quotes by Robert Fulghum

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love."
— Robert Fulghum

"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."
— Robert Fulghum

"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."
— Robert Fulghum

"Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts..."
— Robert Fulghum

"Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things)

"We're all a little weird. Life's a little weird. When you find someone whose weirdness is compatible with yours, you fall into mutual weirdness together."
— Robert Fulghum

"If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy."
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: ‘Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way’. "
— Robert Fulghum

"Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some."
— Robert Fulghum

"Peace is not something you wish for,  it is something you make, something you are, something you do,and something you give away. "
— Robert Fulghum

"It doesn’t matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"You may never have proof of your importance but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary."
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are-when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"The heart will turn to a prune if love is always by the numbers. How will you know if someone really loves you if they only meet your expectations and not your needs?"
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?"
— Robert Fulghum (Uh-Oh)

"One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage."
— Robert Fulghum

"Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid."
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts."
— Robert Fulghum

"Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God."
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished."
— Robert Fulghum (Uh-Oh)

"Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"It’s the spirit here that counts. The time may be long, the vehicle may be strange or unexpected. But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand, everything is still possible."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Imagination is more important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die on our beds. They to go and die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don’t help people who don’t have better values than you do."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Machines and relatives get most of the yelling. But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Don't worry that your children never listen to you: worry that they are always watching you.
"
— Robert Fulghum

"What I notice is that every adult or child I give a new set of Crayolas to goes a little funny. The kids smile, get a glazed look on their faces, pour the crayons out, and just look at them for a while....The adults always get the most wonderful kind of sheepish smile on their faces--a mixture of delight and nostalgia and silliness. And they immediately start telling you about all their experiences with Crayolas."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things)

"If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit fizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things)

"We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things)

"It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday."
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"We can do no great things; only small things with great love.(mother Teresa)"
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
— Robert Fulghum

"If you do not join the dancing you will feel foolish. So why not dance? And i will tell you a secret: If you do not join the dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying. if you dance badly to begin and we laugh, what is the sin in that? We will begin there."
— Robert Fulghum (What On Earth Have I Done?: Stories, Observations, and Affirmations)

"When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness- and call it love-true love."
— Robert Fulghum

"Nobody goes "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here's the drainpipe--a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn't even think about it--just goes. Disaster befalls it--rain, flood, powerful foces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, "To hell with that"? No. Sun comes out--clears things up--dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?"
— Robert Fulghum (Maybe, Maybe Not)

"Alice's robes were seasonal. She hadn't exactly planned
it that way, but that's how it evolved. In winter there was a long,
warm, deep purple terry-cloth robe. In spring she changed to a new
blue-and-white cotton kimono. In summer there was a white chenille
bathrobe with a pattern on it, and in the fall she wore a cotton robe her
husband had bought her as a surprise gift. They were useful, practical
garments, but when she thought about it, she realized she wore them as
much for the feelings and memories they evoked as much as their physical
comfort. When I told her I thought her robes had become like temple
garments, she smiled,"Yes.""
— Robert Fulghum

"Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride?"
— Robert Fulghum

"Why is love easy? I don’t know. And the raccoons don’t say."
— Robert Fulghum

"The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)