Childhood is a golden part of our life that we can never return to. Childhood is the most special day of life, where we enjoy the little things. Experiences in childhood help us to shape our future.

Childhood is when the person that we are going to start to take form. The people in our lives at that time made a big difference. And we have the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of children today.

Although no one’s childhood is perfect, by creating positive childhood memories for children, we can create a loving environment for them to grow and develop into happy, capable adults.

So, If you are looking for quotes about childhood to find a bit of nostalgia or perhaps to caption a throwback picture on social media, you have come to the right place. Here is a list of awesome childhood quotes. And if you love these quotes from childhood, make sure you also check out these childhood friends quotes and inspirational quotes about kids.

180 Best Childhood Quotes And Sayings

Top 10 Childhood Quotes

“What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you’re so wrecked it’s hard to believe you ever were a child?” – Mitch Albom

“We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open.” – Harry Edwards

“We carry our childhood with us.” – Gary D. Schmidt

“There is no land like the land of your childhood.” – Michael Powell

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” – Graham Greene

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.” – Elizabeth Lawrence

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” – Nelson Mandela

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” – Walt Steightiff

“The soul is healed by being with children.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

What is Childhood?

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“Childhoods never last. But everyone deserves one.” – Wendy Dale

“Childhood shouldn’t be complicated.”

“Childhood memories are timeless treasures of the heart.”

“Childhood memories are the sweetest memories of the past.”

“Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child’s eye – it is very beautiful.” – Kailash Satyarthi

“Childhood is where dreams are born, and time is never planned.”

“Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul.” – Ivan Doig

“Childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons.” – Jerry Smith

“Childhood is the light of our life, we must keep it safe within our hearts.” – Marinela Reka

“Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good.” – Katherine Anne Porter

“Childhood is the best of all the seasons of life, and the longer it lasts with happy memories, the stronger the emotional stability in adulthood.” – Venugopal Acharya

“Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can excel academically. Childhood is a small window of time to play, build friendships, and have fun while learning along the way.”

“Childhood is like contemplating a beautiful region as one rides backwards, one really becomes aware of the beauty at that moment, that very instant, when it begins to vanish.” – Soren Kierkegaard

“Childhood is like being drunk, everyone remembers what you did, except you.”

“Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in afterlife the images first presented to it.” – Samuel Smiles

“Childhood is filled with magic because that is what children look for.”

“Childhood is about giving children the roots to grow and the wings to fly.”

“Childhood is a short season to be enjoyed not rushed.”

“Childhood is a journey, not a race.”

“Childhood is a collection of life’s most precious moments.”

“Childhood is a chance for kids to discover who they are before the world tells them who they should be.”

“Childhood friendship is the most beautiful memory that can never be replaced.”

“Childhood dreams are forever stuffed in our souls. Take them out and play sometimes.” – Angie Wieland-Crosby

Happy Childhood Quotes

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“You’re meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there’s a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.” – Emma Donoghue

“To every child—I dream of a world where you can laugh, dance, sing, learn, live in peace and be happy.” – Malala Yousafzai

“The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood.” – David Lynch

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” – Oscar Wilde

“One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to cope in ways you never had to.” – Piers Anthony

“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.” – Agatha Christie

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, and age only matters if you’re a cheese.” – Rick Steves

“It is never too late to have a happy childhood.” – Tom Robbins

“I’m one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.” – Jonathan Coe

“I hope when my children grow up, they can look back and say, ‘I had a happy childhood.”

“I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn’t have. But we had a very happy childhood – pretty much ideal, in fact.” – Natalie Babbitt

“I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you’re going to be an Irish writer.” – Maeve Binchy

“I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort.” – Geraldine McCaughrean

“I had a remarkably happy childhood; whatever scars I have are self-inflicted.” – James Carville

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.” – Neil Gaiman

“Don’t we all look back in longing, those of us who had happy childhoods? Because the greatest loss we ever know is not the loss of family or place or money, it is the loss of innocence. There is forever a hollow place in our hearts once we realise that darkness rings the campfire.” – Carolyn Hart

“Every happy memory created in childhood is a treasure of time.”

