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Adams, John • Aristotle • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterfield (Lord) • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Cicero, Marcus Tullius • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Homer • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Sophocles • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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action age America beauty belief change character death democracy education ego error evil faith fear freedom future God government happiness history human nature humanity integrity leadership liberty life love morality perspective politics power pride progress reality religion science society success truth virtue war wealth wisdom writing- I've been adding topics since 2014, so not all quotes have been given one. Full topic list.
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Quotations about parenting
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan, and raised an adolescent.
Marcelene Cox (contemp.) American writer
“Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal
Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it’s getting worse. It’s because you get older, your responsibilities are different. Now I’m taking care of children instead of being a child. It makes the world look scarier. That happens to everyone.
Penn Jillette (b. 1955) American stage magician, actor, musician, author
“Honest Questions with Penn Jillette,” Interview by Glen Beck, CNN (2 Nov 2007)
(Source)
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) American-British playwright, author, psychologist
The Measure of My Days (1968)
(Source)
Being a father
Is quite a bother,
But I like it, rather.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“Soliloquy in Circles,” New Yorker (27 Mar 1948)
(Source)
Reprinted in Versus (1949).
Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wished we’d had.
Louise Hart (contemp.) American educator, psychologist, author, speaker
The Winning Family, ch. 1, epigraph (1987)
Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.
Dwight Lyman "D. L." Moody (1837-1899) American evangelist and publisher
God’s Good News, “Where Art Thou?” [Gen. 3:9] (1897)
(Source)
The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable — from table tapping to the superiority of their own children — has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don’t argue with it — especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Stranger in a Strange Land, ch. 18 (1960 ed., publ. 1991)
(Source)
An elided version is found in the 1961 published edition, in ch. 13.
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or a major movie star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word “collectible” as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Social Studies, “Parental Guidance” (1981)
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.
William Temple (1881-1944) English Anglican archbishop, teacher, preacher
The Hope of a New World (1940)
Don’t threaten a child; either punish or forgive him.
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
Passage
The world is not always a kind place. That’s something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
You Are Special (1994)
If you bungle raising your children I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) First Lady of the United States (1961-1963), book editor, celebrity
Interview with Sander Vanocur, NBC News (1 Oct 1960)
(Source)
From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.
If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father’s vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practiced in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children’s faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents’ backs.
It reminds me of growing up in Chicago and having to shovel snow. I’ll give my dad credit; he never claimed it was to build character or teach me the value of hard work. “Snowblowers are expensive,” he used to say. “You’re free.” Once, I tried to appeal to my mom. “Don’t be such a wuss,” she suggested.
Andy Weir (b. 1972) American programmer and writer
The Martian (2011)
The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, “How to Get the Best of Your Children” (1957)
My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (1918-2002) Anglo-Irish comedian, writer, actor
(Attributed)
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
Leaving Home? (1987)
Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don’t put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
Leaving Home? (1987)
If we would amend the world, we should mend Ourselves and teach our Children to be not what we are but what they should be.
William Penn (1644-1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, statesman
Some Fruits of Solitude, #214 (1693)
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.
Clara Lucas Balfour (1808-1878) English novelist, lecturer, temperance campaigner
Sunbeams for All Seasons: Counsels, Cautions, and Precepts (1861 ed.)
I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.
Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) American humorist
Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession, ch. 7 (1983)
There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (30 Sep 1837)
