Ari’s Reviews > Children Don't Start Wars > Status Update

"Small children are eager to be helpful, but because their help is often something of a hindrance, adults deliberately train them not to help. Helping is thought of as getting in the way. It is unreasonable to train someone not to do something, and later to complain because they don't do it."

"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."