Quotes about parents
page 14

Robert Hunter (author) photo

“Thrift and foresight are among the chief teachings of all missionaries to the poor and the present day world has little sympathy for any parent”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

also see Charles Dickens, Bleak House
p. 60
Why We Fail as Christians (1919)
Context: Thrift and foresight are among the chief teachings of all missionaries to the poor and the present day world has little sympathy for any parent—whether a Harold Skimpole, a Mrs. Jellyby, a Jean Jacques Rousseau, or a Leo Tolstoy—who for any cause whatsoever feels that he should give no thought for the morrow and that his children may live like the fowls of the air.

Reza Pahlavi photo
Walt Disney photo
Rodney Dangerfield photo
Henry Fielding photo
LeBron James photo
Teal Swan photo
Hanya Yanagihara photo
Joseph Addison photo
Rab Butler photo
Karl Pearson photo

“Heredity. Given any organ in a parent and the same or any other organ in its offspring, the mathematical measure of heredity is the correlation of these organs for pairs of parent and offspring... The word organ here must be taken to include any characteristic which can be quantitatively measured.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution III: Regression, Heredity and Panmixia", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series A, Vol. 187 (1896) p. 259.

Jessica Alba photo

“I was always in trouble with my parents for speaking up and wanting to be an equal part of the conversation. I started working young so I could get that respect.”

Jessica Alba (1981) American model, free-diver and businesswoman; TV and film actress

On working at an early age in order to communicate with her parents in “Jessica Alba's Reinvention” https://www.redbookmag.com/life/money-career/a19434170/jessicaalba/ in Redbook (2018 Mar 15)

Tope Folarin photo

“Growing up, I experienced this viscerally because my parents are from Nigeria, I was born and raised in America and my parents tried to hand over that identity card and that didn’t fit me because I was growing up in a context in which their identity didn’t necessarily line up with how I saw myself…”

Tope Folarin (1982) Nigerian writer

On the generational rifts in his family in “TOPE FOLARIN’S SEARCH FOR HIMSELF” https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/tope-folarin-interview in Mel Magazine (2019)

Newton Lee photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Octavio Solis photo

“For someone born in the US but whose parents hail from Mexico, there is always a disconnect that happens between the present culture and the one before. Sometimes, it is a flimsy synapse, and sometimes the disconnect can be a chasm…”

Octavio Solis (1958)

On having Mexican-born parents in “An Interview with Octavio Solis” http://literaryashland.org/?p=10939 (Welcome to Literary Ashland; 2019 Jun 24)

Dany Laferrière photo

“They were human beings who had a life, who had a lineage, who had parents, who had children, who had lives. They were not poor or rich. They were people and these people had humanity. So it was important that someone who knew them write about the event…”

Dany Laferrière (1953) Haitian Canadian novelist and journalist

On reporting about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti in “An Interview with Dany Laferrière” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/an-interview-with-dany-laferriere-jessie-chaffee (WWB Daily, 2016)

“To see brown bodies in this environment was exciting to me…Rural upstate New York could be anywhere in middle America…The parents being from Brooklyn, and Pop having Puerto Rican heritage, and the mom being white, makes it a quintessential American story.”

Raúl Castillo (1977) American actor, writer

On his role in the film We the Animals in “After ‘Looking’ and ‘We the Animals,’ Raul Castillo Is Ready to Be a Movie Star” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/raul-castillo-interview-we-the-animals-looking-1202029967/ in IndieWire (2019 Jan 2)

Doris Veillette photo

“Why not celebrate parents and not separate the holidays from dads and moms?”

Doris Veillette (1935–2019) Quebec journalist

Chronicle "Interdit aux hommes" (Forbidden to men), by Doris Veillette-Hamel, Journal Le Nouvelliste, February 8, 1972, page 26.
Chronicle "Forbidden to men", 1972

Cory Booker photo

“Working Americans would tell you that the dignity of work is being stripped … they are working harder than their parents and falling further behind … while their salaries may moderately have gone up, what has gone up more is the cost of prescription drugs … child care … college …”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

2019
Source: [Marshall, Karen, Deady, Brendan, Cory Booker Tests Message Of Collaboration And Economic Equality In First Visit To New Hampshire, https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2019/02/19/senator-cory-booker-tests-message-of-collaboration-and-economic-equality-in-first-visit-to-new-hampshire, WGBH News, 2019-03-15]

Vladimir Putin photo
Milton Friedman photo
Milton Friedman photo

“To me, they’re the greatest generation. My parents and their friends, to me, have qualities that I don’t have, my children don’t have. They’re very imaginative, hardworking people. They created so much. My mother could teach all day, and then she could come home and cook a perfect dinner, and her house always looked perfect. They had qualities, I think, that are just so admirable.”

