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Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
- Robert Heinlein
It is idle to talk of civil liberties to adults who were systematically taught in adolescence that they had none; and it is sheer hypocrisy to call such people freedom loving.
- Edgar Friedenberg "The Dignity of Youth and Other Atavisms"
Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors.
- Walt Disney
A child, like all other human beings, has inalienable rights.
- Lucretia Mott
No guarantees come with children's liberation. But neither the promise of great benefits to all nor the prediction of great difficulties ahead can serve as the reason for granting or denying rights to children. Rights will be granted because without them children are incapacitated, oppressed, and abused.
- Richard Farson "Birthrights"
Regardless of what the law or your teachers have to say about this, you are as human as anyone over the age of 18 or 21, yet, 'minors' are one of the most oppressed groups of people in the world, and certainly the most discriminated against legally.
- Grace Llewellyn "The Teenage Liberation Handbook"
13ers ["Generation Xers"] have been bombarded with study after story after column about how bad they supposedly are. Americans in their teens and twenties, we are told, are consumed with violence, selfishness, greed, bad work habits, and civic apathy. Turn on the TV, and it's hard to see a bad-news-for-America story-from crime to welfare to consumerism-in which young bodies and faces don't show up prominently in the footage.
- Neil Howe and Bill Strauss "13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?"
What's done to children, they will do to society.
- Karl Menninger
We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.
- Ralph Nader, Speech at Harvard Law School, Feb. 26, 1972
The attack on youth is a national pathology, unwarranted by fact, smokescreen for the failure of adulthood and its leadership to confront larger predicaments. No rescue by the monied, governing, institutional, or otherwise privileged is in sight. It's up to the energy and inventiveness of the younger generation to pull the gated minds of millennium America toward acceptance of diversity, community, and fairness, and I hope they have as much fun as I did in my adolescences achieving what we Sixties kids only imagined.
- Mike Males "Framing Youth"
The 'teenager' seems to have replaced the Communist as the appropriate target for public controversy and foreboding.
- Edgar Friedenberg "The Vanishing Adolescent"
Don't let anyone think little of you because you are young.
- 1 Timothy 4:12
Children organizing for political rights will probably be treated initially with ridicule and derision, and then with misunderstanding and perhaps eventually violence if the experience of the struggle for women's suffrage is any precedent. Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the adult refusal to acknowledge that children suffer political discrimination and exclusion. Adults do not perceive children as a minority group but as helpless, inexperienced, defenseless young people who need protection. Adult paternalism seeks to protect and if in this process it curtails freedom, truncates potential and destroys civil liberties this is taken to be incidental. The belief in the legitimacy of paternalism justifies and cements the existing power relationships between adults and young people. This attitude must be confronted, challenged and refuted if young people are to secure their political rights...
- Bob Franklin "The Rights of Children"
We are all creative, but by the time we are three of four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.
- Maya Angelou
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
- Pearl S. Buck
If 16-year-olds are old enough to drink the water polluted by the industries that you regulate, if 16-year-olds are old enough to breathe the air ruined by garbage burners that government built, if 16-year-olds are old enough to walk on the streets made unsafe by terrible drugs and crime policies, if 16-year-olds are old enough to live in poverty in the richest country in the world, if 16-year-olds are old enough to get sick in a country with the worst public health-care programs in the world, and if 16-year-olds are old enough to attend school districts that you underfund, than 16-year-olds are old enough to play a part in making them better.
- Rebecca Tilsen, 14, of Minneapolis given as testimony to the Minnesota House subcommittee in 1991 regarding lowering the voting age.
The greatest Glory of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children.
- William Havard
I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us.
- Howard M. Jones
The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.
- Frank A. Clark
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
It used to be believed that the parent had unlimited claims on the child and rights over him. In a truer view of the matter, we are coming to see that the rights are on the side of the child and the duties on the side of the parent.
- William G. Sumner, 1840-1910
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
- Harry S. Truman, 1884-1972
I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.
- Fran Lebowitz
If I am young and wrong, then you are right [to look down on my youthful ignorance.] But if I am young and right, what does my age matter?
- Aesculus, Antigone
The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
The solution of adult problems tomorrow depends in large measure upon the way our children grow up today. There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing that, when we save children, we save ourselves.
- Margaret Mead
It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.
- Peter Singer "Practical Ethics"
Children do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society. They belong only to their own future freedom.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Whether children have first amendment rights is a vexed legal question, but what is not in question is that they someday will. Constraining them from expressing their views is no preparation for exercising those rights.
- Crispin Sartwell
School Quotes
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.
