January

"Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer 'Tomorrow,' his name is today."

- Gabriela Mistral

February

"We've spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love."

- David Brooks,
"Social Animal: How the New Sciences of Human Nature Can Help Make Sense of a Life",
The New Yorker, January 17, 2011

March

"It is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect and by gentleness, than by fear."

- Terence (c. 190 - 159 BCE)

April

"What matters is not wealth, or status, or power or fame, but how well we have loved."

- Barack Obama

May

"We must bow before only two: the emperor and a child's tears."

- Japanese proverb

June

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

- Albert Einstein

July

"Affection is crucial from the day of birth; it is the basis of life."

- The Dalai Lama

August

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place."

- Mark Twain

September

"Consider the injustice of hitting children. We hit in order to inflict pain. The law does not permit us to inflict pain on anyone other than our children. Floggings of prisoners and in the armed services, the beating of wives and servants are part of an unwanted brutal past. Our laws prohibit us from inflicting pain on animals. Why our children?"

- Ian Hassall,
New Zealand Commissioner for Children, 1993

October

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

- Albert Einstein

November

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality."

- Beatrix Potter

December

"Children will not remember you for the material things you provided, but for the feeling that you cherished them."

- Richard L. Evans

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