Quotes about parents
page 12

“There is widespread belief throughout the free world that, but for American nuclear superiority, Europe would already have been reduced to satellite status and the Iron Curtain would have reached the Atlantic and the Channel. Unless a trustworthy and universal agreement upon disarmament, conventional and nuclear alike, can be reached and an effective system of inspection is established and is actually working, there is only one sane policy for the free world in the next few years. That is what we call defence through deterrents. This we have already adopted and proclaimed. These deterrents may at any time become the parents of disarmament, provided that they deter. To make our contribution to the deterrent we must ourselves possess the most up-to-date nuclear weapons, and the means of delivering them.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1955-03-01/debates/ae81a20b-68e7-42d0-8cbb-d9589f53fc0d/Defence#1896 in the House of Commons (1 March 1955) Post-war years (1945–1955)

World, Universe, Time

“When we talk of parental influence we do not think of terror in connection with it—that is not the primary idea—it is not terror and coercion, but kindness and affection, which may bias the child's mind, and induce the child to do that which may be highly imprudent, and which, if the child were properly protected, he would never do.”

William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley (1801–1881) Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Turner v. Collins (1871), L. R. 7 Ch. Ap. Ca. 340.

Idea, Thinking

“Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Misattributed to Tryon Edwards by a number of websites, thinkexist.com and quoteland.com among others. This quote does appear on p. 23 of Edwards' compilation, A Dictionary of Thoughts; however, it is clearly identified there as a quote by Hugh Blair, the Scottish author and preacher.
A genuine Tryon Edwards quote on the subject of anxiety appears above in the Sourced section ( from p. 22 of A Dictionary of Thoughts. )
Misattributed

Life, World, Disappointment

“The most beloved of deeds in the eyes of Allah are: offering prayers at the stipulated times; (then) goodness and kindness towards parents; (and then) Jihad in the way of Allah.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 18897
Shi'ite Hadith

Way, Time

“Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

The Tablet (9 May 1951)

“The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Laura Riding and Robert Graves, from A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (Doubleday, 1928)

“If we want our children to have a balance between their abilities to earn money and show love, it will help if both their parents model that balance.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

page 114.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)

Love, Money, Children, Help

“Family occasions have always given Janice some pain, assembling like a grim jury these people to whom we owe something, first our parents and elders and then our children and their children. One of the things she and Harry secretly had in common, beneath all their troubles, was dislike of all that, these expected ceremonies.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

Pain, Children, People, Family

“Whoever comes to this house shall never leave without being filled with joy. To Me, the Parent, all human beings in the world are My children.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, p. 19
The Life of Oyasama

Children, World, Joy, Housing

“For ten years I never left my books;
I went up … and won unmerited praise.
My high place I do not much prize;
The joy of my parents will first make me proud.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"After Passing the Examination" (A.D. 800)
Arthur Waley's translations

Books, Joy

“Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

As quoted in "Should You Leave It All to the Children?" by Richard I. Kirkland Jr, in Fortune (29 September 1986) http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1986/09/29/68098/index.htm

Love

“See, the truth is that if Princeton hadn’t found my brother as a basketball recruit, and if I hadn’t seen that he could succeed on a campus like that, it never would have occurred to me to apply to that school — never. And I know that there are so many kids out there just like me — kids who have a world of potential, but maybe their parents never went to college or maybe they’ve never been encouraged to believe they could succeed there.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Statements proceeding introduction of husband at College Opportunity Summit (16 January 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/16/remarks-president-and-first-lady-college-opportunity-summit 2010s

Truth, World, School

“It affected me so much having to adapt to different parenting environments.”

Usama Mukwaya (1989) Ugandan screenwriter

Source: " Mukwaya, the self made filmmaker http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18171:mukwaya-the-self-made-filmmaker" at The Observer. 12 April 2012 written by Polly Kamukama

“However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.”

Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013) American sociologist

Habits of the Heart, pt. 1, ch. 3 (1985)

Pain, Children, Home

“My family was all about education, and me being there was a combination of my parents instilling in my sister and I that this was the ticket to wherever you want to go in life—education. And that’s what I tell my children: You’ve got to work now, play later. You’ve got to get to the place where when you’re a senior in high school, you’ve got choices; you’ve got to put in the work.”

