Quotes

PSYCHOLOGY
The thing people forget is how good it can feel when you finally set secrets free. Whether good or bad, at least they're out in the open. And once your secrets are out in the open, you don't have to hide behind them anymore. The problem with secrets is even when you think you're in control, you're not.
"Grey's Anatomy"
Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.
“Grey’s Anatomy”
Feelings only lie. They tell you you're going to get from letting go of them, what you already have from holding on to them.
-Lester Levinson
It's that self-awareness begins with articulating the building blocks of what makes us happy and sad….And the key to living in harmony with others is finding time to listen to their hopes and fears—and learning not to knock them.
-Bruce Feiler
To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken because the greatest hazard of life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, and love."
-Leo Buscaglia
The purpose of therapy is not to remove suffering but TO MOVE THROUGH IT to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites.
-James Hollis
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant...Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you...It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

-Miles Franklin

I felt it shelter to speak to you.
-Emily Dickinson
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

-Eric Hoffer, “Passionate State of Mind,” 1955
[A crisis is not] a threat of catastrophe but a turning point, a crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential... remember that conflict and
tension are sources of growth, strength, and committment.
-Erik Erikson
The myth of mental illness...The mind, which extends beyond the brain, is a function, or activity, of the brain. The mind reaches beyond the physical realm and science and cannot, therefore, be medically sick. Not being a physical organ, the mind is unable to have a disease.
-Bobgan & Bobgan
The term [mental illness] itself is nonsensical, a semantic mistake. The two words cannot go together...you can no more have mental 'disease' than you can have a purple idea or a wise space. Body and behavior become intertwined in this confusion until
they are no loner distinguishable. It is necessary to return to first principles: a disease is something you have, behavior is something you do.
-E. Fuller Torrey
Thomas Szasz criticizes what he has termed the psychiatric imposter. He discusses how the defining of psychiatry as a medical specialty is misleading. He states that mental illness is a myth...a notion of a person 'having a mental illness' is scientifically
crippling.
Because the brain is so complex, it may never fully understand itself no matter how hard we try.
-R. L. Solso
Psychiatry, which had its beginnings in the care of the sick, has expanded its net to include everyone.
-Jonas Robitscher
No one has been able to find that either the amount of clinical experience or the degree of professional training enhances outcome [in psychotherapy].

PARENTING

The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable.

-Lane Olinghouse
Parenthood is the art of bringing children up without putting them down.

-Anyonymous

Raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree.
I'm reminded of a debate the famous pediatrician Robert Mendelsohn, MD had with a psychiatrist. The panelist asked them about the Family Bed (everyone sleeping together). "It's a terrible idea," said the psychiatrist. "I'd never sleep with my children. It fosters dependency, it confuses them sexually, it's just plain wrong." The moderator asked if Dr. Mendelsohn would care to respond. "I agree with the psychiatrist, " said Dr. Mendelsohn. "Psychiatrists should not sleep with their children. But for everyone else, it's just wonderful. I gives infants the warmth and security they seek. It enhances emotional health and it brings the family closer.

-Ted Koren

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

-James Baldwin

The best thing to read when trying to raise a child is the child. Maybe it is even more important that we learn to read ourselves...
In the beginning, our children don't have any problems. They simply reflect our ignorance, just as a thermometer registers a fever. There is nothing you can do to the thermometer that will change the illness. You can shake down the thermometer so that the fever doesn't show, but the fever itself is not affected. The problem is not in the child any more than the sickness is in the thermometer...
Now the interesting thing is that we don't have problems either. We are only ignorant of truth. Actually ignorance is a positive step for most of us. We have to move from the wrong ideas we are certain of, to knowing that we don't know. Once that occurs,
understanding comes rapidly, for there is nothing to interfere with it...
Our children are not images of our selves but of our thoughts about ourselves...
But we must also have regard for them, for their right to be wrong or, more correctly, for their ability to learn to be right...
Sooner or later he must consciously seek truth as we are doing. When this time comes, he must have confidence that truth is and that he can perceive it. If we are constantly fixing our children, they will not have this confidence.. .

-Polly Berrien Berends

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element ... It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather ... I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.

-Haim Ginott

The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions.

-Lloyd DeMause

Childhood is that state which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle instead of an opportunity.

-Kathy Williams

Remember, your basic assignment as a parent is to work yourself out of a job.

