Top 50 Benjamin Spock Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.”

— Benjamin Spock

Featured in: Quotes About Trust, Family Quotes, Encouraging Quotes

2. “Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity. Without creativity, there is no life.”

— Benjamin Spock

3. “A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.”

— Benjamin Spock

4. “The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.”

— Benjamin Spock

5. “Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.”

— Benjamin Spock

6. “In our country today, very few children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country, or God.”

— Benjamin Spock

7. “It’s not the words but the music that counts.”

— Benjamin Spock

8. “I’ve come to the realization that a lot of our problems are because of a dearth of spiritual values.”

— Benjamin Spock

9. “Having a good time together is the essence of lovingness and the best means of increasing it.”

— Benjamin Spock

10. “Can we make a better world for our children? I believe we can, if enough people are concerned and get involved in changing what is wrong with society.”

— Benjamin Spock

11. “How to fold a diaper depends on the size of the baby and the diaper.”

— Benjamin Spock

12. “Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for life.”

— Benjamin Spock

13. “The strongest rebellion may be expressed in quiet, undramatic behavior.”

— Benjamin Spock

14. “If I could make only one wish for a child, I’d wish him the quality of lovingness.”

— Benjamin Spock

15. “The main source of good discipline is growing up in a loving family, being loved and learning to love in return.”

— Benjamin Spock

16. “I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.”

— Benjamin Spock

17. “I would say that the surest measure of a man’s or a woman’s maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.”

— Benjamin Spock

18. “Respect children because they’re human beings and they deserve respect, and they’ll grow up to be better people.”

— Benjamin Spock

19. “Don’t worry about trying to do a perfect job. There is no perfect job. There is no one way of raising your children.”

— Benjamin Spock

20. “Grandparents have the freedom to see their grandchildren uncritically.”

— Benjamin Spock

21. “All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.”

— Benjamin Spock

22. “Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide people to follow His precepts – there is just too much misery and cruelty for that.”

— Benjamin Spock

23. “Don’t take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don’t be overawed by what the experts say. Don’t be afraid to trust your own common sense.”

— Benjamin Spock

24. “What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?”

— Benjamin Spock

25. “The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.”

— Benjamin Spock

26. “What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.”

— Benjamin Spock

27. “It’s up to each of us to help create a better world for our children.”

— Benjamin Spock

28. “When women are encouraged to be competitive, too many of them become disagreeable.”

— Benjamin Spock

29. “Every child senses, with all the horse sense that’s in him, that any parent is angry inside when children misbehave and they dread more the anger that is rarely or never expressed openly, wondering how awful it might be.”

— Benjamin Spock

30. “Don’t be afraid to trust your own common sense.”

— Benjamin Spock

31. “Children who grow up getting nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer.”

— Benjamin Spock

32. “I agree today that a man has no business trying to tell women what their characteristics are, which ones are inborn, which are more admirable, which will be best utilized by what occupations.”

— Benjamin Spock

33. “Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.”

— Benjamin Spock

34. “The loving person makes other people feel good, and he is usually a happy person himself. He is able to form strong, long-lasting friendships.”

— Benjamin Spock

35. “Parental trust is extremely important in the guidance of adolescent children as they get further and further away from the direct supervision of their parents and teachers. I don’t mean that trust without clear guidance is enough, but guidance without trust is worthless.”

— Benjamin Spock

36. “There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its mother’s age.”

— Benjamin Spock

37. “People have said, “You’ve turned your back on pediatrics.” I said, “No. It took me until I was in my 60s to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics.””

— Benjamin Spock

38. “A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.”

— Benjamin Spock

39. “To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation.”

— Benjamin Spock

40. “Our greatest hope is to bring up children inspired by their opportunities for being helpful and loving.”

— Benjamin Spock

41. “I’m not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.”

— Benjamin Spock

42. “Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.”

— Benjamin Spock

43. “The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.”

— Benjamin Spock

44. “Boys and girls need chances to be around their father, to be enjoyed by him and if possible to do things with him. Better to play fifteen minutes enjoyably and then say, ‘Now I’m going to read my paper’ than to spend all day at the zoo crossly.”

— Benjamin Spock

45. “A boy, by the age of 3 years, senses that his destiny is to be a man, so he watches his father particularly-his interests, manner, speech, pleasures, his attitude toward work...”

— Benjamin Spock

46. “I really learned it all from mothers.”

— Benjamin Spock

47. “The surest way to raise mentally healthy children is to cultivate loving, nurturing, and mutually respectful relationships with them. Loving means, first of all, accepting your child as a person. Every child has strengths and weaknesses, gifts and challenges. Loving means adjusting your expectations to fit your child, not trying to adjust your child to fit your expectations.”

— Benjamin Spock

48. “I was so afraid of being bad and being caught at it.”

— Benjamin Spock

49. “Your baby doesn’t need a pillow for her head, and you should not use one. Likewise, it’s best to keep stuffed animals out of your baby’s crib or cradle; little babies don’t care much about them, and they may pose a suffocation.”

— Benjamin Spock

50. “Another subtle but worrisome effect television has on its viewers is its tendency to promote passivity and a lack of creativity. Watching television requires little mental activity on the viewer’s part. You simply sit and let the images flow by. Some research suggests that this sort of nonparticipatory viewing fosters a short attention span, making it hard for children to apply themselves in school. Obesity.”

— Benjamin Spock