Courtney B. Vance (1960) American actor

Alumni Spotlight: Courtney B. Vance http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/18/alumni-spotlight-courtney-vance/, The Harvard Crimson (October 18, 2016)

Life, Children, Education, School

“The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2003

Women, Family, Sex, Question

“[To beginning readers (ages 4 to 8) at a reading of "Noelle's Treasure Tale"]: If you discover a word in my book that you don't understand, ask your parents so they can look it up in the dictionary for you.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment to audience at book signing at Macy's in New York City (November 21, 2006
2007, 2008

Books, Age, Understanding, Reading

“My parents have lived in the United States since 1964 and they have never voted. They don't feel they have a right to. They don't feel this is their country. Even though they are citizens, they pay taxes, they watch the news and keep up with current events, they still don't feel comfortable enough with their American life to fully participate in it…Any attempt to argue is thwarted by dismissal…I guess he doesn't want to explain, because how can you explain something as intangible as invisibility?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Life, Feeling, Country

“Little kids are that way; they feel if their parents aren't watching what they do then what they do isn't real.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Way, Feeling

“Rather than programming children as if they were computers, parents should be something like art instructors. Because life is like a clump-of-clay, you can’t make it into an expression of beauty, unless you take it into your hands. While sprinkling their lives with painful and playful diversions, people wait their lives miserably into old age, for the skills to live-life, to–come as did life- itself.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Life, Pain, Children, People

“When I was a boy and refused to speak Spanish (because I spoke English), then could not speak Spanish from awkwardness, then guilt, Mexican relatives criticized my parents for letting me “lose it”—my culture, they said.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Boy

“And why should man, added he, pretend to an exemption from the lot of all other animals? The whole earth, believe me, PHILO, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Demea to Philo, Part X
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Life, Hunger, War, Fear

“Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right, which will not bear the investigation of reason.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 11

Fear

“One spring day in my sixth grade … we read two articles. The first concerned the cruelty toward cattle in slaughterhouses and the second was about the detrimental effects of red meat on your body. By the time I got home later that day, I had resolved to give up red meat, to take a stand against animal cruelty and a stand for my health … At 13, I decided to give up all meat and fish. My parents were even more surprised and cautiously supportive – provided I learned how to get enough protein. … Although I now eat meat (after having not for 18 years), I have tremendous respect for people who make consistent ethical choices in their lives – people who not only don’t eat meat, but who also don’t wear fur or leather and don’t use products made from animal derivatives.”

Chelsea Clinton (1980) daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton

"On Assignment: Chelsea Clinton admires vegetarian stands taken by Stella, Linda McCartney" http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/19/19026302-on-assignment-chelsea-clinton-admires-vegetarian-stands-taken-by-stella-linda-mccartney?lite, Rock Center NBC News (20 June 2013).

People, Health, Home, Spring

“[T]he 1919 uprising is memorialized in the North without a public holiday as an example of how badly things go when a nation lacks a parental leader. This doesn’t stop propaganda from claiming the protests originated under the influence of Kim Hyŏng-jik, the father of Kim Il Sung, who himself impressed everyone at the age of six by … but never mind. The Blue House is unlikely to quibble with this version of history on the day itself. With these meshing tendencies and measures the ruling camp evidently hopes to bond with the Kim regime over a shared anti-Japanese tradition, to present today’s ROK and DPRK as branches of the same Shanghai tree, put nationalism above liberal-democratic principles, and minimize opposition to all these things. No less obvious is the larger goal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Age, Hope, History, Tree

“Among scientists, I am the second to get it [Bharat Ratna], after C. V. Raman. M. Visveswariah was an engineer, not a scientist. In that sense I am the second scientist to get it. I am happy that Kannadigas are also getting the award. My parents would always tell me to learn Kannada well in my younger days so I could be good both in Kannada and English. Learn to read and write Kannada, then you can learn English and enjoy both languages.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Scientist wonders why nobody asks him about Dan David prize (2013)

Happiness, Sense, Learning, Reading

“And I am very happy to have the boat motif because, when I grew up, in summer with my parents we were always in Massachusetts, and I was always by the sea. You know, sometimes little boys love cars, but I had a particular passion for boats, and now I live by the sea. For sure, it is a passage, but it's also very fascinating for lots of things. When you get interested in something you can find out a lot about things. You might meet people who are interested in one subject or another, like they collect palms. I've found people from all over the world who were fanatical about palms, which you wouldn't know unless you were interested in palms. And the sea: because, if you've noticed, the sea is white three quarters of the time, just white – early morning. Only in the fall does it get blue, because the haze is gone. The Mediterranean [where Twombly is living later in his life], at least – the Atlantic is brown – is just always white, white, white. And then, even when the sun comes up, it becomes a lighter white... Not because I paint it white; I'd have painted it white even if it wasn't, but I am always happy that I might have. It's something that has other consciousness behind it.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 174-175

