't Street Rats. What a waste, for some father to trap such a smart, interesting girl behind a garden gate, like a prized animal... — Liz Braswell

Funny how things like that can change when you're in these kind of situations. Kash usually drove me crazy. He was so stubborn, and such a smart-ass, but I missed those annoying traits so much. I missed the way our personalities clashed and resulted in us fighting; I would give anything to fight with Kash again. The thought of having children with him used to terrify me, and now I was afraid I'd never get to have that opportunity. And I hated the nickname Sour Patch so damn much, but I would never complain about it again if it meant hearing Kash's voice. — Molly McAdams

Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they're the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be. — Trey Parker

I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children. — Sue Monk Kidd

It's amazing how smart the body is. Though maybe we could do without loving. I think it's overrated, and I think it's too hard. You should only love your children; that is necessary, because otherwise you might kill them. But to love a man? It's overrated, and it's too hard and I will never, ever do it again. — Elizabeth Berg

I would imagine, a very large percentage of people who get something for art and they do something else, and they have some excess resources. And they trade those resources with artists whose work makes them feel good, or feel better, or question. And the artist, if they're smart, they use it to buy the most expensive thing in the world: time to make more. The more that come, the better it is for these people, their children, the people they care about, fills the society with a real constant thing. — Lawrence Weiner

The times today are too dangerous for the young and the smart to be not bothered. Know the truth. Remember, "We can deny the truth. But, we can't avoid it." We have been there; we have all been there. Ask a female friend who is fighting for a better pay scale, ask the father of an immigrant who is nervous about the future of his daughter, ask a gay friend who is fighting for the right to marry, ask an African-American friend who wants her younger brother to be unafraid and proud, ask a homeless worker in Bangladesh whose house just got swept by rising sea levels, ask a young child in Beijing who breathes an air polluted by fossil fuels, ask a child labor in India who works ten hours and twelve hours to get two square meals a day. And, when you ask, you will know. You will know why we need to take it personally. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

We knew the massive amount of media attention the Elizabeth Smart case had generated was in part because the Smarts were an affluent, well-connected Caucasian family. However, kidnapping crosses all boundaries and all children deserve the same resources. — Tom Smart

When Aaron came home from the tryout, why didn't he take up the coach's challenge to return, to try harder? When Julia discovered that she wasn't as smart as she thought, why did she collapse? The answer in both cases is that these kids are fragile. It doesn't take much for them to give up and retreat, as Aaron did, or to fall apart, as Julia did. Fragility has become a characteristic of American children and teenagers to an extent unknown 25 years ago. That — Leonard Sax

For decades we have been living lives of abundance, with little regard for our natural resources or global health. But we are now facing hard choices in our energy policy. Future generations - my children and grandchildren, along with yours - will have to live with the decisions we make today. And so it is time for us to make some tough and - hopefully - smart choices regarding our energy use and production before it is too late. — John McCain

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are. — Steve Carell

Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children. — Marie Colvin

I wasn't attractive, I wasn't very verbal, I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going ... I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical ... I just knew it. — Patti Smith

The weary Italian woman nodded at her children behind her. "Where we came from, everybody lives only one kind of life. Alessandro said he wanted his children to choose the life, not the life to choose the children. And also," she added, panting, slowing down and wiping her brow, "he said America is the only place in the world where even the poor can be smart. — Paullina Simons

No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life. — Chuck Palahniuk

The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth
life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill. — Bill Ripley

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. — H.L. Mencken

Remember that Cosby show where he harrassed the children? Well I put on a little suit and because I am so small they invited me on but nobody was laughing at my jokes. I guess I'm just, too, particularly smart for them. — Thom Yorke

And I, who have the world in my pocket, can bring them nothing to comfort their disappointment or reward their optimism, but supplicate the fatted calf which they killed so often before and so in vain. Parents' imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom grow, but instead, contrary as trees, lean sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged. — Elizabeth Smart

Peculiar, isn't it?" he said. "First you're scolding your children and then all at once they're so smart they're scolding you. — Anne Tyler

I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours. I spend my entire day talking to children. And I find it fundamentally strange that you're not a dessert person. It freaks me out. I'm sorry that I don't talk like Murphy Brown. And I hate your pants suit. I wish it had ribbons on it or something just to make it slightly cuter but that doesn't mean I'm not smart and tough and strong. — Zooey Deschanel

Chicago is the proverbial middle child of large U.S. cities. Some might consider this analogy only in reference to Chicago's geographic location in the middle of the country. However, the analogy is multifaceted; like most middle children and like books between elaborate bookends, Chicago can sometimes be easy to overlook. It is smart and genuine, but it is always compared, for better or for worse, to its older and younger siblings, New York and Los Angeles. It's the less notorious but smarter sister to New York; it's the less ostentatious but considerably more genuine sister to Los Angeles. — Penny Reid

I will remark, that it is a common misconception of Ravenclaws that all the smart children are Sorted there, leaving none for other Houses. This is not so; being Sorted to Ravenclaw indicates that you are driven by your desire to know things, which is not at all the same quality as being intelligent. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don't like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it's vapid, so they'll go for the hard words, they'll go for the hard concepts, they'll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things. — Maurice Sendak

You seemed to be listening to me, not to find out useful information, but to try to catch me in a logical fallacy. This tells us all that you are used to being smarter than your teachers, and that you listen to them in order to catch them making mistakes and prove how smart you are to the other students. This is such a pointless, stupid way of listening to teachers that it is clear you are going to waste months of our time before you finally catch on that the only transaction that matters is a transfer of useful information from adults who possess it to children who do not, and that catching mistakes is a criminal misuse of time. — Orson Scott Card

Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn. — Orson Scott Card

A chorus of tough southern belles whispered, You need a loyal husband around here. Loyal to you, loyal to your family, loyal to your land.
I added, Good in bed, smart, and romantic. Politically, socially, and religiously compatible. And he had to want children. — Deborah Smith

Prettying you up for slaughter?" he suggests. "It's more complicated than that. I know them. They're not evil or cruel. They're not even smart. Hurting them, it's like hurting children. They don't see ... I mean, they don't know ... " I get knotted up in my words. "They don't know what, Katniss?" he says. "That tributes - who are the actual children involved — Suzanne Collins

What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system. — Hugh Masekela

Heavenly Father's interest in you does not depend on how rich or beautiful or healthy or smart you are. He sees you not as the world sees you; He sees who you really are. He looks on your heart. And He loves you because you are His child. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.) — Christopher Hitchens