"When I was four years old . . . I bit my sister’s arm. . . . I remember running down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had committed a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute or two my father entered from the yard. . . . My father immediately dropped on all fours and darted for me. I feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having the advantage of him because I could stand up under the table, got a fair start for the stairs, but was caught half-way up them. The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope—and believe—that it did me good."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt ~~
"The nation’s most valuable asset is the children; for the children are the nation of the future. All people alive to the nation’s need should join together to work for the moral, spiritual, and physical welfare of the children in all parts of our land."
~~Roosevelt at Colonial Jamestown,
1907~~
We Americans are only on the threshold of the campaign for a better national life. We have only begun to consider our duty toward the child; to realize that the child-drudge is apt to turn into the shiftless grown-up; to realize that the child growing up in the streets has first-class opportunities for tending toward criminality; and, therefore, that playgrounds may be as necessary as schools.
~~Editorial in the Metropolitan -
1917~~
"There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison."
