Status Updates From Children Don't Start Wars

"We don't like children to watch the horrors on the news because, we say, it affects them too strongly. We feel we can take it, but what this actually means is that we are able to ignore it. ... When we say that we don't want children to have to face such prospects we are actually protecting ourselves from the perfectly rational distress and fear that younger people have not yet learned to suppress."

"Obedience is a concept invented by those in authority to make it easier to achieve their own ends, to relieve them of the tasks of persuasion and justification."

"We train ourselves to withstand emotion. Part of growing up is learning not to cry over fairy-tales, but in learning not to care too much about the fate of characters in fiction we diminish its power to move us. What is worse is that we also learn a certain indifference to the sufferings of real people."