Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. - Sydney J. Harris

And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; only when we allow his independence can he then freely offer us love and respect, without conflict and without resentment. It is the hardest lesson to learn that the goal of parenthood is not to reign forever but to abdicate gracefully at the right time.

Young people know less than we do, but they understand more; their perception has not yet been blunted by compromise, fatigue, rationalization, and the mistaking of mere respectability for morality.

Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.