A person's a person, no matter how small- Dr. Suess

I cried, but you chose not to see.

I wept, but you chose not to hear.

I reached for your hand, but you waited for someone else to steady my fall.

Who am I?

 

I am the child who you ignored.

I am the child whose parents you prayed for.

I am the child who you thought deserved it.

I am the child whose parents you didn't want to upset.

I am the child who never understood why I was left there.

I am the child who cried herself to sleep.

I am the child whose job it was to console my siblings.

I am the child who was scared.

I am the child who listened to the names she was called and believed them.

I am the child who has a high pain threshold.

I am the adult whose heart is hurting, not from my childhood, but from listening to others justifying why they ignored a child in need.

I am the adult who wishes that someone bothered to hurt his feelings because maybe then everything would have been better.

I leave my shoes on the doorstep every night.

They are painful, and hurt my feet.

I do not ask that you walk a mile in my shoes; I only ask that you stop these shoes from being made.

 

Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.

--Herbert Ward

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

--Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa 

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

-- Sigmund Freud

All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

--Dorothy Parker

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

-- Igor Stravinsky

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. 

--Frederick Douglass

The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'

--Alice Walker

Safety and security don't just happen; they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.

-- Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa 

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

-- Albert Einstein, physicist 

There's more to doing good than hating evil.

-- Anonymous 

Failures are divided into two classes — those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

-- John Charles Salak, author 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke, author and philosopher 

Be the change that you want to see in the world.

-- Mohandas Ghandi, political and spiritual leader in India