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“To be perfectly honest, it has had its handicaps. The thing is that people judge you by your parents' and people expect me to be just like daddy and mother. Therefore, I can't run across the street or anything.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

People

“To my analytical mind this relationship of marriage was a very forced one between two people. I understood that for the security and upbringing of the child the parents need to be monogamous. Because then the child will have a secure home. But both people should understand and accept the fact that there would always be temptation. That's not bad in itself because what is temptation?”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

In "I have been a hippie all my life"

Marriage, People, Home, Understanding

“If we both ignore the unique contribution of “male-style” parenting and jail a man who responsibly contributes it, fatherhood becomes another hazardous occupation. More precisely, it becomes the largest 100%-male hazardous occupation. And in the process, our children lose one of the greatest potential gifts of Stage II -- genuine fatherhood. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are ways of creating a father and child reunion….”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 237.

Children, Way

“You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;– liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;– liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;– liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;– liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty– the liberty to do wrong– which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.”

David Hunter (1802–1886) Union Army general

As quoted in The Smart Culture: Society, Intelligence, and Law https://books.google.com/books?id=Jc8VCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA59, by Robert L. Hayman, pp. 59&ndash;61 1860s, Letter to Jefferson Davis (1863)

Children, Angels, Hell, Sister

“If you're offended by any word, in any language, it's probably because your parents were unfit to raise a child.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

Before Turning the Gun on Himself (2012)

“You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defences which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)

Children, Girl, Boy, Freedom

“As a result of high levels of male parental investment, humans evolved into a somewhat “androgynous” species - a species in which human females exhibit traits generally found only in males (e. g., competition for mates) and human males exhibit traits generally found only in females (e. g., the provision of parental care; choosiness about mates).”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

(p. 138)
The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)

“Of all the institutions in their lives, only the Catholic Church has seemed aware of the fact that my mother and father are thinkers—persons aware of the experience of their lives. Other institutions—the nation’s political parties, the industries of mass entertainment and communications, the companies that employed them—have all treated my parents with condescension.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Communication, Personality

“He force-fed his daughter with some mechanically recovered beef fragments […] on TV to show there was no danger from BSE. […] She's probably a teenager now. Most teenagers just irrationally hate their parents. You wouldn't want to be round their house of a Christmas: 'Let's watch that film, when you tried to kill me.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Yes I would like a flat, thank you.'
A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101, The News Quiz

Hate, Christmas, Housing, Daughters

“When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again - which is a loss. But to shield yourself - as I didn't do - seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 18

Life, Truth, World, Error

“My parents believed that if you couldn't put it in a test tube, it didn't exist.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Undated

“My parents taught me that an NDPer in Alberta has to work three times harder than any other politician to earn votes. It's a lesson I won't forget.”

Rachel Notley (1964) 17th Premier of Alberta

On her parents Grant and Sarah Notley. "Knocking at the door of the Dome." http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/insight/story.html?id=b13ff6fa-715c-4810-ad19 April 14, 2007

Time, Forgetting

“I was checking this girl next door
When her parents went out
She phoned said hey boy, come on right around
So I knock at the door
You was standing with a bottle of red wine
Ready to pour
Dressed in long black Satin and Lace to the floor”

Craig David (1981) English singer

Song Fill me in

Girl, Boy, Wine

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Men, Fate, Youth, Age

“If you're a parent, you know how incredibly good it feels when one of your children spontaneously thanks you for something. God is our Father, and he, too, is moved when we express our thanksgiving.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God, Children, Feeling

“I’m clearly a small-minded person, with my own petty grievances. Hopefully, my work transcends my own petty grievances and small-minded nature. It’s best for me to remain small-minded on an emotional level and broad-minded on a conceptual level. It doesn’t matter whatever it is that makes me do my work. Neurosis, obsession, wanting people to like me, wanting my parents to feel bad for underrating me, making a lot of money, power, social status, wanting girls to like me or just to meet one girl on a job. All of this doesn’t matter as long as the work that I do to achieve these small-minded needs is a lot more interesting than me and my reasons for making it”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

SOMA Interview

Money, People, Feeling, Girl

“What will be the influence of communist society on the family? It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Women, Marriage, Children, Education

“When, therefore, we enter the realm of State action, everything is to be considered and weighed on its merits. Changes in death duties, income tax, land tenure, licensing, game laws, church establishment, feudal rights, slavery, and so on through all ages, have received the same denunciations from the absolutists of contract, who are the real parents of revolution.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), Ch. 2 : Public Finance and Changes in the Value of Money

Death, Age, Law, Game

“The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming. Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

God, War, Children, World

“I would say that compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

“Goodness to parents, and paying visits to ones own relatives, will ease the accounting on the Day of Judgement.”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.74, p. 86

“Anna and Elsa's parents didn't die. Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas.”

