The first five years have so much to do with how the next 80 turn out.

Source: Bill Gates, Ounce of Prevention Fund Luncheon: William H. Gates Sr. (April 17, 2007) Complete Sentence: We’re helping to fund the school district’s work to improve high schools, but the problem doesn’t start in high school. It doesn’t start in college. It starts long before that—on Day One—and it has ramifications that last forever. Read More…

Summer Will End Soon Enough And Childhood As Well.

Source: George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (1996).

Play is a child’s work and this is not a trivial pursuit.

play is a child’s work and this is not a trivial pursuit -Alfred Adler

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One’s age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful.

Not to grow up properly is to retain our ‘caterpillar’ quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don’t grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child’s brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science.

Source: Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998).

Never Lose Your Childlike Fascination With The Wonders Of Our World.

My Childhood Was Absolutely Delightful.