Quotes

I think people who produce and perform on programs for children should have as a prerequisite some sort of course to understand their audience. You wouldn't put a newsman on the air who didn't know how to pronounce Vietnam. But we give millions of dollars to these people who are producing cartoons and they have no earthly idea of what they're doing to a kid.

I got into television because I hated it so. And I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.

We have to remember to whom the airwaves belong, and we must put as great an emphasis on the nurturing of the human personality as we can. I believe that those of us who are the producers and purveyors of television -- or video games or newspapers or any mass media -- I believe that we are the servants of this nation.

You know you don't have to be an actor when you read a book to a child. All you need is to simply love what you're reading. Even just enjoying the pictures together is a great start. When you share a book with a child, you're saying to them that books are important. That's a gift that can nurture them all through their lives.

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

You know, you don't have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable.

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

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.

How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.

I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.

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.

[2001] You know, it happens so often. I walk down the street and somebody twenty or thirty or forty years old would come up to me and say, "You ARE Mister Rogers, aren't you?" And then they tell me about growing up with the Neighborhood and how they're passing on to the children they know what they found to be important in our television work. Like expressing their feelings through music and art and dance and sports and drama and computers and writing and, invariably, we end our little time together with a hug. I'm just so proud of all of you who have grown up with us. And I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead. But I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger: I like you just the way you are. And what's more, I'm so grateful to you for helping the children in your life to know that you will do everything you can to keep them safe, and to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods. It's such a good feeling to know that we are life-long friends.

You don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things, without which humankind cannot survive.

I am tired of hearing people, who have long ago set aside the concerns of childhood, telling everybody what children really need. I'll tell you what children need: they need adults who will protect them from the ever-ready molders of their world.

I'd like to be remembered for being a compassionate human being who happened to be fortunate enough to be born at a time when there was a fabulous thing called television that could allow me to use all the talents that I had been given.

Boys are boys from the beginning, girls are girls right from the start.