-Paul Lewis

Every human being, as he grows into childhood, must inevitably be hampered and opposed by the restrictions of his environment, and the best we can hope for is to modify somewhat the urgency of this conflict. The degree to which we are considerate of our baby's early needs, however, may be the measure of his later ability to feel secure in a world of change and to adapt himself to the necessities of circumstance.

-C. Anderson Aldrich

A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds.

-Jean Liedloff

Never leave a baby alone to cry. This is an absolute rule. He may be crying because he is hungry, cold, too hot, wet, etc; if so, these things may be attended to. But he may be none of these things; he may be crying because he is frightened, and if not reassured early this is a dangerous condition. If an infant in the early weeks and months of life is allowed to remain frightened and alone, his first impression of the world into which he has come is that it is inhospitable, dangerous and lonely, and there is no use seeking help. He must try to fend for himself and not expect help; but he cannot fend for himself; he is helpless. It is not a matter for surprise that such impressions may color his view of the world and the people in it permanently. Much of his subsequent conduct will be devoted to the object of making himself as secure as he can in an insecure world.

-M. Bevan-Brown

Except in rare times of great stress or danger, there is no reason why we cannot say 'No' to children in just as kind a way as we say 'Yes'. Both are words. Both convey ideas which even tiny children are smart enough to grasp. One says, 'We don't do it that way', the other says 'That's the way we do it'. Most of the time, that is what children want to find out. Except when overcome by fatigue, curiosity, or excitement, they want to do it right, do as we do, fit in, take part.

-John Holt

MORALITY
The role of morality should be that people who believe in God act in such a way that they feel responsible towards God. To carry out this responsibility they should move in a direction which leads to a better understanding of people, so that better communication takes place and people learn to respect each other will become apparent.

-G. Vanoni

With all these driving factors leading to fewer and fewer family resources to turn to, people have had less support in their daily lives, which has helped to fuel ever-increasing social problems. More roles for professional intervention in our lives has been the inevitable result.

-Helen Hegener

An increasing in cheating reflects deep anxiety and insecurity in America nowadays, desperation even, as well as arrogance among the rich and cynicism among ordinary people….Maybe it's because the potential financial rewards at the top are so astronomical, so off the charts, that people's moral compasses are overwhelmed.

-R. Trigaux

Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion. Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move on. Be off the charts in kindness. In whatever you are called to, strive to be devoted to it in all aspects large and small. Fall short? Try again. Mastery is made in increments, not in leaps. Be brave, be fierce, be visionary. Mend the parts of the world that are "within your reach." To strive to live this way is the most dramatic gift you can ever give to the world.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

-Albert Camus

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

-Upton Sinclair

The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.

-George Orwell

Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?

-Marshall Rosenberg

Unity without verity [truth] is no better than conspiracy.

-Puritan John Trapp

If we treat a man as he is, we make him worse than he is. If we treat him as though he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

-Goethe

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself 'Is is true.' At the second gate ask, 'Is it necessary.' At the third gate ask, 'Is it kind.'

-Sufi saying

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary.

-George Orwell
Generosity is giving more than you have; pride is taking less than you need.

Wise Sayings of "The Master of Believers," Ali ibn Abi Talib

To seek counsel is to go to the fountain of guidance

He who does not know his own worth is doomed to destruction Lead such a life, that, when you die, the people may mourn you, and while you are alive they long for your company.

A man's worth depends upon the nobility of his aspirations
Knowledge enlivens the soul

The learned lives, although he dies

The sum total of excellence is knowledge

To respect the learned is to respect God

Generosity hides shortcomings

People are asleep as long as they are alive; they are awakened when they die

A man's behavior is the index of his mind

Courtesy costs nothing but buys everything

Jealousy devours virtue as fire devours fuel

The tongue pierces deeper than the spear

He who purifies his heart from doubt is a believer

Silence is the best reply to a fool

The best speech is one that is short and reasonable

Speech is like a medicine, a small dose of which cures but an excess of which kills

He that has no courage has no religion

His grief is long whose hope is short

The right of freedom of speech consists in speaking the truth

To assist the wrong is to oppress the right

Right is the best argument

As a man's wisdom increases, so his desire to speak decreases

The greatest sin is the sin that the sinner considers to be ordinary

Contentment is the asset which is never exhausted

Governments are a trial for men

He who fights against the truth, the truth will defeat him

Finding fault in others is one's greatest fault

The best investment is one with which duties are performed

When God wants to humiliate a person He deprives him of knowledge

When your power increases, decrease your desires accordingly

Patience is to faith, what head is to the body, when patience goes, faith goes, when

head goes, the body goes

A good disposition is the best companion

Wisdom is the best friend

He who is aware of his own faults is oblivious of the faults of others

The advice of old men is dearer than the bravery of young men

Whatever harm accrues of silence can be remedied but whatever harm is done because

of speech cannot be remedied

He who does not take the middle course strays

He who trusts the world, the world betrays him

The one, who knows himself, knows his creator

The fear of God makes one secure

How can you rejoice this life that grows shorter each hour?

