Fred Rogers Quotes

The thing I remember best about successful people I've met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they're doing, and they love it in front of others.

Imagine what our real neighbors would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. There have been so many stories about the lack of courtesy, the impatience of today's world, road rage and even restaurant rage. Sometimes, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person. Think of the ripple effect that can be created when we nourish someone. One kind empathetic word has a wonderful way of turning into many.

[Dr. McFarland] once invited a well-known sculptor from the faculty of Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) to come to our nursery school. Dr. McFarland said to him, 'I don't want you to teach sculpting. All I want you to do is to love clay in front of the children.'

And that's what he did. He came once a week for the whole term, sat with the four- and five-year-olds as they played, and he 'loved' his clay in front of them. The adults who have worked at the center for many years have said that not before or since have the children in that school used clay so imaginatively as when they had those visits from the sculptor who obviously delighted in his medium.

It’s very important, no matter what you may do professionally, to keep alive some of the healthy interests of your youth. Children’s play is not just kids’ stuff. Children’s play is rather the stuff of most future inventions.

Later on, he brought that same sense of hard work and inner discipline to his work. Whether he was working on a script for the Neighborhood programs or on a speech, he fretted over the words, attempting to make the content meaningful. I can remember his saying over and over again, as he worked at the fourth or fifth draft of whatever he happened to be writing, “Simple is better.

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.

You know, 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're loved and capable of loving.

I've learned what is most worth knowing through living each day as it is given to me. It cannot be 'taught' but it can be 'caught' from those who live their lives right along with us.

What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness.
A person with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pediatrician is more than a medical doctor. You're MUCH more than your job description or your age or your income or your output.

All we’re ever asked to do in this life is to treat our neighbor — especially our neighbor who is in need — exactly as we would hope to be treated ourselves. That’s our ultimate responsibility.

Love doesn’t mean a state of perfect caring. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now — and to go on caring through joyful times and through times that may bring us pain.

I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.

The way you would draw a tree is different from the way anyone else would draw a tree — and that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

A berry ripens in its own good time . . . and so does a child’s readiness. Just as the one needs water and sunlight, the other needs the patient reassurance of loving adults who can trust children to grow according to their own timetables.

"In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of — moments when we human beings can say "I love you," "I'm proud of you," "I forgive you," "I'm grateful for you." That's what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff."