If you were like most children, you probably grew up with the pleasant sounds of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on your TV. That happy song “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” began, and Mr. Rogers himself came out.
Fred Rogers was the maker of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” that aired from 1968 to 2001. During that time, he taught thousands of children lessons about the world: how to share toys, be kind, and tie shoes. But even more importantly, he taught them that he loved them just the way they were.
But Mr. Rogers did so much more than just host a television show. The values he taught his viewers were ones he honestly believed — and he never forgot them. He’s remembered not just for the lessons on his show, but also for the ways he treated others, both on- and off-camera.
No one can ever forget how he took a stand against racism by inviting Officer Clemmons to cool his feet with him in a wading pool. But that was what Mr. Rogers was all about — changing the world by being kind to our neighbors. Here are 50 quotes from Mr. Rogers to share with your neighbors, whoever they might be.
1. “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.’”
The world can seem like a frightening place, and sometimes, we wonder if things will ever get better. But Mr. Rogers understood that as bad as things get, there are always people who’re willing to help.
2. “All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors — in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.”
Mr. Rogers loved the idea of being part of a community where everyone helped one another. His theme song “Won’t you be my neighbor?” really encompassed his philosophy.
3. “Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.”
Rogers and his wife Joanne had two sons, James and John. But he also worked with hundreds of children throughout his career. He knew how important it was to teach the younger generation how to be the best people they could be.
4. “Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life’s important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.”
Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who applied his beliefs to everything he did. It’s no wonder he believed so fiercely in the importance of forgiving others, even those who are close to us.
5. “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.”
Loving isn’t easy, and Mr. Rogers knew that. It’s a commitment that makes it through the toughest times, even when we don’t feel like loving anymore.
6. “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?”
Rogers worked in the world of the media, which was about as loud and fast as you could get. But he always talked about the importance of taking time to be quiet in the hustle and bustle of life.
7. “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.”
Rogers might’ve been an optimist, but he wasn’t naive. He knew there were parts of life that were painful and dark. But he also believed there could be valuable meaning in them.
8. “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.”
Mr. Rogers always told children he liked them exactly the way that they are. To him, one of the most important things was that everyone felt like they were welcome to come to him exactly where they were in their life.
9. “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero.”
Mr. Rogers had respect for everyone, but he loved children more than anything else. So much so that he spent his entire life reaching out to them. It’s no wonder that generations of children grew up loving him.
10. “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
Mr. Rogers believed that make-believe and storytelling — the normal ways that children play — were much more important than previously thought. It was a revolutionary mindset for the time.
11. “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.”
Mr. Rogers believed that neighbors should help one another. But he also knew that sometimes, helping is a seemingly thankless and pointless task. So, he made it a point to thank everyone for the times when they hadn’t been thanked for their actions.
12. “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”
Listening was another important thing to Mr. Rogers. He believed it was one of the kindest things you could for a friend — just sit and listen to them when they needed to talk.
13. “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”
It’s so easy to say that things can be someone else’s problem, especially when they don’t affect us. It’s the individuals who stand up and volunteer even when they have no stake in the problem that are the best kind of people.
14. “It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.”
Mr. Rogers won many awards during his life and was even honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But that wasn’t important to him. What was important was that he’d done good work and helped those in need.
15. “If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
Mr. Rogers worked with ordinary people, but he believed they were extraordinary. In fact, he believed that everyone was special just because of who they were. That was the message he left with children everywhere.
16. “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!”
It’s easy to become discouraged when you feel like you’re not accomplishing your goals. But Mr. Rogers believed that being kind and helping those around us was more important than doing great things.
17. “Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”
Mr. Rogers encouraged people not to demand things from others, but rather to offer a listening ear. In his mind, that started with self-reflection. Listening to yourself meant you could listen to others.
18. “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
Mr. Rogers knew life could be really rough. But he encouraged everyone to remember that even when things seemed hopeless, there was still hope for a better time to come.
19. “Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re ‘equally infinite.’ Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.”
They say love doesn’t divide, but only multiplies. Clearly, Mr. Rogers was a believer in that. When you love someone, it just keeps going like the infinity sign, on and on.
20. “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
This was one thing Mr. Rogers always tried to convey on his television show. He encouraged everyone to love one another as they were, instead of laying demands on them.
21. “Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other’s achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.”
Loving the people in our lives can be hard, and Mr. Rogers wasn’t about to pretend it wasn’t. But he also said if you’re going to make them work, you had to be willing to give without reserve.
22. “Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence…And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives”
Working in the world of media, it’s a wonder that Mr. Rogers ever had a moment of silence. But it was very important to him. It was a chance to look around at the world and be grateful for it.
23. “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.”
At the end of the day, that was what Mr. Rogers’ philosophy boiled down to: being kind. It might’ve seemed more complicated but that was really all it was about in the end.
24. “Real strength has to do with helping others.”
Mr. Rogers believed we weren’t supposed to live just for ourselves. We are supposed to help other people who are in need. To him, that was what made a person truly strong.
25. “The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.”
Mr. Rogers believed that a lot of problems — in communities, societies, and homes — happened because people forgot they were important. That made them forget others were important, too.
26. “Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front-and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.”
We might often feel like our best isn’t good enough. But Mr. Rogers had a message: as long as you’re trying to do your best, it’s enough. And as long as we’re trying, we should be proud of ourselves.