Adrienne Kennedy (1931) African-American playwright

On her parents in “Unraveling the Landscape: A Conversation With Adrienne Kennedy” https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/04/unraveling-the-landscape-a-conversation-with-adrienne-kennedy/ in American Theatre (September 2019)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Michelle Alexander photo

“For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated…”

Michelle Alexander (1967) American lawyer, civil rights activist and writer

On the effect mass incarceration has on children in “Schools and the New Jim Crow: An Interview With Michelle Alexander” https://truthout.org/articles/schools-and-the-new-jim-crow-an-interview-with-michelle-alexander/ in Truthout (2013 Jun 4)

Hillary Clinton photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Andrew Yang photo

“I support the freedom of parents to adopt circumcision for any religious or cultural ritual as desired. Actually have attended a brit milah myself and felt privileged to be there. Thanks Mikael. Always up to parents.”

Andrew Yang (1975) American entrepreneur

19 March 2019 reported on 21 March 2019 by Israel National News http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/260697

Chris Cornell photo

“Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock, in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn’t their parents’. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
Solo career Era

William Quan Judge photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Alfred von Waldersee photo

“Prince Wilhelm seems to have a good deal of his grandfather about him. If his parents have aimed at training him to be a constitutional monarch ready to bow to the rule of a parliamentary majority they have failed.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 6 December 1883, quoted in Walter R. Pierce, Herr und Heer: The German Social Democrats and the Officer Corps, A Reappraisal

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“No child should ever be separated from their parent. No child should ever taken from their family. No woman should ever be locked up in a pen when they have done no harm to another human being.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

AOC quoted by The Hill, Twitter, https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1146082350725337089 (2 July 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), July 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“I grew up with a real romanticism about America. I grew up in a first-generation household where your parents give up everything, and for me America was the greatest thing ever to exist. To be there on the floor of the House was beyond anything my parents would have ever dreamed of.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Quoted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Coming for Your Hamburgers!, David Remnick, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-coming-for-your-hamburgers (3 March 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Ernest Becker photo
Edmund Burke photo
Pete Buttigieg photo

“Politics is in my bones. I grew up hearing my parents hollering at the TV.”

Pete Buttigieg (1982) American politician

2 December 2004
Rhodes Scholars announced
Ken Gewertz
The Harvard Gazette
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/12/rhodes-scholars-announced-2/
2004

Horace Mann photo
David Cameron photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Nakayama Miki photo

“Oh, I am so glad to see you have come. God the Parent lent a hand to bring you home. You had a hard time, slipping at many places. However, you were joyful. Sah, sah, God the Parent accepts fully, fully. Whatever you ask, it is accepted. God protects you. Enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it!”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

So saying, Oyasama grasped Rin’s cold hands with both Her own. It was something more than warming them over the brazier. Rin was moved with gratitude and awe at the inexpressible warmth of Oyasama.
Anecdotes of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, from Anecdote 44, "A Snowy Day," p. 39.
Nakayama's exchange with Masui Rin, upon her arrival at the Nakayama residence during a stormy day.
Anecdotes of Oyasama

Roy Moore photo

“Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”

Roy Moore (1947) American former judge

Jim Ziegler, Alabama state auditor, in [2017-11-09, Philip Wegmann, Alabama state auditor defends Roy Moore against sexual allegations, invokes Mary and Joseph, The Washington Examiner, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/alabama-state-auditor-defends-roy-moore-against-sexual-allegations-invokes-mary-and-joseph/article/2640217]

Joel Fuhrman photo

“There is an issue of vital importance that most well-meaning parents are not aware of: the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Trying to prevent breast, prostate, and other cancers as an adult may not be totally possible because most risk factors cannot be changed at this late stage. The bottom line is that in order to have a major impact on preventing cancer we must intervene much earlier, even as early as the first ten years of life. In other words, childhood diets create adult cancers.
Introduction, p. xviii
Disease-Proof Your Child (2005)

Ibn Warraq photo
Frances Kellor photo
Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar photo
Ellen Page photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo

“His Highness with the shining examples of his two illustrious parents before him had shown the same earnest devotion to duty and given the same unfailing support to his ministers as had been received at the hands of His Highness* father and his mother.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

Said by the Dewan. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 201 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
From Modern Mysore

Tryon Edwards photo

“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?”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?
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

Hugh Blair photo

“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?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?
Quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern, https://books.google.com/books?id=zlMxAAAAIAAJ ed. Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Company (1908), p. 23.

