Benjamin Spock quotes

There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its mother’s age.
- Benjamin Spock

Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.
- Benjamin Spock

The main source of good discipline is growing up in a loving family, being loved and learning to love in return.
- Benjamin Spock

Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity. Without creativity, there is no life.
- Benjamin Spock

A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.
- Benjamin Spock

Humans can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet they're potentially more vicious than any other. They are the only ones who can be persuaded to hate millions of their own kind whom they have never seen and to kill as many as they can lay their hands on in the name of their tribe or their God.
- Benjamin Spock

Physical punishment teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in the parent-for life.
- Benjamin Spock

Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense.
- Benjamin Spock

Respect children because they're human beings and they deserve respect, and they'll grow up to be better people.
- Benjamin Spock

The children who are appreciated for what they are, even if they are homely, or clumsy, or slow, will grow up with confidence in themselves and happy. They will have a spirit that will make the best of all the capacities that they do have and of all the opportunities that come their way.
- Benjamin Spock

Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.
- Benjamin Spock

The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
- Benjamin Spock

What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.
- Benjamin Spock

If I could make only one wish for a child, I'd wish him the quality of lovingness.
- Benjamin Spock

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.
- Benjamin Spock

Children who grow up getting nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer
- Benjamin Spock

The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.
- Benjamin Spock

I'm not a pacifist. I was very much for the war against Hitler and I also supported the intervention in Korea, but in this war we went in there to steal Vietnam.
- Benjamin Spock

It's not the words but the music that counts.
- Benjamin Spock