A world wide reputation can be undone by an hour's degradation

The best man among us is he who is most helpful to his fellow men

He who never corrects himself will never correct another

Listen and you will teach yourself: remain silent, and you risk nothing

Beware of backbiting it sows the seed of bitterness, and separates you from God and

man

The sin that displeases you is better in the view of Allah than the virtue that makes you

proud

The best truth is the keeping of promises

If you discipline a child, leave him room to turn away from his wrong action so that you

do not leave him with stubbornness as his only way out

The best response to a fool is silence.

Discovery consists in seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.
-Albert Szent-Gy-rgi

Trust rather than fear, encouragement rather than force, cooperation rather than competition, challenge rather than threat, recognition rather than praise, self-discipline rather than punishment, and satisfaction rather than reward.
-Arthur Combs

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Those who say it cannot be done shouldn’t interrupt the people doing it.
You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.
-Les Brown

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little.
-Edmund Burke

A stumble may prevent a fall.
-English Proverb

Never mistake motion for action.
-Ernest Hemingway

When you hire people who are smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are.
-RH Grant

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
-Vince Lombardi

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands-but, like seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, reach your destiny.
-Carl Schurz

Whether you think you can or think you can’t - you are right.
-Henry Ford

Winner vs. Loser: The winner - is always part of the answer; the loser - is always part of the problem; the winner - always has a program; the loser - always has an excuse; the winner - says let me do it for you; the loser - says that’s not my job; the winner - sees an answer to every problem; the loser- sees a problem for every answer; the winner- sees a green near every sandtrap; the loser - sees two or three sand traps near every green; the winner - says it may be difficult but it’s possible; the loser - says it may be possible but it’s too difficult.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-Thomas Alva Edison

In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.
-Eric Butterworth

A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.
-Richard Nixon

Learn to create not compete.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
-Will Rogers

You see things as they are and ask “why?” I dream things as they never were and ask “why not?”
-George Bernard Shaw

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
-Eric Hoffer

To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?
-Katherine Graham

Entrepreneur: A high rolling risk-taker who would rather be a spectacular failure than a dismal success.
-Jim Fisk & Robert Barron

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
-David Lloyd George

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson.
The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-Bill Cosby

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.
-Ann Landers

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.
-Napoleaon Hill

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw

After all is said and done, more is said than done.
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.
-Mary Pickford

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
Begin with the end in mind.
Success is measured by what you had to give up to get there.
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
-Thomas A. Edison

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success."
– Thomas J. Watson

Be the change you wish to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle

Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to start where he was.
-Lao-Tzu

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
-Confucius

A ship in the harbor is safe...but that's not what ships were made for.
Too many people are ready to carry the stool when the piano needs to be moved.
-Anonymous

The wealthy person is not the one who has the most but the one who needs the least.
If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.”
-Ann Landers

Think again about the global schoolhouse, madhouse, prison. What are madhouses and prisons? They are institutions of compulsory treatment.

-Patrick Ferenga

To learn to know oneself, and to find a life worth living and work worth doing, is problem and challenge enough, without having to waste time on the fake and unworthy challenges of school.

-Patrick Ferenga and John Holt

Unschooling is allowing your child as much freedom to explore and learn from the world as you can comfortably bear as a parent.

-Patrick Farenga

We can allow our kids to learn and grow in the shelter and safety of a warm, loving, supportive family. We can ignore the strong messages from the dominant culture that kids need to develop and demonstrate their independence by physical separation from their families as they attend daycare, preschool, conventional schools, etc. Many homeschoolers define independence not by physical distance...

-Larry and Sue Kaseman

We did not homeschool our children to shelter them. We homeschooled them so that they would be able to take advantage of the far greater variety and quality of educational resources that the world offers, outside the stifling, regimented government institutions where by and large what is taught is propaganda and not functional knowledge, much less social skills. The picture that emerges is that of homeschooling as a natural extension of parenting, as something worth doing that can be done by anyone determined to find a way.