Chris Buck

10 August 2015 via MTV http://www.mtv.com/news/2236490/frozen-director-debunks-major-disney-conspiracy-theory/, affirmed 15 December 2017 by Seventeen https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/movies-tv/news/a33173/chris-buck-talks-tarzan-frozen-theory/

Way, Boy, Birth, Thinking

“Parents control their children in the interests of the family, universities exercise control over professors and students, government exercises control over citizens, and religions control their adherents… Society's need for social control was stated most dramatically by Hobbes (1651/1958), who observed that in the "natural" state (without social control), as each person attempted to satisfy his/her individual needs and desires at the expense of others, humankind would be in a war of all against all, such that life would be "nasty, brutish, and short."”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 161

Life, War, Children, Family

“My parents were very protective. I couldn't even cross the street without them getting all excited, and… placing bets…”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

E=MO² (1985)

“A parent knows an individual child's needs better than a set of guidelines will. A group of parents and teachers in a community will almost always know what's best for that community's students, than that of state board of education.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Education, Communication, Teachers

“The concordance model of cosmology, ΛCDM, provides a satisfactory description of the evolution of the universe and the growth of large scale structure. Despite considerable effort, this model does not at present provide a satisfactory description of small scale structure and the dynamics of bound objects like individual galaxies. In contrast, MOND provides a unique and predictively successful description of galaxy dynamics, but is mute on the subject of cosmology. … it is far from obvious that the mass spectrum of galaxy clusters or the power spectrum of galaxies can be explained in MOND, two things that ΛCDM does well. Critical outstanding issues are the development of an acceptable relativistic parent theory for MOND, and the reality of the non-baryonic dark matter of ΛCDM. Do suitable dark matter particles exist, or are they a modern aether?”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

A Tale of Two Paradigms: the Mutual Incommensurability of LCDM and MOND, Stacy McGaugh, 29 Apr 2014, updated 17 May 2014 http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7525,

Reality, Effort, Universe, Success

“With parents like heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and entertainment impresario/personality Sharon Osbourne, you might have anger management issues, too.”

Kelly Osbourne (1984) English singer-songwriter, actress, television presenter and fashion designer

Baltimore Jewish Times, Jan 30 2009 http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/celebrities/jt/celebrities/kelly_osbourne/ About

Personality, Anger

“"Our family comes first" Strong families support each other's dreams; they sacrifice to show support. A friend turned down a company trip to the Bahamas so he could attend his son's championship soccer game. "the beach will always be there," he said, "but my son won't always be 14 and team captain." this "family first" attitude begins with a bond of loyalty between marital partners. But single-parent families (28% of all families with children, according to the latest census) can be just as successful in raising strong children if they develop a "family first" attitude.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Children, Family, Dreams, Game

“For too long, the powers that be in this country have been able to explain these inequalities--why there are higher levels of poverty among Blacks, why there's higher unemployment, why Blacks go to the worst schools--by saying that we don't care. They blame the parents, and they blame the individuals for their success or failures. And at no point is there a discussion about the society that we live in and the way it's organized. There's no discussion about how the system sets up people to fail, it sets up people to be poor, it sets up people to be unemployed.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1950) American academic and author

The fight against racism doesn't stop here (2013)

People, School, Way, Failure

“You're Orthodox? No. Conservative? Young people never are. My parents were Orthodox. They believe, I believe, that whatever your father is, as long as your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish too because we all come from our mother's womb. A long unbroken chain of Jewish mothers going all the way back to Eve.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Two, Part I, Schoenmaker

People, Way

“I was a troubled teen, as they say. I was drinking - not smoking pot so much as was the easy choice in Vancouver and I was supposed to be a rebel - but I was angry and mixed-up and there was only one parent in my family, so there were those issues that go along with abandonment and all the rest of it.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article 'Canada dry' in the London Evening Standard (March 11th, 2005)

Family, Drink

“Two children die. An accident and a suicide amongst so many murders. A chance death and a death of self-recrimination. Smut and the Skipping Girl have been aping their parents and elders -- perhaps they could now teach them a lesson -- all the machinations and game-playing and adjusting for sexual and emotional positioning is not worth the effort.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Death, Children, Girl, Game

“Logically the Neo-Pagan should get rid of the institution of marriage altogether; but the very nature of human society, which is built up of cells each of which is a family, and the very nature of human generation, forbid such an extreme. Children must be brought up and acknowledged and sheltered, and the very nature of human affection, whereby there is the bond of affection between the parent and the child, and the child is not of one parent but of both, will compel the Neo-Pagan to modify what might be his logical conclusion of free love and support some simulacrum of the institution of marriage.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. V New Arrivals

Love, Marriage, Children, Family

“During what years should a child be introduced to better ways of giving and receiving criticisms – to what I call “relationship language”? Before school age. The best teacher? Parents.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.

Age, School, Way, Teachers

“The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their children are not alike but vary…”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

Children, Question, Success

“I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience. The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Episode 193 http://drunken-peasants-podcast.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_193 of Drunken Peasants Podcast debuted 4 January 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC1nm85btY&t=3552s, transcript circulated 20 February 2017 by Heavy http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-transcript-pederasty-video-full-sex-boys-men-catholic-priest-cpac-quotes/ with supplements from discover-the-truth https://discover-the-truth.com/2017/02/20/full-unedited-video-of-milo-yiannopoulos-defending-pedophilia/ 2017

Love, Men, Children, People

“The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Samuel Johnson in The Rambler no. 148 (17 August 1751).
Misattributed

“I agree that you might clone some people who would look amazingly like their parental cell donors, but the odds are that they’d be almost as different as you or me, and certainly more different than any of today’s identical twins.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

"On Cloning a Human Being", p. 53
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

People

“So then Mom decided my father ought to do a vegan diet, too. Well, my father grew up on a cattle ranch, but the nice thing is, my dad’s been sitting at the same dinner table for fifty-one years, and he can’t find his way around the kitchen! He’s been relying my Mom for fifty-one years to put the plate in front of him. So Mom went to the local health food store and bought hot dogs that are called “Not Dogs” and veggie burgers – which used to taste like cardboard, but now they’re really good. She can get Canadian bacon made of a wheat derivative. It’s all vegetarian. Instead of cow’s milk, it’s soy milk, rice milk, fake eggs – all that stuff! Dad just keeps cleaning his plate. Now I’ve got two vegetarian parents, and only one of them know it!”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

Wramc Us Too, Inc Newsletter (2003).

Health, Food, Dogs, Way

“I do not need any promise of eternity to be happy. My eternity is now. I have only one interest: to fulfill my purpose here where I am. This purpose is not given me by my parents or my surroundings. It is induced by some unknown factors. These factors make me a part of eternity.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 103

Happiness, Parting

“Whenever like mates with like (genetically), the statistical distribution curve, which describes the frequency of the purely fortuitous combinations of genes, is flattened out, its mode is depressed, and its extremes are increased. The reduces the number of the mediocre produced and increases the numbers both of the sub-normal and the talented groups. It is possible that, without this increase in the number of extreme variants, no nation, race or group could produce enough superior individuals to maintain a complex culture. Certainly not enough to operate or advance a civilization. …Any number of social customs have stood, and still stand, in the way of an optimum amount of selective matings. In a feudal society, opportunities are denied to many able men who, consequently, never develop to the high level of their biological potential and thus they remain among the undistinguished. Such able men (and women) might also be diffused throughout an "ideal" classless society and, lacking the means to separate themselves from the generality, or to develop their peculiar talents, would be effectively swamped. In such a society they could hardly segregate in groups. In fact, only a few of the able males might ever meet an able female who appealed to them erotically. Obviously an open society—one in which the able may rise and the dim-wits sick, and where like intelligences have a greater chance of meeting and mating—has advantages that other societies do not have. Our own society today—incidentally and without design—is providing more and more opportunities for intelligent matrimonial discrimination. It is possible that our co-educational colleges, where highly-selected males and females meet when young, are as important in their function of bringing together the parents of our future superior individuals as they are in educating the present crop.”

