Fred Rogers Quotes

In a young child's mind, parents probably condone what's on the television, just like they choose what's in the refrigerator or on the stove. That's why we who make television for children must be especially careful.

It would have been sad for me to spend my life just trying to superimpose stuff on people rather than trying to encourage them to look within themselves for what's of value.

One of the strongest things I have had to wrestle with in my life is the significance of the longing for perfection in oneself and in the people bound to the self by friendship or parenthood or childhood.

All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we're giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That's one of the things that connects us as neighbors - in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.

When I was ordained, it was for a special ministry, that of serving children and families through television. I consider that what I do through "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is my ministry. A ministry doesn't have to be only through a church, or even through an ordination. And I think we all can minister to others in this world by being compassionate and caring. I hope you will feel good enough about yourselves that you will want to minister to others, and that you will find your own unique ways to do that.

When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.

My hunch is that if we allow ourselves to give who we really are to the children in our care, we will in some way inspire cartwheels in their hearts.

Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.

It's not always easy for a father to understand the interests and ways of his son. It seems the songs of our children may be in keys we've never tried. The melody of each generation emerges from all that's gone before. Each one of us contributes in some unique way to the composition of life.

There's always someone who is trying to help.

I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring.

We're all on a journey - each one of us. And if we can be sensitive to the person who happens to be our neighbor, that, to me, is the greatest challenge as well as the greatest pleasure.

I feel that the real drama of life is never center stage, it's always in the wings. It's never with the spotlight on, it's usually something that you don't expect at all.

When we treat children's play as seriously as it deserves, we are helping them feel the joy that's to be found in the creative spirit. It's the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.

The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.

I think that those who would try to make you feel less than who you are, I think that's the greatest evil.

Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent but also comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, stand, and be leaned upon, because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.

[I]f we can bring our children understanding, comfort, and hopefulness when they need this kind of support, then they are more likely to grow into adults who can find these resources within themselves later on. (from the introduction)

Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated.

There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.

How many times have you noticed that it's the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?

Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.

People have said, 'Don't cry' to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, 'I'm too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don't cry.' I'd rather have them say, 'Go ahead and cry. I'm here to be with you.'

It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life.

For children, play is exceedingly seriously & important

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning ... They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.

I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.

There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.

Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.

We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being

To say that you are being carried is a declaration of enormous faith and hope.

Parents find many different ways to work their way through the assertiveness of their two-year-olds, but seeing that assertiveness as positive energy being directed toward growth as a competent individual may open up some new possibilities.

Jane Addams, writing about her Twenty Years at Hull House, said, People did not want to hear about simple things. They wanted to hear about great things - simply told.

The child is in me still and sometimes not so still.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.

I hope that you're learning how important you are, how important each person you see can be. Discovering each one's specialty is the most important learning.

It is our continuing love for our children that makes us want them to become all they can be, and their continuing love for us that helps them accept healthy discipline
from us and eventually from themselves.

Often out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak.

It's very important, no matter what you may do professionally, to keep alive some of the healthy interests of your youth. Children's play is not just kids' stuff. Children's play is rather the stuff of most future inventions.

The roots of a child's ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child's having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return. If a child finds this during the first years of life, he or she can grow up to be a competent, healthy person.

Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words - like 'aggression' and even 'violence'. Real strength is neither male nor female; but it is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that a human being can possess.

Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.

If the grain of wheat could know fear, it would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of being dropped in the ground, covered over, put out of sight, doomed to inactivity, yet what a glorious harvest awaits it!

Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us.

Those of us who are in this world to educate-to care for-young children have a special calling: a calling that has very little to do with the collection of expensive possessions but has a lot to do with worth inside of heads and hearts.

We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.

The kingdom of God is for the broken hearted

Imagine what our real neighbors would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. There have been so many stories about the lack of courtesy, the impatience of today's world, road rage and even restaurant rage. Sometimes, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person. Think of the ripple effect that can be created when we nourish someone. One kind empathetic word has a wonderful way of turning into many.

You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.

I can put on a hat, or put on a coat,
Or wear a pair of glasses or sail a boat. I can change all my names and find a place to hide. I can do most anything, but I'm still myself inside. I can go far away, or dream of anything, Or wear a scary costume or act like a king. I can change all my names and find a place to hide. I can do almost anything, but I'm still myself. I'm still myself. I'm still myself inside.