-E. McCullough

We learn something from everything we do, and everything that happens to us or is done to us.... It is the quality of our experiences, the satisfaction, excitement, or joy that we get or fail to get from them, that will determine how those experiences change us--in short, what we learn.... Our most rapid, efficient, far-reaching, useful, and permanent learning comes from our doing things that we ourselves have decided to do, and ... in doing such things we often need very little help or none at all.

-John Holt

We who live in artificial environments cannot any longer depend on nature or instinct to tell us how to bring up our children. We must study their growth and their development, discover their needs, and what are the obstacles that may hinder and obstruct them. Then we can construct an environment where they can grow naturally, not develop into problems.

-Miss Child

What's actually wrong is that children and parents are expected to believe that school activities are natural and good and proper for children. I believe that those activities are totally unnatural for children and therefore are bad for them. And I believe that when a child does not perform them as expected, the child is normal and the activities are abnormal and should not be engaged in. For many kids, school is hell because so much that they are expected to do is unnatural and uninteresting and irrelevant to their lives.

-Ned Vare

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think.

-Bertrand Russell

With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. ...A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.

-Stanley Milgram

If a child doesn't like, or doesn't fit into a situation (such as school), it does not mean that he is imperfect; it means that the situation is wrong for him. Get him out of the situation. Get him away from people who see him as defective, or as someone who is not developing properly.

-Ned Vare

If a parent is going to neglect a child, it's much easier to send a child to school for six to eight hours a day than to neglect a child at home.

-D. Stevenson

It is easy for us to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion: but when we have done this we have robbed him of the greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.

-Maria Montessori

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.

-Ivan Illich

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

-Emma Goldman

Of primary concern is the very real possibility that homeschooling might now become the very conduit for entry into our homes and personal lives, and that is a concern about which every family should be alarmed. If parents can not be trusted to mold and shape their children's learning, their thinking, their values, - where will that leave us?

-Helen Hegener

Our mission is to inspire and equip parents to help develop those gifts.

-Home Life Academy

Part of the problem is the institutionalized schooling to which we subject ourselves and our children. This form of schooling, euphemistically called 'education, ' has as its primary outcome the creation of consumers who are barely able to think for themselves and are always in need of some fix from somewhere, whether from television, more schooling, or therapy.

-Y. Progler

People spend a great deal of time...talking about how to make 'education' more effective and efficient, or how to do it or give it to more people, or how to reform or humanize it. But to make it more effective and efficient will only be to make it worse, and to help it do even more harm. It cannot be reformed, cannot be carried out wisely or humanely, because its purpose is neither wise nor humane.

-Patrick Ferenga

Perhaps at some point in the future, people will realize that children who are raised in a warm, cooperative, supportive environment by people who love them actually turn out better prepared for the real world than they would if they were sent at an early age to deal with strangers and large groups of their peers in a competitive and sometimes aggressive environment.

-Larry and Sue Kaseman

Rather than nurturing learning, the teacher's presence and questions often inhibit learning in children, making them think more about what the teacher wants rather than the actual subject at hand.

-Patrick Ferenga

Real objects validate the importance of their play, and play is the genuine work for their stage of life.

-Home Education Magazine

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation, school administrators are really emphasizing the importance of 'celebrating' every child....though they seldom get into the specifics of exactly what 'celebrating' every child entails. We do know one thing it can't mean, however?it can't mean that schools are going to begin offering instruction that is individually tailored to each child's interests, abilities, and rate of development. Schools are not set up that way. They must, by design and constraint, offer mass instruction in a general curriculum to large groups of children in a specified sequence. That's what schooling is.

-E. McCullough

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill conviction but to destroy the capacity to form any. The first lesson that is taught is how to accept confusion as your destiny.
From the second edition of Random House unabridged dictionary...'Socialization: a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.'...To be sure, the school system will 'socialize' your child according to the values and mores of today's society....One of the basic reasons that people choose to home school is so that their children CAN be properly socialized.

-M. Robinson

The biggest advantage is TIME! Time to think, to explore, to read, to build, to daydream. Homeschooled kids are allowed and encouraged to explore their gifts much earlier in life than schooled kids. I often wonder how much genius is missed because young people are not only not encouraged, they are not allowed the time to let their minds wander. The opportune time to explore our gifts is when we are young and do not know the artificial limits imposed by society....it's not a 'missed' road it's an alternative path.

-L. Buoni

The concepts of grade level; self-contained classrooms; learning upon command; breaking the fabric of knowledge into units of study that divide art from science, history from literature, and so on: focusing on competitive grades as measurements of academic achievement; the places, people, and rules of study; and, in particular, school's compulsory nature, remain largely unchanged...