27. “The kingdom of God is for the broken hearted”
Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, but he didn’t often mention religion. He preferred to teach in ways that everyone understood. But occasionally, he brought God into the equation — a part of his life he considered essential.
28. “Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”
Not all of us are capable of doing great things or changing the world, but Mr. Rogers didn’t believe we had to be the best. Instead, he said, we should just focus on loving the people in our lives.
29. “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.”
Mr. Rogers didn’t believe in forcing people to do things — especially children. Instead, he believed in teaching them about the importance of the things that we do, encouraging them to participate.
30. “How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.”
One of the things Mr. Rogers always tried to impress on people is that ultimately, we’re alike more than we realize. So, when we turn our backs on each other, it’s like turning on ourselves.
31. “The media shows the tiniest percentage of what people do. There are millions and millions of people doing wonderful things all over the world, and they’re generally not the ones being touted in the news.”
A lot of people feel depressed after watching or reading the news. It seems like everything in the world’s a disaster. But Mr. Rogers encouraged people to look beyond the bad news and remember the “helpers.”
32. “The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.”
Mr. Rogers believed that being truly happy had nothing to do with wealth or fame. Instead, he believed it was about loving what you do and connecting with other people.
33. “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has- or ever will have- something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”
You might think some people are just average Joes, but Fred Rogers didn’t see them that way. He thought each person was amazing just because they were who they were.
34. “Imagining something may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions.”
To Mr. Rogers, everything was the result of team effort — even his wildly successful television show. He might’ve been the face of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but he knew too well how many people helped make it a success.
35. “Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service.”
Fred Rogers firmly believed that no human was put on Earth just to have a good time — we were put here to help one another. And each of us have a different gift to bring to others to do just that.
36. “There are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don’t seem to help.”
Mr. Rogers was known for being a hopeful, optimistic person. But he also knew there doesn’t always seem to be a reason for the bad times. We don’t need to have all the answers — we just need to help one another.
37. “We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that’s what’s important.”
“Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” was a wildly successful show, commanding high ratings for decades. But to Fred Rogers, that wasn’t nearly as valuable as the relationships he established along the way.
38. “You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first.”
It’s so easy to be self-critical. Many people do it often but without realizing. Mr. Rogers believed in trying to be the best person you could be, while also loving yourself exactly as you are.
39. “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.”
No one’s perfect, and it can be hard to look beyond your faults. But Mr. Rogers was all about reminding us that even though we’re not perfect, we’re still ultimately good.
40. “I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.”
During Mr. Rogers’ day, the idea of “gentle parenting” wasn’t really around yet. He helped pioneer the concept that parents should focus more on guiding their children so they learn how to behave rather than punishing them.
41. “We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.”
To Mr. Rogers, what you do was closely tied up with who you are. That meant everything we do is charged with a unique personality. To him, that was something incredibly special.
42. “We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”
To Mr. Rogers, every moment with another person was an opportunity to totally invest in them. He wasn’t pretending to hear what other people had to say; he was genuinely listening.
43. “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.”
Life is challenging, and there are a lot of choices to make — we all know it’s not easy. But for Mr. Rogers, everything came back, as it always did, to each person’s unique identity.
44. “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.”
Mr. Rogers was dedicated to teaching children mindfulness — to show them they had control over their actions and words. That even applies to sharing thoughts, which we can always keep to ourselves if preferred.
45. ”The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.”
Mr. Rogers thought forgiveness was so radical that it broke down the evil in the world. That might not be easy, but it’s one reason why it’s so powerful.
46. “You can think about things and make believe. All you have to do is think and they’ll grow.”
Mr. Rogers believed that everyone could have an imagination. In his mind, making believe was as simple as taking a thought and following where it went.
47. “It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”
No one brings the same gifts to the table, and Mr. Rogers knew that. He believed that was the way it should be. We’re all different, and to him, that made every person special.
48. “Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.”
Fred Rogers believed we’re all on a journey to learn who we really are, but that’s not an easy lesson. It came after years of learning by the way we interact with ourselves and others.
49. “What really matters is helping others win, too, even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.”
Mr. Rogers believed we’re all in this life together. We’re not playing the game one-on-one — it’s a team effort, and sometimes, we need to give each other a hand.
50. “People have said, ‘Don’t cry’ to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, ‘I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.’ I’d rather have them say, ‘Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.’”
Mr. Rogers was all about meeting people exactly as they were. If they needed to cry, he wanted to offer them a safe place to so. He wanted to make sure everyone could truly be themselves around him.
50 Mr. Rogers’ quotes to share with all your neighbors
Cedric Jackson
12.02.19
If you were like most children, you probably grew up with the pleasant sounds of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on your TV. That happy song “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” began, and Mr. Rogers himself came out.
Fred Rogers was the maker of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” that aired from 1968 to 2001. During that time, he taught thousands of children lessons about the world: how to share toys, be kind, and tie shoes. But even more importantly, he taught them that he loved them just the way they were.
But Mr. Rogers did so much more than just host a television show. The values he taught his viewers were ones he honestly believed — and he never forgot them. He’s remembered not just for the lessons on his show, but also for the ways he treated others, both on- and off-camera.
No one can ever forget how he took a stand against racism by inviting Officer Clemmons to cool his feet with him in a wading pool. But that was what Mr. Rogers was all about — changing the world by being kind to our neighbors. Here are 50 quotes from Mr. Rogers to share with your neighbors, whoever they might be.
