They’re also fed stories about God and about Father Christmas. And somehow children usually got off the ordinary magic spells of fairy tales. And they get off Father Christmas. They don’t get off God. And there’s something a bit different. And I don’t quite understand what it is. Children do seem to have some capacity to filter what they’re told and to work about, well obviously that’s not really true. But it’s a good story. I wonder if it’s to do with the seriousness of the tone of voice that’s adopted by the adult who is telling you about it. ibid.
Faith acts like a virus that attacks the young and infects generation after generation. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith, 2006
What in the twenty-first century are we doing venerating a book that contains such stuff? ibid.
These innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods. ibid.
When it comes to children I think of religion as a dangerous virus. It’s a virus which is transmitted partly through teachers and clergy but also down through the generations from parent to child to grandchild. Children are especially vulnerable to the virus of religion. ibid.
For many people part of growing up is killing off the virus of faith with a good strong dose of rational thinking, but if an individual doesn’t succeed in shaking it off, his mind is stuck in a permanent state of infancy and there is a real danger that he will infect the next generation. ibid.
Religious opinion is the one kind of parental opinion that by almost universal consent can be fastened upon children who are in truth too young to know what their opinion really is. Richard Dawkins, lecture I’m an Atheist But ...
God was only joking after all. Tempting Abraham and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. Richard Dawkins, lecture The God Delusion, Lynchburg Virginia
What I am against is the labelling of children with the religion of their parents ... I think it’s abusive to children to take a tiny child and say, You are a Christian child. Or you are a Muslim child. Richard Dawkins, The Big Debate, BBC 2008
I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as ‘Catholic child’ or ‘Muslim child’. Speak of a ‘child of Catholic parents’ if you like; but if you hear anybody speak of a ‘Catholic child’, stop them and politely point out that children are too young to know where they stand on such issues. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion preface
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. ibid. p176
The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they’re not going to succeed, saying: ‘There is a life, but it’s not for you.’ John Mortimer, cited Daily Mail 31st May 1988
Childhood has, I regret to say, like much else, got worse since I was a boy. We had school bullies, we had headmasters who were apparently direct descendants of Captain Bligh of the Bounty, we had cold baths, inedible food and long hours in chapel on Sundays, but there was one compensation. No one had invented social workers. John Mortimer, Rumpole & the Children of the Devil
I rose at night, and visited
The Cave of the Unborn:
And crowded shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be.
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To haste its advent morn
Their eyes were lit with ardent trust,
Hope thrilled their every tone:
‘A scene the loveliest, is it not?
A pure delight, a beauty spot
Where all is gentle, true and just,
And darkness is unknown?’
My heart was anguished for their sake.
I could not frame a word;
And they descried my sunken face,
And seemed to read therein, and trace
The news that pity would not break,
Not truth leave unaverred.
And as I silently retired
I turned and watched them still,
And they came helter-skelter out,
Driven forward like a rabble rout
Into the world they had so desired,
By the all-immanent Will. Thomas Hardy, The Unborn
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. ibid.
It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. Margaret Sanger, atheist & socialist, founder of Voluntary Parenthood League in 1914, and responsible for opening first birth control clinic in New York City
I said, Mum gave it to me. He [father] grabbed it [bicycle] out of my hand and stomped and stomped and stomped. Smashed it to bits. Unkind. When I left school, he opened the door, looked at me and said, ‘Out!’ And he opened the door. And I went out ... I was then sleeping rough. Norman Wisdom
Goodbye childhood, hello self-harm. Rab C Nesbitt: Role, BBC 2011
What is the use of a newborn child? Benjamin Franklin
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince, 1943
I thought that the whole world was involved in abuse. And as a very young child I had hoped there was some place in the world where people didn’t abuse their children. Cathy O’Brien, lecture Trance Formation Over America
After my father came back from Boston Massachusetts I was subjected to extensive systematic abuses. The sexual abuse that I had endured was extending into ritual abuse and more tortures. The ritual abuse that I experienced within our local Catholic church was very deliberate for the purposes of mind control. ibid.
Every time where the mind control is prevalent there is always abuse, and it’s usually sexual abuse of the children. ibid.
Boxcar Willie sexually abused my daughter. Cathy O’Brien
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children’s Hour, 1859
She took the girls – she had to – and the moment she stepped over the threshold of the judge’s quarters they were snatched from her – physically snatched from her. She was told she mustn’t attempt to follow them. She now knows they were held in the children’s home for a period of weeks, and the French social services calmly handed them back to the English social services, who calmly handed them back to the father, who by that time was working with other men to abuse children. The paper now has injunctions to stop us telling the truth about children who have been unlawfully taken from their parents. Brian Gerrish, lecture British Constitution Group 2009, ‘The State of the Nation’
Sir Mark Potter, Britain’s most senior family judge and President of the High Court Family Division, told The Times that the judiciary had been split about whether to open up the family courts and that there was not a clear single view. ibid.
Sixty-five hundred children were unjustly convicted. Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story
Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIP with Reagan, Bush: ‘Call boys’ took midnight tour of White House. The Washington Times 29th June 1989 re the Franklin Affair
Legal History after Independent Campaign: A father and son reunited. A secret court forced to open its doors.
A father’s struggle to be allowed to care for his autistic son made legal history yesterday when a judge ruled that the story of his ongoing battles with his local council could be made public.
Mark Neary attracted a wave of public sympathy when it first became known that the council had separated him from the son he had been looking after for 20 years. But after the initial outcry, silence descended over the case when Hillingdon Council took it to the Court of Protection. The Independent 1st March 2011
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, Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies
The affection you get back from children is sixpence given as change for a sovereign. Edith Nesbit
Arthur: A child wants to see. It always begins like this, and it began like that then. A child wanted to see ... What he saw there became his first memory ... A small boy and a corpse. ... An encounter in a curtained room. A small boy and a corpse. Julian Barnes, Arthur & George, chapter 1 Beginnings