* "These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country."
-- Harry Belafonte

* The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock--food for the well off--while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation.
-- Dr.Walden Bello

"Children need systems that are inclusive and driven by them, systems that will enable them to respond to their feelings and needs at any time."
-- Jeroo Billimoria

* Success will be when every child in the world has access to a service like Childline and knows that someone who cares is just a phone call away
-- Jeroo Billimoria

* How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
-- Grace Lee Boggs

* The ultimate test of a moral society
is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We must look towards societies that set a high value on nonaggression and noncompetitive ness, and therefore handle conflicts by nonviolent means. We can see how child rearing patterns produce nurturing adult behaviors.”
-- Elise Boulding

* We’re never going to have respectful and reverential relationships with the planet- and sensible policies about what we put in the air, the soil, the water – if very young children don’t begin learning about these things literally in their houses, backyards, streets and schools. We need to have human beings who are oriented that way from their earliest memories.”
-- Elise Boulding

* 35 million people in the U.S. are hungry or don't know where their next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children. If another country were doing this to our children, we'd be at war.
-- Jeff Bridges

* Many people think that hunger is unavoidable in any society, even a society that is blessed with great abundance. That is not true. The European community does not have widespread hunger. America, which leads the world in so many ways, can end childhood hunger within its borders.
-- Pierce Brosnan

* "We want the world to focus on children whose lives have been devastated by AIDS. The millions of children who are missing their parents; their childhood, their future but most importantly, they are missing YOU. Everyone can make a real difference. Your voice is needed in a global movement that can change their world."
-- Pierce Brosnan

* “We are asking people to understand that slavery still exists today; in fact, according to a recent New York Times article, if you count the number of women and children in bonded labor, domestic slavery or sexual slavery today, there are more slaves in the world than at any other time in history.”
-- Charlotte Bunch

* "Every minute of every day, a child under 15 is infected with HIV - the overwhelming majority of children under 15 who are HIV-positive get infected through their mothers at birth. Without treatment, half of these children die before they reach their second birthday."
-- Gabriel Byrne

The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.
-- Pablo Casals

* You must work - we must all work to make the world worthy of its children.
-- Pablo Casals

* "Music can speak louder than words, and I will use my music to speak out on behalf of children everywhere."
-- Judy Collins

* "UNICEF is helping mothers realize their dreams for the future — a future in which the basic needs for a child’s survival: food, clean water and simple health care — are guaranteed."
-- Jane Curtin

* As a people, we value family, education and success. Hunger is an enemy to all three. Scientific studies have demonstrated that even brief periods of hunger can permanently inhibit a child's mental, emotional and physical growth. Kids who are hungry do poorly in school and are unlikely to grow into productive adults. For families, experiencing hunger means living in a world of isolation and shame. Caring citizens must put an end to this disgrace.
-- Ted Danson

"The greatest gift we can give to our children is to raise them in a culture of peace."
-- Louise Diamond

Some of us believe in communism,
Some of us believe in capitalism,
Some of us believe in spiritualism,
Some of us believe in materialism
Some mothers believe in heavy dandy,
Some fathers believe in understanding.
Some of us believe in total freedom,
Some of us believe in laying the rules on.
But the children believe in friends,
For the children of the world,
Every boy and girl,
All they'll know is what we teach 'em,
Most of us fail when we try to reach 'em
For the children believe in having friends
-- Donovan

* We live in a complex world and the motivation to use violence to solve problems needs to be seriously questioned. It is essential that we help our children perceive peaceful alternatives. We need to use these troubled times as an opportunity to create a new vision for the future.
-- Naomi Drew

The only way children can learn the habit of forgiveness is by seeing us, their parents, forgive others and forgive ourselves.
-- Naomi Drew

* If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

* Many times, a child's struggle against hunger begins before he or she is born because the mother is undernourished. Making sure prenatal care and proper nutrition are available for expectant mothers in need is a critical part of ending childhood hunger.
-- Hector Elizondo

* Unicef's education initiative does not seek to impose, but to initiate and integrate. It does, however, aim to address the huge bias towards education for boys at the expense of girls in so many cultures.
-- Ralph Fiennes

* Unicef wants to encourage a sense of stability for a child.
-- Ralph Fiennes

* If we are ever to have real peace in this world we shall have to begin with the children.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* “It is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage of wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will never know peace”
-- Danny Glover

