Quotes about father
page 17

Johannes Warnardus Bilders photo

“Then - being in two minds - in my father's courtyard, I counted the buttons of my coat: soldier or painter, soldier, painter, soldier, painter.... the last button told me: painter. So it was decided by chance that I would become a painter”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

c. 1831
version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Toen telde ik, op de binnenplaats mijns vaders in tweestrijd, de knoopen van mijn jas: soldaat of schilder, soldaat, schilder, soldaat, schilder.. ..de laatste knoop zei schilder, en zoo besliste het toeval, dat ik schilder zou worden [c. 1831].
J.W. Bilders was fighting as a Dutch volunteer in the Belgium Independents War against The Netherlands. 1830
Source: 1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900), p. 78

Heber C. Kimball photo
Bernice King photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Wafa Sultan photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Stephenie Meyer photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“There ain't a note that I play on stage that can’t be traced back directly to my mother and father.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

Bruce Springsteen Talking

“Idmon, Phoebus' son,… to him the Father gave by his ordinance the foreknowledge of omens divine, whether he inquired of flames or close-viewed entrails smooth, or of the air thick with fowls that cannot lie.”
Phoebeius Idmon, ... cui genitor tribuit monitu praenoscere divum omina, seu flammas seu lubrica comminus exta seu plenum certis interroget aera pinnis.

Source: Argonautica, Book I, Lines 228 and 231–233

Antonio Gramsci photo

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Alfred P. Sloan photo

“My father was in the wholesale tea, coffee, and cigar business, with a firm called Bennett-Sloan and Company. In 1885 he moved the business to New York City, on West Broadway, and from the age of ten I grew up in Brooklyn. I am told I still have the accent. My father's father was a schoolteacher. My mother's father was a Methodist minister. My parents had five children, of whom I am the oldest. There is my sister, Mrs. Katharine Sloan Pratt, now a widow. There are my three brothers — Clifford, who was in the advertising business; Harold, a college professor; and Raymond, the youngest, who is a professor, writer, and expert on hospital administration. I think we have all had in common a capability for being dedicated to our respective interests.
I came of age at almost exactly the time when the automobile business in the United States came into being. In 1895 the Duryeas, who had been experimenting with motor cars, started what I believe was the first gasoline-automobile manufacturing company in the United States. In the same year I left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a a BS. in electrical engineering, and went to work for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company of Newark, later of Harrison, New Jersey. The Hyatt antifriction bearing was later to become a component of the automobile, and it was through this component that I came into the automotive industry. Except for one early and brief departure from it, I have spent my life in the industry.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 37

George W. Bush photo

“What I am and what I know I owe to my father’s library and to my mother’s salon.”

Nicolaus Sombart (1923–2008) German sociologist

Original : Was ich bin und weiß, verdanke ich der Bibliothek meines Vaters und dem Salon meiner Mutter.
Source: Jugend in Berlin. München: Hanser Verlag, 1984. p. 57

George Carlin photo

“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony. If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large. Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Rachel Notley photo

“Tonight, I also want to say that I'm also thinking about my mother and father. I know my mother would be completely over the moon about this. I think my dad would too. I'm sorry he couldn't see this. This really was his life’s work but I can say this: I know how proud he'd be of the province we all love.”

Rachel Notley (1964) 17th Premier of Alberta

Rachel Notley during her 2015 victory speech. "Notley's Way: How the Alberta premier became determined." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/the-alberta-ndps-rachel-notley-she-is-a-child-of-the-party/article24338069/ May 8, 2015.

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Jeremy Hardy photo

“You can inherit male-pattern baldness from your mother's father, but not a tendency to fight in the First World War.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, October 1998 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 6 June 2006)

Bill Hybels photo
Tiffany Trump photo
Warren Farrell photo

“A father’s traditional role prepared him to love his family by being away from the love of his family.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Bill Cosby photo

“My father walked to school 4 o'clock every morning with no shoes on, uphill, both ways, in 5 feet of snow and he was thankful.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Bill Cosby---Grandparents(Youtube), 15 August 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt33zqib2qk#t=01m57s,

Evelyn Waugh photo

“I had warned my father that my viva might mean a second. It meant a third, and I was overcome with regret, not, I am ashamed to say, for the giddy nights, but for the sober ones. I had not done much work, but I had done some. Had I known I was only to get a third I would not have wasted my time.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

"Is Oxford Worth the Money?", Sunday Dispatch, 10 July 1938, page 12. Quoted in "The Sayings of Evelyn Waugh", edited by Donat Gallagher, Duckworth Sayings Series

Lang Lang photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The priests have so disfigured the simple religion of Jesus that no one who reads the sophistications they have engrafted on it, from the jargon of Plato, of Aristotle & other mystics, would conceive these could have been fathered on the sublime preacher of the sermon on the mount.”

