Fred Rogers Quotations

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.

How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.

You know, you don't have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

I believe that appreciation is a holy thing--that when we look for what's best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something sacred.

He was an enormous talent, and for him to have been able to offer that to children through the neighborhood all through these years was a great gift,

What makes the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, and it may take months or years for wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about a wish that you'll do all you can to make it happen.

I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen,

When I saw the toy piano on one of the pages, that was it!

Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.

Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should. But the very same people who are good sometimes are the very same people who are bad sometimes. It's funny but it's true. Its the same isn't it, for me and . . .

The kingdom of God is for the broken hearted

We all have only one life to live on Earth, and through television we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways.

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

It's a miracle when we finally discover whom we're best equipped to serve.

For children, play is exceedingly seriously & important

The gifts we treasure most over the years are often small and simple. In easy times and tough times, what seems to matter most is the way we show those nearest us that we've been listening to their needs, to their joys, and to their challenges.

Imagining may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.

Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it.

Hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.

Real strength has to do with helping others.

All life events are formative. All contribute to what we become, year by year, as we go on growing. As my friend the poet Kenneth Koch once said, You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

Honesty is often very hard. The truth is often painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth the trying.

I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world.

I don't want to eat anything that has a mother

We Don't always succeed in what we try, certainly not by the world's standards, but I think you'll find it's the willingness to keep trying that matters most.

Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect on any front-and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.

Development comes from within. Nature does not hurry but advances slowly.

Deep within us-no matter who we are-there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

I like you just the way you are.

Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.

In appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.

My hope for all of us is that 'the miles we go before we sleep' will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring--delight , sadness, joy, wisdom--and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.

People have said, 'Don't cry' to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, 'I'm too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don't cry.' I'd rather have them say, 'Go ahead and cry. I'm here to be with you.'

This evening is as brief as the twinkling of an eye yet such twinklings is what eternity is made of.

I got into television because I hated it so,

There's always someone who is trying to help.

I wonder if we might pledge ourselves to remember what life is really all about—not to be afraid that we're less flashy than the next, not to worry that our influence is not that of a tornado, but rather that of a grain of sand in an oyster! Do we have that kind of patience?

The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.

Our children are extensions of ourselves in ways our parents are not, nor our brothers and sisters, nor our spouses.

If your trusted and people will allow you to share their inner gardern...what better gift?

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered . . . just one kind word to another person.

Those of us who are in this world to educate-to care for-young children have a special calling: a calling that has very little to do with the collection of expensive possessions but has a lot to do with worth inside of heads and hearts.

For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a "solution" to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another.

Our worlds needs more time to wonder and reflect but there is too much fast paced constant distraction.

When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.

Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them ... ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That's what the world needs.

I have really never considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit.

Fame is a four-letter word. And like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or love, or life, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.

The real drama of life is never centerstage. It's always in the wings.

It's a mistake to think that we have to be lovely to be loved by human beings or by God

Love begins with listening.

It's the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.

The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.

There's no "should" or "should not" when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.

Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.

Play is really the work of childhood

[I]f we can bring our children understanding, comfort, and hopefulness when they need this kind of support, then they are more likely to grow into adults who can find these resources within themselves later on. (from the introduction)

What really matters is not just our own winning but helping other people to win, too.

I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring.

When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won't be just our child's feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well-from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.

Parenting forces us to get to know ourselves better than we ever might have imagined we could--and in many new ways. . . . We'll discover talents we never dreamed we had and fervently wish for others at moments we feel we desperately need them. As time goes on, we'll probably discover that we have more to give and can give more than we ever imagined. But we'll also find that there are limits to our giving, and that may be hard for us to accept.

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.

It's important to know when we need to stop, reflect, and receive. In our competitive world, that might be called a waste of time.

Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us.

I feel that the real drama of life is never center stage, it's always in the wings. It's never with the spotlight on, it's usually something that you don't expect at all.

We want to raise our children so that they can take a sense of pleasure in both their own heritage and the diversity of others.

One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things--combinations that may yield new formsof expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It's exactly what children's play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children's play is so important a part of childhood--and beyond.

There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility--for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents' decision to live apart.

Love isn't a perfect state of caring...

There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.

Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains ofgrowth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine; could you be mine?

Very early in our children's lives we will be forced to realize that the "perfect" untroubled life we'd like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don't want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.

Parents find many different ways to work their way through the assertiveness of their two-year-olds, but seeing that assertiveness as positive energy being directed toward growth as a competent individual may open up some new possibilities.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.

It's not the honors and not the titles and not the power that is of ultimate importance. It's what resides inside.

More and more I've come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. Whether the other be an adult or a child, our engagement in listening to who that person is can often be our greatest gift. Whether that person is speaking or playing or dancing, building or singing or painting, if we care, we can listen.

It is one of the paradoxes of parenting, and often a painful paradox, that even as our children need us for love and trust, they also need us for honest differing. It's not only over limits and rules...[but also] about what we represent in the way of culture, traditions, and values. We owe it to our children to let them know what we believe, and if they differ with us, we owe it to them to be honest adversaries, for it is through this honest confrontation that children can grow into adults who have a firm sense of their place in the sequence of the generations.

It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life.

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.

And those handmade presents that children often bring home from school: They have so much value! The value is that the child put whatever he or she could into making them. The way we parents respond to the giving of such gifts is very important. To the child the gift is really self, and they want so much for their selves to be acceptable, to be loved.

It is our continuing love for our children that makes us want them to become all they can be, and their continuing love for us that helps them accept healthy discipline--from us and eventually from themselves.

Love is at the root of all healthy discipline. The desire to be loved is a powerful motivation for children to behave in ways thatgive their parents pleasure rather than displeasure. it may even be our own long-ago fear of losing our parents' love that now sometimes makes us uneasy about setting and maintaining limits. We're afraid we'll lose the love of our children when we don't let them have their way.

Anything mentionable is manageable.

Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated.

It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.

I don't believe that children can develop in a healthy way unless they feel that they have value apart from anything they own or any skill that they learn. They need to feel they enhance the life of someone else, that they are needed. Who, better than parents, can let them know that?

Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent but also comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, stand, and be leaned upon, because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.

Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end each program by saying, 'You've made this day a special day by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.' And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service.

To say that you are being carried is a declaration of enormous faith and hope.

If the grain of wheat could know fear, it would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of being dropped in the ground, covered over, put out of sight, doomed to inactivity, yet what a glorious harvest awaits it!

Feelings about money -- saving and spending, holding back and letting go -- start very early in our lives. Stingy people have often been forced to give when they were very, very young, when they weren't ready. And generous people have often been really appreciated when they were very young.

When we're able to resign ourselves to the wishes that will never come true, there can be enormous energies available within us for whatever we CAN do.

It's the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest ... and the maddest! Love and anger are such a puzzle!