John Mayer photo

“Neither punk nor prom king, Mayer was a tall kid from Connecticut, driving on the freeways, chasing slippery techno women, inhabiting a world of parents and slipcovers and holidays and gracious Southeastern metropolises; he was smart, inquisitive, articulate, a touch off in places.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Hunter, James (2003-10-02), "Corduroy Boy" http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/_/id/300650/johnmayer?pageid=rs.ArtistDiscography&pageregion=triple1. Rolling Stone. (932):116 Retrieved October 2, 2003

Gilles Villeneuve photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Teal Swan photo
Robert Greene photo
Teal Swan photo
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck photo
Richard Dawkins photo
David Sedaris photo

“I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, 'All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalog.'
The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word 'pony' or 'television set,' so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, 'What do you say to Santa?'
The child says, 'Thank you, Santa.'”

It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to the fingerprints.
Essay, "Santaland diaries" - p.233-234, 235
Barrel Fever (1994)

Lynn Compton photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Paul Kruger photo

“We have arrived here to celebrate as you are well aware. Our aim, as your aim, is no less than to acquire a deeper understanding of the will of the Lord, and to apprise ourselves of his guidance, in order that the parents may convey to their children and grandchildren, and thence to our most distant descendants, what God has bestowed on us.”

Paul Kruger (1825–1904) President of the South African Republic

At Paardekraal, current Krugersdorp, addressing a crowd of SAR citizens who gathered to celebrate the Paardekraal resolution of a year before, besides the Day of the Vow (13 to 16 December 1881)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Robert Filmer photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Parents probably don’t know that they are playing favorites even when they are doing it.”

Source: Time for the Stars (1956), Chapter 5, “The Party of the Second Part” (p. 54)

Joanna Trollope photo

“I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On her novel Mum & Dad in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/02/joanna-trollope-on-families-fiction-and-feminism-society-still-expects-women-to-do-all-the-caring in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

“Governments have meddled incessantly with money, which in our time has been the fruitful parent of intricate discussions and painful changes.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 179

Bulleh Shah photo
Julia Gillard photo
Bhanu Choudhrie photo
Carmen Lomas Garza photo

“My parents did not trust…There was a lot of mistrust…There was this skepticism about white people because of what they had gone through. And I didn't associate with any white people except when I got to junior high.”

Carmen Lomas Garza (1948) Mexican-American artist and illustrator

On the racial divides in her household and community in “Oral history interview with Carmen Lomas Garza, 1997 Apr. 10-May 27” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-carmen-lomas-garza-13540#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Francis Bacon photo

“The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Parents and Children

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“If you’re a parent, you want to teach your kids to be kind, you want to teach them to care about other people and you want to teach them not to discriminate for no reason.”

Daniel Chong (animator) (1978) American artist

We Bare Bears Creator Daniel Chong On Life Lessons And The Future Of Bears https://geekculture.co/geek-interview-we-bare-bears-creator-daniel-chong-on-life-lessons-and-the-future-of-bears/ (August 24, 2020)

Warren Farrell photo

“Parenting plans should be consistent.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 165

Warren Farrell photo

“Empathy is a virtue which, when it only goes from parent to child, and is not required of the child, becomes a vice.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 138

Confucius photo

“All people respect and love their own parents and children, as well as the parents and children of others.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, A Great Utopia (The World of Da-Tong)

Prevale photo

“The greatest inheritance that a parent can leave to their child is the memory of his love, otherwise the rest has no value.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La più grande eredità che un genitore possa lasciare al proprio figlio è il ricordo del suo amore, altrimenti il resto non ha alcun valore.
Source: prevale.net

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh photo

“Children go to school because their parents don't want them in the house.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Source: Prompting giggles from Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban after campaigning for the right of girls to go to school without fear - October 2013.

Celeste Ng photo
Richard Price photo

“Ignorance is the parent of bigotry, intolerance, persecution and slavery. Inform and instruct mankind; and these evils will be excluded.”

Richard Price (1721–1791) Welsh nonconformist preacher and radical

Source: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), p. 13

Torrie Wilson photo
Elizabeth Blackwell photo
Jamie Chung photo

“We'd only speak Korean at home. They [parents] wouldn't let us have sleepovers and sent us away to Korean church camp during the summers. We had weird food concoctions, too, so instead of spaghetti bolognese, we had rice bolognese with kimchi.”

Jamie Chung (1983) American actress

On her childhood memories in "Jamie Chung, Star of ‘Premium Rush, On Her Road from The Real World to Hollywood" in The Daily Beast (25 August 2012) https://www.thedailybeast.com/jamie-chung-star-of-premium-rush-on-her-road-from-the-real-world-to-hollywood

Jamie Chung photo

“My parents, in their 40s, moved to a different country, started a business, bought a house, didn't speak the language, raised two kids - it's kind of amazing.”

Jamie Chung (1983) American actress

As quoted in "Jamie Chung is finally over her fear of commitment" in New York Post (14 April 2015) https://nypost.com/2015/04/14/once-reluctant-bride-jamie-chung-is-ready-to-walk-down-the-aisle/

Jason Tanamor photo