“Children are not only innocent and curious but also optimistic and joyful and essentially happy. They are, in short, everything adults wish they could be.” – Carolyn Haywood

“A happy childhood lasts forever.”

“A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood.” – Amos Bronson Alcott

“A happy childhood is perhaps the most fortunate gift in life.” – Dorothy Richardson

Early Childhood Quotes

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“You never realize how much you need your childhood until it is over.”

“You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.” – John J. Plomp

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” – Kahlil Gibran

“Whoever said that childhood is the happiest time of your life is a liar, or a fool.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” – Angela Schwindt

“Whenever you miss your childhood, ride a bicycle! It is crazy how it can take you back in an instant.”

“When you hear the words ‘magic’ and ‘story’, they will probably evoke thoughts of your favorite fairy tales from childhood.” – Tony DiTerlizzi

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood.” – Sam Ewing

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” – Patrick Rothfuss

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so.” – C.S. Lewis

“What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles, it was a miraculous world.” – G.K. Chesterton

“The people in your childhood are the ones that you will miss the most when you are an adult.”

“The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.” – Ellen Glasgow

“The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day.” – John Milton

“Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.” – Daniel Black

“Some days I wish I could go back to my childhood. Not to change anything, but to feel a few things twice.”

“Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Praise the innocence of childhood soon forgotten.” – Will Leamon

“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.” – Fred Rogers

“Children will not remember you for the material things you provided, but for the feeling that you cherished them.” – Richard L. Evans

“Children will listen to you after they feel listened to.” – Jane Nelsen

“Children still need a childhood with dirt, mud, puddles, tree, sticks, and tadpoles.” – Brooke Hampton

“Children need models rather than critics.” – Joseph Joubert

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead

“Children make your life important.” – Erma Bombeck

“Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.” – W.E.B. DuBois

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grownups have another kind.” – C.S. Lewis

“Children begin by loving their parents, as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” – Oscar Wilde,’ The Picture Of Dorian Gray’

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” – John F. Kennedy

“Children are one third of our population and all of our future.” – Unknown

“Children are magic because they look for it.” – Christopher Moore

“Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” – Lady Bird Johnson

“Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” – Maria Montessori (see more quotes from Maria Montessori)

“Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.” – Maria Montessori

Funny Childhood Quotes

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“One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.” – Jane Goodall

“One of the great lessons I remember my dad constantly emphasizing in our family while I was growing up was ‘Use your R&I.’That is, use your resourcefulness and initiative. He taught us that we were not victims of the circumstances surrounding us, but rather masters of our own destiny.” – Stephen Covey

“Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.” – Malcolm De Chazal

“O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.” – Leo Rosten

“Never have more children than you have car windows.” – Erma Bombeck

“My goal is to give my child the best childhood I can.”

“My childhood may be over, but that doesn’t mean playtime is.” – Ron Olson

“Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” – Jim Henson

“It’s a sad moment when you realize your childhood is over.”

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back on your childhood everything is different?”

“In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees.” – Philip Roth

“I don’t want to grow up,’ she thought. ‘There can’t be anything nicer in the world than this – being with the others, having fun with them. No – I don’t want to grow up!’” – Enid Blyton

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be… This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages… Far too many people misunderstand what ‘putting away childish things’ means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grown up. When I’m with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don’t ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child’s awareness and joy, and be fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grown up.” – Madeleine L’Engle

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.” – Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children.” – Diana, Princess of Wales

“How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood when I found recollection presents them to view!” – Samuel Woodwort

“Every child you encounter is a divine appointment.” – Wess Stafford

“Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think.” – Anne Frank

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” – Robert Brault

“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.” – Charles R Swindoll

“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?” – Sarah Addison Allen

“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?” – Sarah Addison Allen

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” – Robert A. Heinlein

“Don’t burden your children with worries about the future. Let them be little. Let them enjoy their childhood.”