Conway Zirkle (1895–1972)

"Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), pp. 59-61

Women, Men, Education, Way

“Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The time of obedience and atonement is past.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 4 (p. 308)

Time, Past

“[How is it consistent with what you advocated this evening in terms of a vision for peace, that you continued to allow the building of settlements in the West Bank, during your primeministership? ] Let me tell you, first of all, during my term as a Prime Minister, we have not built a single new settlement. I ordered the dismantling of many voluntary -- I don't know how to call it -- new settlements that had been set on top of hills in different parts of the West Bank, basically. But, I allowed contracts, contracts that had been signed, legally, in Israel, beforehand. To build new neighborhoods in some big cities in the West Bank, cities with 25,000 or 30,000 people. And very few new homes, in small settlements, where youngsters, who came back from the army service, asked to build their home near the home of their parents. Now, Israel is a law-abiding state, you cannot break contracts, there is Supreme Court. If the government behaves in a way that is not proper, any individual can appeal and change whatever we decide. Realizing that this is a sensitive issue from the Palestinian side, I talked to Arafat, at the beginning of my term as a Prime Minister, and I told him: Mr. Chairman, I know that you are worried about it, it creates some problems, in your own constituency. But let me tell you, we have a great opportunity here to put an end to the whole conflict, in a year and a half. When President Clinton that invested unbelievable amount of energy and political capital in trying to solve it, and he's still in power. Now, I understand your problem with settlement if there is no end, there is no time limit, and you are afraid that maybe the accumulation of new settlements will change the nature of the situation, for the worse, from your position. So I tell you, out of our own considerations, independent of you, we have decided not to set even a single new settlement. We will not allow anyone to establish his own private initiatives on the hills, for our own reasons, not because of you. But at the same time I will respect any contract that has been signed, under law, in Israel. But -- and here is a point -- bearing in mind that we can put an end to the conflict, to reach an agreement within a year and a half, why the hell it will matter? To build a new building in Israel takes more than a year and a half, so you won't see any building that is not already emerging from the ground, having it's roof before we can reach an agreement. Now if such a building happens to be in a settlement that will become, under the agreement, part of the new independent Palestine, why the hell you have to care? Take it, use it, put some refugees in it. And if it will happen to be a part of what will be agreed, as Israel, in a mutual agreement that is signed by you, why the hell do you care, if you agree? I believe that that simple answer would not solve his public -- or internal political -- problems, but it would solve the real issue if the will was there to make peace, and not just to politically maneuver and manipulate.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

People, Peace, Law, Way

“Can't help our damned parents which is why we have to thrash our damned children”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major General Nairn, p. 21
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

Children, Help

“When I read the gospels, I don’t see a wise and benevolent sage imparting truth. I see a religious extremist and faith-healer, who is just as much of a scam artist as any of the exorcists still practicing today. Remember that Jesus taught his disciples how to do faith healing too, just like tele-evangelists still do. Jesus didn’t believe in washing your hands because he didn’t know about pathogens. He believed in demons instead. And he cursed a fig tree because he didn’t know they were out-of-season. Likewise he didn’t know that the farmers of his day already knew about other seeds that were smaller than mustard seeds. My best evidence was Jesus’ complaint that the people who knew him since childhood wouldn’t buy any of his bullshit. So the only indications I had to believe in a historic Jesus were the very points that implied that he could not be a god nor have any real connection to God. So there are only two possibilities: Jesus was either an ignorant 1st century charlatan and cult leader heavily exaggerated like Robin Hood, or he’s a completely imaginary legendary figure like Hercules. Remember how Jesus said that he came not to bring peace but a sword; that he would divide husbands from their wives and children from their parents all on behalf of beliefs based on faith? Remember also that faith, (an unreasonable assertion of complete conviction which is not based on reason and is defended against all reason) —is the most dishonest position it is possible to have. Any belief which requires faith should be rejected for that reason.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"Jesus never existed" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/03/jesus-never-existed/, Patheos (November 3, 2015) Patheos

God, Children, People, Truth

“Now that the dogs of war are calling for the head of Senator Al Franken I believe it is time to speak up on behalf of all heterosexual males. As a candidate for Governor let me save my opponents some research time. In my last fifty years I was sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females. It ranged form a gorgeous personal secretary to Senator Bob Taft (Senior) who was my first true love and we made passionate love in the hayloft of her parents barn in Gallipolis and ended with a drop dead gorgeous red head who was senior advisor to Peter Lewis at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland.
Now can we get back to discussing legalizing marijuana and opening the state hospital network to combat the opioid crisis. I am sooooo disappointed by this national feeding frenzy about sexual indiscretions decades ago.
Peace.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-17-2017 AM

Love, War, Peace, Dogs

“I’ve grown up with animals in the house, I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and all of us had cats, dogs, mice, chickens, frogs, tortoises, so they’ve always been a big part of my life. My dog, Scamp, was my best friend when I was growing up, and he was just as much a brother to me as my human brothers. Someone threw acid on him, and he almost died, but my parents spent their life savings having him treated. It appalled me that people could be so cruel, and ever since I have stuck up for animals. It is something I can be active in, unlike trying to figure out the appalling things humans do to each other.”