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

Letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (13 October 1815). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, p. 492
1810s

Warren Farrell photo

“There is little life where no one will listen. These are fathers, sons and families who are needlessly lost.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Denis Diderot photo

“There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

No. 51
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

Albrecht Thaer photo
Bernard Baruch photo
Homér photo
Bruno Schulz photo

“">“Sadly, Adela,” said Father, “you have never been able to comprehend matters of a higher order. Always and everywhere, you have thwarted my actions with your outbursts of mindless animosity. But today, clad in armour, I mock your tickling, by which you once drove one helpless to despair.””

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“My Father Joins the Fire Brigade” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/fire_brigade.htm
His father, Adela (the domestic servant)

“For Moses, that God should "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation" (Exod. 20:5) is an unacceptable form of group punishment akin to the morally indiscriminate punishment of Sodom. Challenging God's pronouncement of the punishment of the sons for the sins of the fathers, Moses argues with God, against God, and in the name of God. Moses engages God with fierce moral logic:
Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteousness of Abraham and the idol worship of his father Terach. Does it make moral sense to punish the child for the transgressions of the father? Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteous deeds of King Hezekiah, who sprang from the loins of his evil father King Achaz. Does Hezekiah deserve Achaz's punishment? Consider the nobility of King Josiah, whose father Amnon was wicked. Should Josiah inherit the punishment of Amnon? (Num. Rabbah, Hukkat XIX, 33)
Trained to view God as an unyielding authoritarian proclaiming immutable commands, we might expect that Moses will be severely chastised for his defiance. Who is this finite, errant, fallible, human creature to question the explicit command of the author of the Ten Commandments? The divine response to Moses, according to the rabbinic moral imagination, is arresting:
By your life Moses, you have instructed Me. Therefore I will nullify My words and confirm yours. Thus it is said, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers."”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Deut. 24:16
Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

Ayn Rand photo

“It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world. Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support. It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it. In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!" But Lenin and Stalin is what they got. In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler. In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!"”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

What they got was Napoleon. In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it. No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.
The Ayn Rand Column

Tadeusz Kościuszko photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

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

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Nastassja Kinski photo
Joseph H. Hertz photo
G. I. Gurdjieff photo

“Dull headed I am, you are the very progenitor of cupid
Forgiving my countless sins please save me…
I am the sinner and you remove the sins on me
Anger, vanity, arrogance I am filled with these
Make me fearless removing my worries
False shadowy forms engross me
You are the redeemer to those who seek refuge
Worst criminal I am you remove hurdle rocks that huge
Bewildered I am you save me as you foresee
Charlatan I am and you are without vanity
Unlucky I am you are lord of wealth divine
Can I comprehend past or future of mine?
Oh Purandara Vittala Raya my father
Perpetually you save me without bother.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this song Dasa’s reference to ‘cupid’ is to a mythological episode in which Shiva destroys Manmatha the demi god for hindering his penance. However, he is rescued by Parvati, Shiva’s consort and adopted as their own son Pradyumna in a rebirth in the subsequent era of Lord Krishna. This is considered as a noble act. The translated version is here.[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 89]

Ray Comfort photo

“I don't see my Father as a tyrant because Scripture gives me extra information that tells me that He is just and holy, and that all His judgements are righteous and true altogether.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Jane Roberts photo
Mahadev Govind Ranade photo

“The preamble to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was common practice among husbands and fathers to desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in the absence of conscience it was futile to expect moral indignation against the social wrongs. Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending every wrong for the simple reason that they lived on them. They defended Untouchability which condemned millions to the lot of the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they defended enforced widowhood—the two great props of the Caste system. They defended the burning of widows, and they defended the social system of graded inequality with its rule of hypergamy which led the Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames! What wrongs! Can such a Society show its face before civilized nations? Can such a society hope to survive?”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

In support of the Regulation (VII of 1819) to put a stop to this moral degeneracy such were the questions which Ranade asked. He concluded that on only one condition it could be saved—namely, rigorous social reform. Quoted in Ranade Gandhi & Jinnah
At his 100th Anniversary lecture delivered in 1943 on Ranade, Gandhi & Jinnah by Dr. Ambedkar

Boris Yeltsin photo

“I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Interview on Russian television (2000), as quoted in the BBC Obituary (23 April 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6584481.stm
2000s

Robin Lane Fox photo

“Olympia's royal ancestry traced back to the hero Achilles, and the blood of Helen of Troy was believed to run on her father's side.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.44

Huldrych Zwingli photo

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Galeazzo Ciano photo

“As always, victory will have a hundred fathers, but defeat will never be acknowledged by anyone at all.”

Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944) Italian politician

Galeazzo Ciano (1946) The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943. Milan: Rizzoli. p. 594; Original cited in: Emerging Infectious diseases. Vol 2, Nr 1, Jan.-March 1996. p. 61
Original: Come sempre, la vittoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l'insuccesso.