The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.

Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.

I don't think we give that gift anymore (the gift of silence). I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise, rather than silence…how do we encourage reflection? Oh my, this is a noisy world. I get up every morning at least by 5AM. I have a couple hours of quiet time, reflect about what it is important. What can we do, to encourage people to have more quiet in their lives, more silence? Real revelation comes through silence.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine; could you be mine?

Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them ... ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That's what the world needs.

Pretending doesn't require expensive toys.

Our worlds needs more time to wonder and reflect but there is too much fast paced constant distraction.

It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.

When we're able to resign ourselves to the wishes that will never come true, there can be enormous energies available within us for whatever we CAN do.

It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world.

In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.

For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a "solution" to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another.

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has- or ever will have- something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.

Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it.

Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.

When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.

We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that's what's important.

It's good to be curious about many things.

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.

Children long to know that they are lovable. And there are ways that technology can help with that. But ultimately it's their relationships with their parents, their grandparents, their peers, and their teachers that help them to know that for sure. A child can learn the word "hug" and the letters h-u-g through a computer, but a computer can never give the child a hug.

My hope for all of us is that 'the miles we go before we sleep' will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring
delight , sadness, joy, wisdom
and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.

The world is not always a kind place. That's something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it's something they really need our help to understand.

Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal.

Very early in our children's lives we will be forced to realize that the "perfect" untroubled life we'd like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don't want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.

Being able to resolve conflicts peacefully is one of the greatest strengths we can give our children.

I realize that it isn't very fashionable to talk about some things being holy; nevertheless, if we ever want to rid ourselves of personal and corporate emptiness, brokenness, loneliness, and fear, we have to allow ourselves room for that which we can not see, hear, touch , or control.

Feeling good about ourselves is essential in our being able to love others.

I have long believed that the way to know a spiritual sense is to know it in our real life. I think the best way to understand about God and peace is to know about peace in our everyday lives.

Parenting forces us to get to know ourselves better than we ever might have imagined we could
and in many new ways ... We'll discover talents we never dreamed we had and fervently wish for others at moments we feel we desperately need them. As time goes on, we'll probably discover that we have more to give and can give more than we ever imagined. But we'll also find that there are limits to our giving, and that may be hard for us to accept.

All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me.

A high school student wrote to ask, "What was the greatest event in American history?" I can't say. However, I suspect that like so many "great" events, it was something very simple and very quiet with little or no fanfare (such as someone forgiving someone else for a deep hurt that eventually changed the course of history). The really important "great" things are never center stage of life's dramas; they're always "in the wings". That's why it's so essential for us to be mindful of the humble and the deep rather than the flashy and the superficial.

Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence...And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives

I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world.

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.

It is one of the paradoxes of parenting, and often a painful paradox, that even as our children need us for love and trust, they also need us for honest differing. It's not only over limits and rules ... [but also] about what we represent in the way of culture, traditions, and values. We owe it to our children to let them know what we believe, and if they differ with us, we owe it to them to be honest adversaries, for it is through this honest confrontation that children can grow into adults who have a firm sense of their place in the sequence of the generations.

You are a very special person. There is only one like you in the whole world. There's never been anyone exactly like you before, and there will never be again. Only you. And people can like you exactly as you are.

I wonder if we might pledge ourselves to remember what life is really all about - not to be afraid that we're less flashy than the next, not to worry that our influence is not that of a tornado, but rather that of a grain of sand in an oyster! Do we have that kind of patience?

The greatest gift that you can give another person is to gracefully receive whatever it is that they want to give us.

Imagining may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.

The gifts we treasure most over the years are often small and simple. In easy times and tough times, what seems to matter most is the way we show those nearest us that we've been listening to their needs, to their joys, and to their challenges.

Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.

Listening and trying to understand the needs of those we would communicate with seems to me to be the essential prerequisite of any real communication. And we might as well aim for real communication.

How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements ... and into dreams that we can make come true.

I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have.

I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen,

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end each program by saying, 'You've made this day a special day by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.' And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service.