Geezer Butler (1949) English musician, bassist and lyricist of Black Sabbath

“Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler,” interview with Devils Gate Media (24 March 2016) http://devilsgatemedia.com/interview-black-sabbaths-geezer-butler/.

Life, People, Dogs, Cats

“Having one child makes you a parent; having two makes you a referee.”

David Frost (1939–2013) English journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and daytime TV game show host

Quoted in The Independent, 16 September 1989

“The real question is: "Should we have public schools?" Let's argue about that one for a while first. If we are going to have them, then we should discuss what could be taught in them. Who decides what is going to be taught in them? Does Bill Clinton decide what's taught? Or Osama Bin Laden decide what's taught? Should you decide what's taught, or should I decide? The whole problem is that some people have this idiot idea that children belong to the state. No, no, no, children belong to God, they are entrusted to parents. The parents should decide what God wants them to be taught, the state does not ever have children. It is sterile, it can't have children, they want to steal yours.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

God, Children, People, School

“Half the humans are women, so I think half the scientists should be women - a legacy of my parents.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Nye: We must all save the Earth, The Madison Courier, Madison, Indiana, February 21, 2009, Pat Whitney]

Women, Thinking

“Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Age, Soul, Nature, Evil

“Now what in hell am I going to tell this boy Schaefer's parents? That a substitute nurse assassinated him because she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Dr. Bock.
The Hospital (1971)

Boy, Hell

“Mo: I wish it were me instead of you.
Sydney: Yeah. I'm getting the sodium pentothal. You have to go sit with my parents.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#416, "The Basic Anxiety" (2003), collected in Invasion of the DTWOF (2005).
Dykes to Watch Out For

“There are two distinct types of bike: The one you save up for and buy yourself, otherwise known as the 'Dream Machine', and the one your parents buy for you, otherwise known as the 'Complete waste of space.”

Peter Corey (1946) British writer

Quotes from specific Coping With Books, Coping with Cash

Dreams

“Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)

Singing

“The part of my life I think I'm most disappointed in is that I have not had the great marriage. And I would have thought that would have happened, because I came from a home—you know, it's not like some of my friends, they get divorced, but their parents were divorced twice or three times. I came from a home where marriage was just incredible. I mean, my parents truly loved each other.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Good Morning America (2 December 1999), as quoted in The World According to Trump (2005) by Ken Lawrence, p. 46
1990s

Love, Life, Marriage, Disappointment

“Only by discarding a diet based on rotting corpses could men become sane. The fantasy of needing a blood-diet, a corpse-diet, was inseparable from the distorted relation to the parents I had been trying to clarify in myself and which one way or another existed in everyone. The corpse-eater was still in fantasy feeding on the parents. We discussed these ideas and decided to eat no more meat, no more animal products of any kind (such as milk, cheese, eggs) and to discard mineral salt. Apart from a few extreme applications of our position, when I tried to eat such nauseous things as raw potatoes, we found that we felt very much better in health.”

Jack Lindsay (1900–1990) Australian writer in the United Kingdom

Fanfrolico and After (London: Bodley Head, 1962), pp. 217-218.

Men, Health, Way, Idea

“We know that there are children out there whose parents do not take the kind of interest in their upbringing and in their existence that we would wish, but I don't think censorship is ever the solution to any problem, be it societal or be it the kind of information or ideas that you have access to.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"Easy Access?" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/july-dec97/library_8-7.html by Spencer Michels, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (August 7, 1997)

Children, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“[President Obama] encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women. And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud, and that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me. So I just appreciated that very much.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

Andrea Mitchell interview with Sandra Fluke. Andrea Mitchell Reports. March 2, 2012. — cited in [Andrea Mitchell interviews Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke moments after speaking with President Obama, MSNBC, http://info.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/02/10563035-andrea-mitchell-interviews-georgetown-law-student-sandra-fluke-moments-after-speaking-with-president-obama, March 2, 2012, March 8, 2012, NBCUniversal, Weesie, Vieira]
Media interviews

Women, Family, Question, Support

“Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Freud"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Life

“Both Socrates and Christ taught economic man to be at least slightly ashamed of himself when he failed to sacrifice the lower capacity to the higher. Freud is America’s great teacher, despite his ardent wish to avoid that fate. For it was precisely the official and parental shams of high ideals that Freud questioned. In their stead, Freud taught lessons which Americans, prepared by their own national experience, learn easily: survive, resign yourself to living within your moral means, suffer no gratuitous failures in a futile search for ethical heights that no longer exist—if they ever did.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Fate, Search, Failure, Question

“If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Education, School, Way

“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further… God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.