"If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives."
-- Danny Glover

-- Emma Goldman

Our society is only as healthy as our most vulnerable citizens. It is unconscionable that the weakest links in our country are our hungry children. No other Western industrialized nation has widespread hunger within its borders. We really must put an end to hunger in the United States if we are to keep our prosperity and protect the future.
-- Linda Gray

* "...in the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty."
~ Antonio Guterres

* Have we forgotten about the children, and thus forsaken the next generation?"
-- Audrey Hepburn

"I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.”
-- Audrey Hepburn

* "Giving kids clothes and food is one thing but it's much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important, and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use it in the service of other people."
-- Dolores Huerta

* It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
-- Hubert Humphrey

* "Having visited Oxfam-funded school programs in rural communities has made me realise how vital education is to developing countries in bringing people out of poverty and giving them a sense of dignity, self-worth and confidence."
-- Scarlett Johansson

* "I'm not a statistician, but it doesn't take a genious to work out that 100 million children being denied an education is ridiculous. There is nothing lost in translation here, it's obvious that's wrong.
-- Scarlett Johansson

* “Over 20 million children of conflict are out of school. Education is often forgotten.”
~ Angelina Jolie

To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.
-- June Jordan

"...we condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakeable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money- bitten, frightened, adult lives
-- June Jordan

* The message of our campaign is "Make every mother and child count". This campaign is not just about health. It is also a powerful call for radical progress in women's rights and the rights of their children. Too often, the health of mothers and children does not count. In too many parts of the world, they are forgotten.
-- Liya Kebede

* We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

* "I felt my country should do more for its children. Its children are not born gangsters. In fact, they have in them the potential to be heroes because most of the kids who are in these gangs are leaders, very charismatic and good organizers."
-- Azim Khamisa

* I think it's important for me as an actor that I say these are the issues I'm going to be committed to. One of them for me is women and children's health around the world and their rights;the other is ovarian cancer.
-- Nicole Kidman

* Give young people a chance, our generation may just surprise you!
-- Marc Kielburger

“Let's concede that we have decided to let our children grow up in two separate nations, and lead two separate kinds of lives. If, on the other hand, we have the courage to rise to this challenge to name what's happening within our inner-city schools, then we also need the courage to be activist and go out and fight like hell to change it.”
-- Jonathan Kozol

“I write books to change the world. Perhaps I can only change one little piece of that world. But if I can empower teachers and good citizens to give these children, who are the poorest of the poor, the same opportunity we give our own kids, then I'll feel my life has been worth it.”
-- Jonathan Kozol

* "We're not locked in to these conditions that degrade the environment, and jeopardize the future of our children."
-- Dennis Kucinich

* There can be no better measure of our governance than the way we treat our children, and no greater failing on our part than to allow them to be subjected to violence, abuse or exploitation.
-- Jessica Lange

* "There is no greater cause than making the world fit for children. I feel very strongly about carrying on the family tradition by working with UNICEF to help improve the lives and well-being of children everywhere."
-- Téa Leoni

* "If I have brightened up one single sad childhood, then I have at least accomplished something in my life."
-- Astrid Lindgren

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
-- John Locke

* The impact of armed conflict on children is everyone's responsibility. And it must be everyone's concern.
-- Graça Machel-Mandela

* In a disparate world, children are a unifying force capable of bringing us all together in support of a common ethic.
-- Graça Machel-Mandela

* Therefore my challenge to each of you ... is that you ask yourself what you can do to make a difference. And then take that action, no matter how large or how small. For our children have a right to peace.
-- Graça Machel-Mandela

it is clear that increasingly, children are targets, not incidental casualties, of armed conflict.
-- Graça Machel-Mandela

* "Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."
-- Nelson Mandela

* Care for all the animals they need our help
Care for all the children stop thinking of ourselves.
And if we work together to try for harmony
Someday we will live in peace
-- Country Joe McDonald

* I want to live long enough to see every school child in the world getting a good, nutritious lunch every day.
-- George McGovern

* 'As fathers, we know what a force for life children can be. They represent all of our futures. UNICEF is successfully giving children and young people all over the world opportunities and hope. Just like the ones we met on the Long Way Down - protecting them from exploitation and giving them chances in life.'
-- Ewan McGregor

I am so honoured to have been given this opportunity to become an Ambassador. It’s a new and different venture for me and one that I know will widen my wider perspective on life. I’m in a position to use the recognition from my work to do something really positive for children
-- Ewan McGregor

* "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

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.
-- Margaret Mead

"No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded."
-- Margaret Mead

I do not believe in a simplistic and inflammatory view of good and evil. I believe this is a big world full of men, women, and children who struggle to eat, to love, to work, to protect their families, their beliefs, and their dreams.
-- Sean Penn

* “Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!”
-- Utah Phillips

* "As a nation, this is the moment to start seriously investing our time, energy and resources into proven methods of reducing violence, both within our nation as well as internationally. The cost of violence to our culture and our children is simply not sustainable."
-- Joaquin Phoenix

"As a nation, this is the moment to start seriously investing our time, energy and resources into proven methods of reducing violence, both within our nation as well as internationally. The cost of violence to our culture and our children is simply not sustainable. I have learned that in the United States, youth homicide rates are more than 10 times that of other leading industrialized nations, this is just one example of the challenges we face. Is this really a legacy we want to leave our children? There is a better way.
-- Joaquin Phoenix

* All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
-- Pablo Picasso

* Small loans can transform lives, especially the lives of women and children. The poor can become empowered instead of disenfranchised. Homes can be built, jobs can be created, businesses can be launched, and individuals can feel a sense of worth again.
-- Natalie Portman

* Together we can prevent genocide from happening again. Together we can make a better future for our children. -- Dith Pran

* Land mines, torture equipment, cluster bombs, chemical weapons are weapons designed to inflict pain and death on human beings. Most victims are civilians, women and children. How can arms manufacturers, weapons designers, plant managers, politicians, who have families of their own whom they love, be so insensitive when it comes to the suffering of other human beings?
-- José Ramos-Horta

* As long as people and the planet are being exploited, and billions of dollars are being made precisely because laborers and the environment are being abused and used up, there will be children going hungry and ecological destruction.
~ Ocean Robbins

* Are we doing enough to help our children create a more peaceful world?
-- Debbie Robins

* "I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs"
-- Anita Roddick

If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element in the conservation of the natural resources of this country.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

The function of our Government is to insure to all its citizens, now and hereafter, their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we of this generation destroy the resources from which our children would otherwise derive their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to support a population, and so either degrade the standard of living or deprive the coming generations of their fight to life on this continent.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

* Ordinary people like you and me have the chance to make a tremendous difference for mothers and their children worldwide
-- Meg Ryan

* The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'
-- Jeffrey Sachs

* "I want my child to walk in a world guided by love. This means that everybody will have a job, or the resources to take care of basic needs. A world where families are not oppressed and are connected to their neighbors and their communities, where the best in humanity is honored. That's when we will truly be at peace."
-- Malika Sanders

if you can just see all the children of the world as your own, all the mothers of the world as you are, we can make a huge difference.
-- Susan Sarandon

* When my children wake up in the morning they know they will eat breakfast, get hugs from their parents, go to a good, safe school. Plates are full and store windows are glittering. But at the same time the great majority of the world's children and women stand - no - shiver on the precipice
-- Susan Sarandon

Everyone is always talking about our defense effort in terms of protecting women and children, but no one ever asks the women and children what they think.
~ Patricia Schroeder

* There is an ancient Indian saying: "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." If we use this ethic as a moral compass, then our rendezvous with reality can also become a rendezvous with opportunity.
~ Patricia Schroeder

* I feel that our planet is in peril and that creating a sustainable planet for my children and my children’s children is the most important thing I can do in this lifetime.
-- Kyra Sedgwick

Ever since I had my first child I have been passionate in my commitment to preserve our precious resources for my children and their children’s children. This is the obligation of all of us visiting this planet for a limited time.
-- Kyra Sedgwick

* "We are the ancestors of our grandchildren's children. We look after them, just as our ancestors look after us. We aren't here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren."
-- Roy Sesana

* "The schools play an important role when it comes down to protecting children against violence.Violence is one of the principal reasons why children don't go to school. It's also one of the causes of the alarming school dropout rates."
-- Shakira

* "We know that many boys and girls leave school because of poverty, because they have to work. However, there are an important number of children who abandon their studies because of the abuses they're subject to by teachers and their own parents."
-- Shakira

* "My goal in life is to leave behind a safe and healthy world for our children. Before I leave this world, I want to be satisfied that at least I tried. I know I can make a difference, even if it might only be a small one."
-- Maisie Shiell

In the past, children were all too often viewed more as property than people. Many victories for children's rights have been won in the last 100 years, such as child labor laws, protecting children from having to work long hours in unsafe conditions; public education, allowing all children to have access to learning; and laws preventing child abuse. But there is still much to do in protecting children's rights around the world.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* Can we make a better world for our children? I believe we can, if enough people are concerned and get involved in changing what is wrong with society.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock

* It's up to each of us to help create a better world for our children.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock

* “Receive the children in reverence, educate them in love, and send them forth in freedom.”
-- Rudolf Steiner

* A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.
-- Marlo Thomas

Every child deserves a chance at a life filled with love, laughter, friends and family. We are working to find the cures that will give these youngsters a fighting chance. When a child or parent faces an uncertain disease like cancer, they can find hope at St. Jude -- a place where miracles can and do happen.
-- Marlo Thomas

* I want a different world. One where I don’t wake up thinking I’m so lucky to be able to feed my daughter, and able to give people a clean drink of water. I don’t want images of starving babies at the breast in my mind. I want that to change. And if I want that, I had better do something about it.
-- Emma Thompson

“It’s not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that’s made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much?
-- Emma Thompson

The situation of the world around us can be painted in a picture of the darkest possible colours. On one hand, the arms race absorbs for deadly purposes 40 million dollars every 24 hours. On the other hand, immeasurable poverty affects the lives of three-quarters of the men, women and children in the world around us. The efforts for disarmament must therefore be an inextricable part of the efforts to solve the common problems of our time, problems which ultimately involve our very survival, the possibility to continue the human experiment."
-- Inga Thorsson

"Yes, I want to remind people that in the Indigenous Traditions, women are very important. Not because we are told we are important but because we know that since forever and always, we have had the power and the capacity to give birth, raise women and men and to take care of the earth. It is today that I thusly give celebration to all the women on Earth. I would like to ask my sisters to give up the thoughts and actions of the word victim. We are no longer Victims & We are strong! I would like to address an acknowledgement to each woman here today. We have the power and that power is rising. Use it to preserve, teach, share, and raise our voices, to save our children, our planet, our people, and our earth mother. Don't share the things that have hurt us but share what can save us. Turn our scars into Stars! Come together and reclaim what is inherently ours, the power to bring forth nurturing Peace! May Peace Prevail!"
-- Mary Thunder

Children, if you are tired, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.
-- Harriet Tubman

* "There is no greater legacy that we can leave our children and grandchildren than a peaceful and safer world."
~ Ted Turner

* "Children are a wonderful gift . . . They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are."
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

* ...just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.
-- Desmond Tutu

* "Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education."
-- Alice Waters

"I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land...to know how to nourish themselves...and to know how to connect with the community around them."
-- Alice Waters

Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives.
-- Alice Waters

* The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?
-- Paul Wellstone

“I hope people will not think we are encouraging people to break the law. But our actions should teach people, and children, to scrutinize laws against human life, and they should be broken to prove a point.”
-- Barbara Wiedner

My cause was justice, not vengeance. My work is for a better tomorrow and a more secure future for our children and grandchildren.
-- Simon Wiesenthal

* We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, lives at home, at work and at play to be lives of joy and peace.
-- Betty Williams

Governments do not have the answers. Indeed quite the reversal. A lot of times they not only do not have the answers, they themselves are the problem. If we are committed to helping our world’s children, then we must begin to create solutions from the bottom up.
-- Betty Williams

In a world that we know can feed itself, upwards of 40,000 children die very day from conditions of malnutrition. Surely we must question why we are allowing this carnage to continue
-- Betty Williams

Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
-- Marianne Williamson

"A new educational system in which all children born shall have the same advantage of physical, industrial, mental and moral culture, and thus be equally prepared at maturity to enter upon active, responsible and useful lives. . . . In so doing, it strikes a fatal blow at . . . the most demoralizing of all monopolies. . . educational superiority."
-- Victoria Woodhull

"Hundreds, thousands, aye, millions of human beings, men, women and children, wander the streets of our cities and the highways of our country, hungry, ragged and cold, vainly seeking in this land of plenty, where physical want should be unknown."
-- Victoria Woodhull

* Education is the way to move mountains, to build bridges, to change the world. Education is the path to the future. I believe that education is indeed freedom.
-- Oprah Winfrey

* My hope for the planet is my children and grandchildren.
-- Joanne Woodward

* We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems. While we still live, let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution so that your world will be better than ours and the world of your children even better.
-- Rosalyn Yalow

If we are to have faith that mankind will survive and thrive on the face of the earth, we must believe that each succeeding generation will be wiser than its progenitors. We transmit to you, the next generation, the total sum of our knowledge. Yours is the responsibility to use it, add to it, and transmit it to your children.
-- Rosalyn Yalow

* We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
-- Howard Zinn

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