Eugene Field photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Derren Brown photo

“Justification is the act of God as a Judge; adoption as a Father; by the former we are discharged from condemnation, and accepted as righteous; by the latter we are made the children of God and joint-heirs with Christ.”

John Guyse (1680–1761) British independent minister

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 362.

Jonathan Ive photo
Dorothy Day photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Zainab Salbi photo
Peter Singer photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo
William Cobbett photo

“I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects…. Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that [my children] should be bred up in it too.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Source: The Autobiography of William Cobbett (1933), Ch. 8, p. 99.

Hovhannes Bagramyan photo

“What's bad about my biography? My father was a worker, my brothers, too, and I have always honestly served my country.”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad" - Page 112 - by Harrison E. Salisbury - History - 2003

Elton John photo
R. Venkataraman photo

“The welfare of the weaker sections of our society has been entrusted to the nation’s collective care by the founding fathers of our polity. Their advancement must, therefore be regarded by the nation as its privilege.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.185

Brigham Young photo

“Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken-He is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later. They came here, organized the raw material, and arranged in their order the herbs of the field, the trees, the apple, the peach, the plum, the pear, and every other fruit that is desirable and good for man; the seed was brought from another sphere, and planted in this earth. The thistle, the thorn, the brier, and the obnoxious weed did not appear until after the earth was cursed. When Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became mortal from its effects, and therefore their offspring were mortal…It is true that the earth was organized by three distinct characters, namely, Eloheim, Yahovah, and Michael, these three forming a quorum, as in all heavenly bodies, and in organizing element, perfectly represented in the Deity, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 1:50-51 (April 9, 1852)
This concept is commonly referred to as the "Adam–God theory."
1850s

Artur Balder photo

“I am the unknown Will,
The Anger that threatens glory and ruin:
Lord of Storms am I,
in heaven high and caverns deep.
I am the Father of the War,
Odin for you, Wotan for him,
Wayfarer, Wanderer, beggar, king,
numen, genius, strength and ring.”

Artur Balder (1974) Spanish film director

Invocation of the Nordic god Odin, from "Invocations and Oracles", Germanic Appendices, Volume V of the Teutoburg Saga, as quoted in advance posting (30 September 2014) https://m.facebook.com/ArturBalderWeb/photos/a.328905527173875.77327.224962374234858/757576457640111/?type=1

Patrick Modiano photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Antoine François Prévost photo

“A father's heart is nature's finest work.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

Un cœur de père est le chef-d'œuvre de la nature.
Part 2, p. 205; translation p. 117.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Croesus photo

“In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.”

Croesus (-596–-546 BC) King of Lydia

Quoted by Herodotus in The Histories, Book I http://books.google.com/books?id=QA4ZZ5gRpnkC&q="In+peace+the+sons+bury+their+fathers+but+in+war+the+fathers+bury+their+sons"&pg=PA45#v=onepage

Anwar Ibrahim photo

“I am saying this with all humility. I know him (Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad). I love him as a father and a leader. I have fought against him. And now I accept that he is the best man to lead Malaysia now.”

Anwar Ibrahim (1947) Malaysian politician

Anwar Ibrahim said during the Port Dickson bi-election campaign rally, quoted on Channel News Asia, "'I love him as a father and a leader': Anwar, Mahathir in show of unity at by-election rally" https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/anwar-ibrahim-mahathir-port-dickson-by-election-pakatan-10805828, 9 October 2018.

Robert P. George photo

“If you're a father of sons, think of a man you'd like your boys to emulate, then be that man--exemplify his selflessness, fidelity, courage.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/911713887061409797 (23 September 2017)
2017

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“It is the anti-colonial ideology of his African father that Barack Obama took to heart.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), Ch. 2: The Black Man's Burden

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“I don't think it's healthy for people to want there to be a permanent, unalterable, irremovable authority over them. I don't like the idea of a father who never goes away, the idea of a king who cannot be deposed, the idea of a judge who doesn't allow a lawyer or a jury or an appeal. This is an appeal to absolutism. It's the part of ourselves that's not so nice; that wants security, that wants certainty, that wants to be taken care of. For hundreds and hundreds of years, the human struggle for freedom was against the worst kind of dictatorship of all: the theocracy, the one that claims it has God on its side. I believe that totalitarian temptation has to be resisted. What I'm inviting you to do is to consider emancipating yourselves from the idea that you, selfishly, are the sole object of all the wonders of the cosmos and of nature - because that's not a humble idea at all, it's a very arrogant one and there's no evidence for it. And then, again, the second emancipation - to think of yourselves as free citizens who are not enthralled to any supernatural-eternal authority; which you will always find is interpreted for you by other mammals who claim to have access to this authority - that gives them special power over you. Don't allow yourselves to have your lives run like that.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=22m46s
2010s, 2010

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