Love, Men, God, Children

“I was raised by parents who taught me to love and respect people regardless of their race or background, so I am saddened and frustrated by the divisive rhetoric and racial tensions that seem to be getting worse as of late. I know this country is better than that, and I can no longer stay silent. We need to find solutions that ensure people of color receive fair and equal treatment AND that police officers – who put their lives on the line every day to protect us all – are respected and supported.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Love, People, Color, Support

“When a parent denies a child its “parent time,” that parent is denying the child its child support -- its psychological child support.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 187.

Support, Time

“Thank you. Thank you very much. President Turner, thanks. Members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Ludden, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, and — most importantly — the Class of 2015. Thank you for your warm welcome, and I appreciate the invitation to be with you. You know, when I mentioned this speech to some pals, they were surprised I was going to give it. I haven't given a commencement address since leaving office. You know, my decision is quite practical. So I got a call from my landlord, Gerald Turner. Rather than raising the rent or threatening to withhold our security deposit. I was relieved to hear President Turner ask if I believed in free speech. I said yeah. He said, 'Perfect. Here’s your chance to give one'. As a proud member of the SMU community, I am honored to be here – truly honored – to deliver the 100th Spring Commencement address. I admire President Turner’s persuasiveness and leadership. He runs a fantastic university. It is dynamic, diverse, and destined for continued excellence. He has assembled a strong administrative team. He is supported by engaged alumni, and he has an outstanding Board of Trustees.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Spring, Communication, Support, Decision

“There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation… [The] progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix B

Life, Beauty, Nature

“Don't be misled by the current atheistic drive to take God out of the classroom. "Separation of church and state" was to keep creeds out of the curriculum, but not God. It would be as unconstitutional to teach irreligion in the classroom as it would be to emphasize some particular religion. As teachers we are not to teach a particular faith, but parents are within their rights when they insist that the classroom is not be used by those few teachers who seek to destroy faith. Teachers who believe that teaching atheism is a necessary part of a good education are not really qualified to teach in a Judaic-Christian culture. They are entitled to be atheists but, as public employees, they are not entitled to teach it. If they do, they are violating an important constitutional principle.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

God, Education, Faith, Religion

“The Constitution forbids the passing of a bill of attainder: that is, a law entailing upon the child the disabilities and hardships imposed upon the parent. Every slave law in America might be repealed on this very ground. The slave is made a slave because his mother is a slave. But to all this it is said that the practice of the American people is against my view. I admit it. They have given the Constitution a slaveholding interpretation. I admit it. Thy have committed innumerable wrongs against the Negro in the name of the Constitution. Yes, I admit it all; and I go with him who goes farthest in denouncing these wrongs. But it does not follow that the Constitution is in favor of these wrongs because the slaveholders have given it that interpretation. To be consistent in his logic, the City Hall speaker must follow the example of some of his brothers in America — he must not only fling away the Constitution, but the Bible. The Bible must follow the Constitution, for that, too, has been interpreted for slavery by American divines. Nay, more, he must not stop with the Constitution of America, but make war with the British Constitution, for, if I mistake not, the gentleman is opposed to the union of Church and State. In America he called himself a Republican. Yet he does not go for breaking down the British Constitution, although you have a Queen on the throne, and bishops in the House of Lords.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

War, People, Law, Housing

“A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank — though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it — not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament — but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought … all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Life, Secret, Family, Knowledge

“Both parents’ rights must be in balance so children can grow up with a balance between both parents.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 126.

Children

“I would take school instruction out of the hands of the old order of decrepit, stammering, journeymen-teachers as well as from the new weak ones, who are generally no better for popular instruction, and entrust it to the undivided powers of Nature herself, to the light that God kindles and ever keeps alive in the hearts of fathers and mothers, to the interest of parents who desire that their children should grow up in favour with God and man.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (1801), ed. Ebenezer Cooke, trans. Lucy E. Holland and Frances C. Turner (Syracuse, NY, 1894), letter VII, p. 97 http://www.archive.org/stream/howgertrudeteach00pestuoft/howgertrudeteach00pestuoft_djvu.txt

God, Children, School, Nature

“Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.”

Henry Fielding Love in Several Masques

Act III, sc. vii
Love in Several Masques (1728)

Dance

Quotes about parents page 12

Quotes about parents
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