- George Bernard Shaw "Everybody's Political What's What"
Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes any more that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
- John Taylor Gatto
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
- George Santayana
It is... nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreak and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
- Albert Einstein
My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.
- Margaret Mead
I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.
- Woody Allen
I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.
- Winston Churchill
Song Lyrics Quotes
We don't need no education
we don't need no thought control
no dark sarcasm in the classroom
teacher leave them kids alone
- Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall"
The old get old and the young get stronger
it may take all week and it may take longer
they've got the guns but we've got the numbers
gonna win, yea we're taking over
- Doors "Five to One"
We don't refer to the past when showing what we've done
a generation gap means the war is never won
the past is in your head; the future's in our hands
cause I'm a brat, and I know everything
and I talk back, cause I'm not listening to anything you say
and if you count to three, you'll see its no emergency
you'll see I'm not the enemy, just a prisoner of society
- The Living End "Prisoner of Society"
Kids, I wish every mom and dad would make a speech to their teenagers and say, 'Kids, be free, be whatever you are, do whatever you want to do, just as long as you don't hurt anybody. And remember kids, I am you friend."
- From the musical Hair
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
and don't criticize what you can't understand,
your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,
your old road is rapidly aging,
please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
oh the times they are a changing
- Bob Dylan "The Times they are a changing"
What if we could awaken all people to the chains that tie them down?
What if everyone saw we were responsible for holding ourselves down?
What if the message of systematic and deliberate oppression were exposed to the entire society and
Everyone everywhere saw that young people were looked down upon, frowned about, sat upon and shat upon throughout their whole youth.
- Robert Grant "Free My People"
download the song here!
Dear Mother
Dear Father
Every thought I'd think you'd disapprove
Curator
Dictator
Always censoring my every move
Children are seen but are not heard
Tear out everything inspired
- Metallica "Dyers Eve"
It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing
They blacken your eyes, and then apologize
You're daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thing
Be a good little boy, and you'll get a new toy
Tell grandma you fell off the swing
- Pat Benatar "Hell is for Children"
The power of children can amaze
- Bush "Chemicals Between Us"
Revolution in their minds - the children start to march
Against the world in which they have to live
and all the hate that's in their hearts
They're tired of being pushed around
and told just what to do
They'll fight the world until they've won
and love comes flowing through
- Black Sabbath "Children of the Grave"
…And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through…
- David Bowie "Changes"
And the world will know
And the world will learn
And the world will wonder how we made the tables turn
And the world will see
That we had to choose
That the things we do today will be tomorrow's news
And the old will fall
And the young stand tall
And the time is now
And the winds will blow
And our ranks will grow and grow and grow and so
The world will feel the fire
And finally know!
- "The World Will Know" Newsies
Open the gates and seize the day
Don't be afraid and don't delay
Nothing can break us
No one can make us
Give our rights away
Arise and seize the day
- "Seize the Day" Newsies
Nine o'clock, no stamp on your hand
It's hard to rock when you can't see the band
You have enough money to pay the rates
But you can't get in because of your age
- The Teen Idles "Minor Disturbance - Too Young To Rock"
From an early age
We're taught and trained, oppressed and stained
to an extent beyond our imagination at that time
Shown that we should stay put, sit still, hold on, walk, don't run, and be quiet, whatever you do, be quiet.
- Robert Grant "Free My People"
download the song here!
Quotes About NYRA
NYRA is at the forefront of the continuing struggle for social justice in the US. Their leadership offers a hopeful, energetic light in the sea of darkness that surrounds many communities by providing an unparalleled vision. With that vision as a roadmap for the future, NYRA offers a much needed leadership in the present, and one that will guide the entire youth movement for many years to come.
- Adam Fletcher, freechild.org
There are groups that present an articulate youth rights point of view that are independent from both the "save our youth" and "corporate interest" viewpoints. NYRA is one of those groups.
- Mike A. Males, Author, "Framing Youth"
Most of us tend to view childhood as a time of carefree pleasure. Those of us who have looked at the real condition of children in America, however, see a very different picture--one in which children are victims of terrible discrimination, prejudice, and abuse. They need protection. But the protection they need most is to have the protection of civil rights, so that they can be regarded as full persons under the law. The organization leading that effort, with research, discussion and effective action, is the National Youth Rights Association. Supporting it supports children and youth in the most important way possible.
- Richard Farson, Author, "Birthrights"
Today I realized that the rights of youth are not simply an issue, but a HUGE issue. It never really clicked in my mind just how much we are being oppressed. It never really clicked how youth rights stem out into so many other issues. It's shocking…. I just wanted to say thank you for working so hard, and for believing so strongly. You really are making a difference.
- Shiree Weinbaum, NYRA Member
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