Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"I have tried to encourage children to love and care for themselves and to love the parents who care for them. That’s the way true neighborliness grows — loving others as we first loved ourselves."

- Fred Rogers

"Love is not merely a feeling but an enacted emotion. 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."

- Fred Rogers

"Love is not 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."

- Fred Rogers

"Grandparents are both our past and our future. In some ways they are what has gone before, and in others, they are what we will become."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"Play is really the work of childhood."

- Fred Rogers

"The connections we make in the course of life—maybe that's what heaven is."

- Fred Rogers

"To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"But as I grew, my heroes changed so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child in this life is a hero to me."

- Fred Rogers

"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.’"

- Fred Rogers

"If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as we and they are, then I believe we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what ‘good’ parenting means."

- Fred Rogers

"Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort."

- Fred Rogers

"It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to."

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

"It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it."

- Fred Rogers

"When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero."

- Fred Rogers

"Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning."

- Fred Rogers

"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth."

- Fred Rogers

"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth."

- Fred Rogers

"Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life."

- Fred Rogers

"I like you just the way you are."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"The connections we make in the course of life—maybe that’s what heaven is."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"We need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes."

- Fred Rogers

"Real strength has to do with helping others."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable, can be more manageable."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

"“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.”"

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"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

"Play is frequently mentioned as a diversion from serious learning. For preschool, however, play is serious learning. “Childhood work is play.”"

- Fred Rogers

"Grandparents can be very special resources. Just being close to them reassures a child, without words, about change and continuity, about what went before and what will come after."

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

""Often when you think you are at the end of something, you are at the beginning of something else.""

- Fred Rogers

"Often when you think you are at the end of something, you are at the beginning of something else."

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

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

- Fred Rogers

"Life is for service."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"Some days, doing ‘ the best we can ’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect — on any front — and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else."

- Fred Rogers

"Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else."

- Fred Rogers

"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."

- Fred Rogers

"When children pretend, they're using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero."

- Fred Rogers

"It’s the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives."

- Fred Rogers