“Contemplating childhood is like contemplating a beautiful region as one rides backwards; one really becomes aware of the beauty at that moment, that very instant, when it begins to vanish.” – Soren Kierkegaard

“Cleaning the house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.” – Phyllis Diller

“At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.” – Jane D. Hull

“As I learned from growing up, you don’t mess with your grandmother.” – Prince William

“All of us are products of our childhood.” – Michael Jackson

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

“Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people.” – Henry Cloud

“Adults are just outdated children.” – Dr. Seuss

“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” – Dr. Seuss

“A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.” – Robert Brault

“A child only gets one childhood.”

“A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Childhood Love Quotes

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“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.” – George Eliot

“What one loves in childhood stays in their heart forever.” – Hary Jo Putney

“If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.” – Bette Davis

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” – Albert Einstein

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” – Tom Stoppard

“I’m so thankful I had a childhood before technology took over.”

“I wish I could turn back time to the good old days of my childhood.”

“I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway… let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.” – C. JoyBell C.

“I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I’m spending my adulthood wishing I were younger.”

“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

“I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted – stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container.” – Bill Bryson

“The best childhood memories are the ones stitched together with love.”

“I love those random childhood memories that make me smile no matter what is going on in my life right now.”

Childhood Friends Quotes

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“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” – Aristotle

“When I was growing up, I remember my mother saying, “Your friends are like elevators; they will bring you up or down – the choice is yours.” – David DeNotaris

“Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.” – G. Randolf

“There are friends, there is family, and there are childhood friends that become family.”

“Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.” – Crystal Woods

“Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.” – Clifton Fadiman

“Lucky are those that still have their childhood friends.”

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common.” – Lyle Lovett

“Parenting is not giving your child everything they want. Parenting is not being your child’s friend. Parenting is about preparing your child to be a useful and respectful person in society.” – GloZell

“Happiness is reconnecting with a lost childhood friend.”

“Happiness is having a best friend since childhood.”

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. … It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” – C. S. Lewis

“At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it.”

“Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” – Francis Bacon

Childhood Memories Quotes

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“When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly.” – Dan Simmons

“We didn’t realize we were making memories. We just knew we were having fun.” – Winnie The Pooh

“The mud and dirt will wash off, but the childhood memories will last a lifetime.”

“The memories we make in our childhood are the ones that will carry with us for the rest of our lives.”

“Sometimes, it’s better to bunk a class and enjoy with friends, because today, when I look back, marks never make me laugh, but memories do.” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

“Sometimes my childhood memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.”

“Take time to play with your kids…for long after they are grown the memories will remain.”

“Sometimes I wish I could go back to my childhood and capture all those happy memories.”

“Nothing is as nostalgic as remembering your childhood memories.”

“Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.” – Julian Barnes

“It’s the little moments in childhood that make the biggest memories.”

“In the happiest of our childhood memories our parents were happy too.” – Robert Brault

“Happy times come and go, but the best childhood memories stay forever.”

“Happy childhood memories is the greatest legacy we can leave our kids.”

“A day spent making happy memories with your kids is never wasted.”

“A throwback to my childhood, when the times were good and the memories even better.”

“I may not be able to give my children everything they want in life, but I can give them happy childhood memories.”

“Happiness is listening to stories from your childhood.”

“Happiness is laughing at old childhood photos.”

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Growing up, my parents were my heroes, in the way they conducted their lives.” – Chris Hemsworth

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” – Chili Davis

“Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side, our roots will always be tangled.” – Ally Condie

“Great childhoods are made of feelings of connection and positive experiences, not things.”

“Give your kids the childhood you wish you had.”

“For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.” – John Connolly

“Every time you miss your childhood, ride on a bicycle!” – Mehmet Murat İldan

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