Robert Fulghum Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. These are the things you already know:

Share everything.
Play Fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

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

Robert Fulghum
What we learn in kindergarten comes up again and again in our lives as long as we live. In far more complex, polysyllabic forms, to be sure. In lectures, encyclopedias, bibles, company rules, courts of law, sermons, and handbooks. Life will examine us continually to see if we have understood and have practiced what we were taught that first year of school.

Robert Fulghum
The name is not important anymore - it's the tone that counts. I feel like an old dog I know. He will come to any name you call him, just so long as your demeanor carries with it the promise of affection and food

Robert Fulghum
The best feelings in your life come when you start feeling good after you've been feeling just awful

Robert Fulghum
Do you ever go off with a long grocery list and come home from the store with a bunch of different stuff? And somebody in the family unsacks the groceries and wants to know why you got this and didn't get that and just where is the whatever? And you want to say, 'Well, just be glad I came back, okay?' And the unpacker says, 'Well, next time bring what's on the list.'

Robert Fulghum
Almost anything can be dealt with if people are of good will and light hearts and strong values.

Robert Fulghum
If we could just figure out how to have more fun at it, maybe more of us would join the ranks of those who seek after justice and mercy.

Robert Fulghum
Weddings seem to be magnets for mishap and for whatever craziness lurks in family closets. In more ways than one, weddings bring out the ding-dong on everybody involved.

Robert Fulghum
We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

Robert Fulghum
Manuals have their uses... but they are not to be confused with living.

Robert Fulghum
Only an open mind still has room for new knowledge. What is outgrown and used up must be discarded to make room for what is yet to be learned. And much of the best thinking is done alone-in deserts, on beaches, in bed, behind closed doors. It is why we say we need to get away-to escape from clutter and busyness-to hear ourselves think.

Robert Fulghum
Be aware of wonder. And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.

Robert Fulghum
There's another thing not everyone figures out right away: It's almost impossible to go through life all alone. We need to find our support group — family, friends, companion, therapy gatherings, team, church or whatever. The kindergarten admonition applies as long as we live: When you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together. It's dangerous out there — lonely, too. Everyone needs someone. Some assembly is always required.

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
You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And 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
A six-year-old will not understand that By and large it has been demonstrated that violence is counterproductive to the constructive interaction of persons and societies. True. But a child can better understand that the rule out in the world and in the school is the same: Don't hit people. Bad things happen. The child must understand this rule is connected to the first rule: People won't share or play fair if you hit them.

Robert Fulghum
We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.

Robert Fulghum
The point is that getting married for lust or money or social status or even love is usually trouble. The point is that marriage is a maze into which we wander - a maze that is best got through with a great companion.

Robert Fulghum
Sometimes history knocks at the most ordinary door to see if anyone is home. Sometimes someone is.

Robert Fulghum
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
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. 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
To ponder is not to brood or grieve or even meditate. It is to wonder at a deep level.

Robert Fulghum
I'd like to speak a foreign language well enough to get the jokes. I'd like to talk with Socrates, and watch Michelangelo sculpt David. I'd like to see the world as it was a million years ago and a million years hence.

Robert Fulghum
Knowledge is meaningful only if it is reflected in action. The human race has found out the hard way that we are what we do, not just what we think. This is true for kids and adults — for schoolrooms and nations.

Robert Fulghum
Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.

Robert Fulghum
It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday.

Robert Fulghum
You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.

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
Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride?

Robert Fulghum