-Patrick Ferenga

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

-Stanley Milgram

The earliest pioneers of social reform sought ways to speed up the assimilation of immigrant families into American society, because these immigrants carried with them strong family structures. The progressive social thinkers of the day determined that their children must be weaned from family loyalties in order to successfully identify with the larger values and goals of the just-emerging American society. Complete integration of the children could only be achieved if professionals took over the role that had previously belonged to the parents.

-Helen Hegener

The majority of children in this country will spend their days institutionalized, away from their families and loved ones, doing the bidding of strangers and being trained not to ask why.

-Helen Hegener

There is no doubt that to have perfect order in their surroundings and to preserve it by their own activity does give them real satisfaction. What the mysterious process in the mind may be we do not know....Whatever it is we have no doubt that the children who have this desire satisfied become calmer and are better able to overcome the difficulties of development.

-Miss Child

...Homeschooling has become so popular and well respected that everyone with a program to sell wants to capitalize on the term.

-Helen Hegener

...Slaves still know they're enslaved, and the last thing you want is to have to put down a rebellion. Far better for them to believe they're free, because then if they're unhappy the fault lies not with you but with them. It all starts with the children. If you don't start young enough, you'll never be able to acculturate them sufficiently so that they disbelieve in alternatives.

-D. Jensen

Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don't happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn't make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show.

-Fritz Redl

Caution: Homeschooling has been known to stimulate proper use of the brain which is not endorsed by government nor huge corporations involved in serious profit from a brainwashed and enslaved population.
I'm not talking to myself...I'm having a parent-teacher conference!

Homeschool Rules: 1. Relax 2. Learn

I AM in school right now and you're talking in class.

The only other place you will be: a) put in a totally supervised facility, b) subjected to a pre-planned routine and a largely unchanging environment that you are more or less powerless to change or escape, and c) where you are surrounded by people your own age all day long---is a nursing home.

We live in a country where the only limit to education is our own self-defeatist perspective.

-Tammy Takahashi, 'Deschooling Gently'

Government compulsory schooling is a huge business (one billion dollars a day in the U.S.!) that uses our tax money to fund a constant public relations campaign to convince us that they are doing a good job and that there is no viable alternative.

-Luz Shosie and Ned Vare

He who facilitates effective learning is not the sage on the stage, but the guide on the side.

-Unknown

Holt saw and worked to create a learning society in our culture, a society that welcomed its young into daily life whenever possible.

-Patrick Ferenga

Homeschooled children have many opportunities to observe their parents and other adults as they handle daily life. They see how much of adult life is cooperative and how adults handle situations that are competitive or aggressive. The adults they observe are better role models (at least most of the time) than would be a group of their peers who often lack the experience and maturity to deal with such challenges in ways.

-Larry and Sue Kaseman

Homeschooled children have more opportunity to observe real work being done than they would if they attended a conventional school. In conventional schools, just about the only real work is that done by custodians and cafeteria personnel. (If we didn't have the artificial world of schools, we wouldn't need the work that is done by teachers. People would learn by observing others, by having people of ages show them how to do things and explain things to them, and by getting involved themselves?the way most people have learned most of what they know throughout history.)

-Larry and Sue Kaseman

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience.

-Anne Sullivan

I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?

-Ray Bradbury

To learn to know oneself, and to find a life worth living and work worth doing, is problem and challenge enough, without having to waste time on the fake and unworthy challenges of school.

-Patrick Ferenga and John Holt

We did not homeschool our children to shelter them. We homeschooled them so that they would be able to take advantage of the far greater variety and quality of educational resources that the world offers, outside the stifling, regimented government institutions where by and large what is taught is propaganda and not functional knowledge, much less social skills.The picture that emerges is that of homeschooling as a natural extension of parenting, as something worth doing that can be done by anyone determined to find a way.


-E. McCullough

We who live in artificial environments cannot any longer depend on nature or instinct to tell us how to bring up our children. We must study their growth and their development, discover their needs, and what are the obstacles that may hinder and obstruct them. Then we can construct an environment where they can grow naturally, not develop into problems.

-Miss Child

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think.

-Bertrand Russell

Of primary concern is the very real possibility that homeschooling might now become the very conduit for entry into our homes and personal lives, and that is a concern about which every family should be alarmed. If parents can not be trusted to mold and shape their children's learning, their thinking, their values, - where will that leave us?

-Helen Hegener

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.

-Ivan Illich

If a parent is going to neglect a child, it's much easier to send a child to school for six to eight hours a day than to neglect a child at home.

-D. Stevenson