Top 40 Quotes About Childhood (2024 Update)

1. “Play is the work of childhood.”

— Jean Piaget

2. “Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul.”

— Ivan Doig

3. “Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand, that which we allow him to discover for himself will remain with him visible for the rest of his life.”

— Jean Piaget

4. “The childhood of today is the manhood of tomorrow.”

— William Wordsworth

5. “What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.”

— Mary Jo Putney

6. “All of us are products of our childhood.”

— Michael Jackson

7. “In that world, you’ll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Adventure Quotes

8. “The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.”

— Maria Montessori

Also featured in: Goal Quotes, Quotes About Children

9. “Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom.”

— Saint Augustine

Also featured in: Humility Quotes

10. “There’s something about childhood friends that you just can’t replace.”

— Lisa Whelchel

11. “Before you judge me, ask me about my childhood. And I will ask you about yours.”

— Michael Jackson

Also featured in: Judging Quotes

12. “What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

13. “Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Quotes About Memories

14. “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.”

— Marcel Proust

Also featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

15. “The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

16. “One should never count the years – one should instead count one’s interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I’m glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in.”

— Helen Keller

17. “Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.”

— Auguste Comte

18. “Childhood obesity issue is critically important to me because it’s critically important to the health and success of our kids, and of this nation, ultimately.”

— Michelle Obama

19. “For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Quotes About Songs

20. “You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it.”

— Ken Keyes Jr.

21. “Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also featured in: Growth Quotes

22. “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”

— Khaled Hosseini

23. “Childhood has it’s own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

24. “I let go of childhood fears. I am a secure, empowered human being.”

— Louise Hay

25. “Childhood decisions do not have to define you.”

— Selena Gómez

26. “Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”

— Arthur Rimbaud

27. “Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.”

— Roald Dahl

28. “Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.”

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

29. “The death of childhood is the beginning of poetry.”

— Andrei Tarkovsky

30. “We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.”

— Epictetus

31. “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”

— Charles Baudelaire

32. “Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Also featured in: Responsibility Quotes

33. “I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.”

— Andrew Wiles

34. “In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.”

— Lydia Sigourney

35. “Playing with Queen was the biggest moment of my career. It was like living a childhood fantasy.”

— George Michael

36. “Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult’s capacities.”

— Charles Baudelaire

37. “I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.”

— Andrew Wiles

38. “I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.”

— Kurt Cobain

39. “Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn’t sure how to start.”

— John Grisham

40. “Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

Also featured in: Sadness Quotes