Fred Rogers, commonly known by his stage name Mister Rogers, was an American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a children’s television program that ran from 1968 to 2001, and he was the program’s creator, executive producer, and host. Roger lived from March 20, 1928, until February 27, 2003.
96 Fred Rogers Quotes
- “The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.”
2. “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.”
3. “The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.”
4. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
5. “You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first.”
6. “Love and success, always in that order. It’s that simple and that difficult.”
7. “Nobody else can live the life you live.”
8. “Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect.”
9. “You are special. You’re special to me. There’s only one in this wonderful world.”
10. “Understanding love is one of the hardest things in the world.”
11. “Peace means far more than the opposite of war.”
12. “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
13. “There are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don’t seem to help.”
14. “It’s really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it’s the opposite that’s true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!”
15. “Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.”
16. “Often out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak.”
17. “It’s important to know when we need to stop, reflect, and receive. In our competitive world, that might be called a waste of time.”
18. “Honesty is closely associated with freedom.”
19. “I don’t think anyone can grow unless he’s loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.”
20. “Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.”
21. “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
22. “The child is in me still and sometimes not so still.”
23. “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
24. “Many people work very hard at the things they do for fun.”
25. “Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”
26. “Try your best to make goodness attractive. That’s one of the toughest assignments you’ll ever be given.”
27. “Being able to resolve conflicts peacefully is one of the greatest strengths we can give our children.”
28. “Anger makes us feel so isolated.”
29. “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
30. “Honesty is often very hard. The truth is often painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth the trying.”
31. “The kingdom of God is for the broken hearted”
32. “Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated.”
33. “I’m proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you have ever done”
34. “Love is at the root of everything. All learning, all parenting, all relationships. Love or the lack of it.”
35. “Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it.”
36. “We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.”
37. “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
38. “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
39. “The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.”
40. “Sometimes you are in just the right place.”
41. “We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”
42. “You can think about things and make believe. All you have to do is think and they’ll grow.”
43. “Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past. Hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”
44. “The most important learning is the ability to accept and expect mistakes, and deal with the disappointments that they bring.”
45. “Real strength has to do with helping others.”
46. “Life is for service.”
47. “I think that those who would try to make you feel less than who you are, I think that’s the greatest evil.”
48. “Celebrate those who have loved us into being”
49. “To me, what makes someone successful is managing a healthy combination of wishing and doing. Wishing doesn’t make anything happen, but it certainly can be the start of some important happenings.”
50. “You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”
A book to Read: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers
51. “There is a close relationship between truth and trust.”
52. “Try your best to make goodness attractive. That’s one of the toughest assignments you’ll ever be given.”
53. “You know, you don’t have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable.”
54. “The kingdom of God is for the broken hearted”
55. “Parenthood is not learned: Parenthood is an inner change.”
56. “Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.”
57. “When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.”
58. “There’s a part of all of us that longs to know that even what’s weakest about us is still redeemable and can ultimately count for something good.”
59. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?”
60. “Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.”
61. “Transitions are almost always signs of growth, but they can bring feelings of loss. To get somewhere new, we may have to leave somewhere else behind.”
62. “You bring all you ever were and are to any relationship you have today.”
63. “Times when families laugh together are among the most precious times a family can have.”
64. “Watching a baby grow with our help tells us other things we like to feel about ourselves: that we are competent and loving.”
65. “It’s good to be curious about many things.”
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66. “Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren’t perfect.”
67. “I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.”
68. “I think one of the greatest gifts you can give anybody is the gift of your honest self.”
69. “We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”
70. “When you’re a parent you have a new chance to grow.”
71. “Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you’re thinking or feeling unless you share it.”
72. “I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.”
73. “I hope you’re proud of yourself for the times you’ve said “yes,” when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to someone else.”
74. “Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you’re thinking or feeling unless you share it.”
75. “Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn’t have to be a lonely kind of thing.”
75. “Love is generally confused with dependence.”
76. “Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn’t have to be a lonely kind of thing.”
77. “It’s a mistake to think that we have to be lovely to be loved by human beings or by God.”
78. “It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life.”
79. “You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first.”
80. “It’s a mistake to think that we have to be lovely to be loved by human beings or by God”
81. “I’m fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of ‘powerlessness.’ Join the club, we are not in control. God is.”
82. “One of the most important things a person can learn to do is to make something out of whatever he or she happens to have at the moment.”
83. “Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in the world. ”
84. “All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me.”
85. “One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.”
86. “There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.”
87. “There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.”
88. “How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?”
89. “We want to raise our children so that they can take a sense of pleasure in both their own heritage and the diversity of others.”
90. “All life events are formative. All contribute to what we become, year by year, as we go on growing.”
91. “Feeling good about ourselves is essential in our being able to love others.”
92. “Little by little, we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect.”
93. “One of the universal fears of childhood is the fear of not having value in the eyes of the people whom we admire so much.”
94. “It always helps to have people we love beside us when we have to do difficult things in life.”
95. “That’s what eternity is made of: invisible, imperishable good stuff.”
96. “We don’t always succeed in what we try, certainly not by the world’s standards, but I think you’ll find it’s the willingness to keep trying that matters most.”
97. “It’s not possible to be a parent without having times of worry.”
A Must Read: The World According to Mister Rogers (Reissue): Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers
The book is inspirational but also simple to read. With a cup of coffee in hand, it is the ideal book to read briefly. It emphasizes the crucial aspects of life without sounding preachy. Love and kindness are what all people want in life.
Fred Rogers’s Short Biography
Rogers graduated from Rollins College in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in music. In 1953, he moved back to Pittsburgh to work for children’s programming at NET (later PBS) television station WQED, where he had started his television career at NBC in New York. In 1962, he received a bachelor of divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and in 1963, he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.
He studied at the Graduate School of Child Development at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also met Margaret McFarland, a child psychologist, and began their 30-year partnership. Additionally, he contributed to the creation of the kid-friendly television programs The Children’s Corner (1955) for Pittsburgh’s WQED and Misterogers (1963) for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
When he returned to Pittsburgh in 1968, he created Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood by modifying the structure of his Canadian series. It was praised by critics for emphasizing children’s emotional and physical concerns, such as death, sibling rivalry, school enrollment, and divorce, over the course of its 33-year run.
On February 27, 2003, Rogers passed away from stomach cancer, 3 weeks before turning 75. More than 40 honorary degrees and numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997, were given to him in recognition of his contributions to children’s television, which has been widely praised. In 1999, he received his induction into the Television Hall of Fame. Even after his passing, Rogers’ broadcasts have continued to provide solace during tragic events because of his influence on a large number of children’s television show writers and producers.
Additional Read:
Seven Lessons from Mister Rogers That Can Help Americans Be Neighbors Again