Fred Rogers Quotes

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet;

how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

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.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.

But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

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.

The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.

Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.

At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service.

Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.

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.

What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves.

What really matters is helping others win too. Even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring.

It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

I think everybody longs to be loved and longs to know that he or she is lovable and, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered .

. . just one kind word to another person.

Feelings about money -- saving and spending, holding back and letting go -- start very early in our lives. Stingy people have often been forced to give when they were very, very young, when they weren't ready. And generous people have often been really appreciated when they were very young.

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.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

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.

A love of learning has a lot to do with learning that we are loved.

Transitions are almost always signs of growth, but they can bring feelings of loss. To get somewhere new, we may have to leave somewhere else behind.

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?

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.

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self.

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.

I'm fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of 'powerlessness.' Join the club, we are not in control. God is.

The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.

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.

Fame is a four-letter word; and like tape or zoom or face or pain or life or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.

One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.

Human relationships are primary in all of living. When the gusty winds blow and shake our lives, if we know that people care about us, we may bend with the wind ... but we won’t break.

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.

It may take months or years for a wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about a wish that you'll do all you can to make it happen.

The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away.

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. We're helping ourselves stay in touch with that spirit, too. It's the things we play withand the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.

Real strength has to do with helping others.

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.

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.

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.

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

Anyone who has ever been able to sustain good work has had at least one person--and often many--who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring, it is an active noun like struggle.

I recently learned that in an average lifetime a person walks about sixty-five thousand miles. That's two and a half times around the world. I wonder where your steps will take you. I wonder how you'll use the rest of the miles you're given.

When I was a boy I used to think that STRONG meant having big muscles, great physical power; but the longer I live, the more I realize that real strength has much more to do with what is NOT seen. Real strength has to do with helping others.

If it's mentionable, it's manageable.

Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.