Quotes about father
page 8

Jane Addams photo
Ernst Hanfstaengl photo
Aristophanés photo

“Just Discourse: Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.”

tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 1, p. 359 http://books.google.com/books?id=9vpxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Do+not+bandy+words+with+your+father%2C+nor+treat+him+as+a+dotard%2C+nor+reproach+the+old+man%2C+who+has+cherished+you%2C+with+his+age%22
Clouds, line 998-999
Clouds (423 BC)

Marvin Gaye photo
James Weldon Johnson photo

“Father, Father Abraham,
To-day look on us from above;
On us, the offspring of thy faith,
The children of thy Christ-like love.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

Father, Father Abraham, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Sarah Bakewell photo
Norodom Ranariddh photo
David Morrison photo
Barbara (singer) photo

“He died before the night was through
Without farewell, or I love you
My father, my father.
The sky in Nantes
Rips my heart with grief.”

Barbara (singer) (1930–1997) French singer

Mais il mourut à la nuit même
Sans un adieu, sans un je t'aime
Mon père, mon père
le ciel de Nantes
Rend mon coeur chagrin.

Nantes.
Song lyrics

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Richard Feynman photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“Just as the eldest son of a wheel-turning monarch properly keeps in motion the wheel of sovereignty set in motion by his father, so do you, Sāriputta, properly keep in motion the Wheel of Dhamma set in motion by me.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Vangisasamyutta, as translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi (2000), p. 287
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Samyutta Nikaya (Connected Discourses)

Hillary Clinton photo

“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Conference on domestic violence https://web.archive.org/web/20010726225357/http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html in San Salvador, El Salvador (17 November 1998).
White House years (1993–2000)

N. K. Jemisin photo

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

Robert Burns photo
Kapil Dev photo

“…his mother was very old, and his father was no longer alive -- hence there cannot be another Kapil Dev!”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

When questioned "why a big country like India could not produce another fast bowler like him" quoted in Bigg Boss 6: Sidhu recalls funny sides of Kapil and Sachin, 18 October 2012, 20 December 2013, Times of India http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-10-18/tv/34554217_1_kapil-dev-kapil-dev-sachin-tendulkar,

Alan Alda photo

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

in his memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned, Random House, 2005, ISBN 1400064090.

Edward Young photo

“The booby father craves a booby son,
And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire II, l. 165.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Emily Brontë photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Students coming from father-present families score higher in math and science even when they come from weaker schools.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 31.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Daniel Handler photo
Bai Juyi photo

“And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.”

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

可憐光彩生門戸
遂令天下父母心
不重生男重生女
"A Song of Unending Sorrow"

Roberto Clemente photo

“I am having a plaque put on the front of my house. It will say, "To God, Mother, Father and Baseball."”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente's Smiling All the Way to the Bank" http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/61275081/ by Milton Richman (UPI), in The San Bernardino County Sun (Tuesday, December 6, 1966), p. 27
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

Maya Angelou photo
Martin Amis photo
Salvador Dalí photo
William Frederick Yeames photo

“And When Did You Last See Your Father?”

William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918) british painter

Title of a painting that depicts the son of a Royalist being questioned by Roundheads during the English Civil War. The painting is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Aurangzeb photo

“Verily, the guide and teacher of this path [of rebellion against, a reigning father] is Your Majesty; others are merely following your footsteps. How can the path which Your Majesty chose to follow can be called 'the path of ill-luck'?
My fathered bartered away the garden of Eden for two grains of wheat; I shall be an unworthy son if I do not sell it for a grain of barley!”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Muhammad Akbar to Aurangzeb; see Studies in Aurangzib's reign: Being Studies in Mughal India, first series by Jadunath Sarkar, p. 68, Ayodhya Revisited https://books.google.com/books?id=gKKaDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA581 by Kunal Kishore, p. 581; Mughal Empire in India, 1526-1761: Volume 2 by Shripad Rama Sharma, p. 637
Quotes from late medieval histories

Orson Scott Card photo
Edvard Munch photo
Martin Harris photo

“BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY DAVID WHITMER MARTIN HARRIS”

Martin Harris (1783–1875) Book of Mormon witness

Book of Mormon, 1830 Edition, p. 585 (1830)

Michelle Obama photo
Cassandra Clare photo
John Adams photo

“I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Autobiography (1802–1807)
1800s

H. G. Wells photo

“Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness — waiting for the Food.”

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) - Online PDF and Epub http://books.google.com/books?id=VOyeAAAAIAAJ

Louis Farrakhan photo

“My time is up. I believe … that my time to be with my spiritual father and his sender has come. And your time to go through serious trial has come.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

As quoted in "Farrakhan in Speech: 'My Time Is Up' " by Jeff Karoub http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2903211 ABC News (26 February 2007)

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre photo

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Norodom Ranariddh photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“I and the Father are not-two!”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 95

Gloria Estefan photo
Elie Wiesel photo
James Taylor photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Giordano Bruno photo

“Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Quote as translated in The Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 11 (1987), by Mircea Eliade, p. 459
The Ash Wednesday Supper (1584)

Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“Eventually there was a split between my parents about me. My mother obviously knew what was going on with me and the girls my friends lined up. She never came out and said anything directly, but she let me know she was concerned. Things were different between me and my father. He assumed that when I was eighteen, I would just go into the Army and they would straighten me out. He accepted some of the things my mother condemned. He felt it was perfectly all right to make out with all the girls I could. In fact, he was proud I was dating the fast girls. He bragged about them to his friends. 'Jesus Christ, you should see some of the women my son's coming up with'. He was showing off, of course. But still, our whole relationship had changed because I'd established myself by winning a few trophies and now had some girls. He was particularly excited about the girls. And he liked the idea that I didn't get involved. 'That's right, Arnold', he'd say, as though he'd had endless experience, 'never be fooled by them'. That continued to be an avenue of communication between us for a couple of years. In fact, the few nights I took girls home when I was on leave from the Army, my father was always very pleasant and would bring out a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/067122879X (1977), New York: Simon & Schuster.
1970s, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977)

C. N. R. Rao photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Edward Andrade photo
Arshile Gorky photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Ann E. Dunwoody photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
John Knox photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Sharron Angle photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo
Bernard Cornwell photo

“"You've never heard of Paul Revere?" "No." "Lucky man, Sharpe. He called my father a traitor, and our family called Revere a traitor, and I rather think we lost the argument."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Thomas Leroy, and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 81
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Company (1982)

Mike Huckabee photo

“When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in [The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel, 2007-10-21, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21debate-transcript.html?pagewanted=9, 2011-03-01]
asked his opinion on Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's position to do nothing to change the laws that keep abortion legal
Republican Debates

Cormac McCarthy photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“In the second year of my residence in Gottingen, I entered my name for a course of lectures on practical physics, against the advice of all my friends, but I have never regretted so doing, as there never has been, and probably never will be, a greater man at the university than Doctor Schroder, physician to the king, who gave, at that period, his celebrated lectures on practical physics. Schroder himself was astonished at the step I had taken; but when he perceived that I fully understood him, I became one of his favourite pupils; nor had I the advantage alone of receiving private lessons gratis, but he took me with him in most of his professional visits, where I had all the advantages of his great practice. Thus I caught a putrid fever which was then very prevalent; Schroeder attended me day and night, and giving up all hopes of my recovery, he observed to one of his friends, not thinking that I understood what he said, "The expansion of the sinews increases." "Then," answered I, in a quiet manner, "I shall die in four days, according to such and such a rule of Hippocrates: pray, prepare my father to receive the news of my death." However, immediately after, a sudden turn in the disorder taking place, I soon recovered; not so my memory, which I lost for a time, so that I had forgotten the names of my best friends; my nerves were so completely shaken, that I had no wish to recover. After my recovery, Professor Schroeder being himself attacked with the same fever, requested of his wife that no other physician than myself should attend him; but when he became light-headed, she called in all the physicians of Gottingen, and these gentlemen not agreeing in opinion respecting the treatment of the patient, this great and learned man fell a victim to ignorance and jealousy, April 21, 1772. I cannot think of this celebrated and good man without shedding tears of regret and gratitude.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Yolanda King photo

“My father was this whip who carried a bible everywhere he went, including to someone's house to dinner. That's not the kind of minister Daddy was! All these ridiculous cliches.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

In regards to her seeing a play's portrayal of her father as quoted in Living Black History: How Reimagining the American Past Can Remake American's Racial Future (2006) by Manning Marable, p. 133.
1980s

Jordan Peterson photo

“I also don't think it's unsophisticated to think of God the Father as the spirit that arises from the crowd that exists into the future. You make sacrifices in the present so that the future is happy with you. The question is, then, what is that future that would be happy with you? It's the spirit of humanity. That's who you're negotiating with, because you make the assumption that if you forgo impulsive pleasure and get your medical degree, that when you're done in ten years and when you're a physician, humanity as such will honor your sacrifice and commitment, and it will open the doors to you. So you're treating the future as if it's a single being, and you're also treating it as if it's a compassionate judge. You're acting that out. And maybe, once we figured out that there is a future, we needed to imagine God in that form in order to concretize something that we could bargain with so that we could figure out how to use sacrifice so that we could guide ourselves into the future. Because if sacrifice is a contract with the future, but not with any particular person, then it is a contract with the spirit of humanity as such. It's something like that. To come up with the idea that you can bargain with the future is THE major idea of humankind. We suffer. What do we do about it? We figure out how to bargain with the future. And we minimize suffering in that manner.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Dick Gregory photo

“When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Nigger: An Autobiography (1964)

Will Cuppy photo

“Among Noah's sons was one who covered the shame of his father, but the Hegelians are still tearing away the cloak which time and oblivion had sympathetically thrown over the shame of their Master.”

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher (1757–1830) Danish scientist

In a letter to Gauss. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361-362
Quoted

John Stuart Mill photo
Nat Turner photo
Aron Ra photo

“… the fact is that while we have become the most religious of any of the predominantly Christian first world nations, (due to repeated surges in rural revivalism) the US in its infancy was once the most secular government in history. The original colonies were primarily peopled by refugees fleeing religious persecution in other countries. But almost upon arrival, the Puritans only continued that practice against native Shaman, then against Quakers, and even each other –over religious differences. Catholics to the South were even worse! The founding fathers however were largely Deists, the least devout form of theism. They were brilliant men who knew better than to let religion rule over law because theocracy has in all instances almost automatically violated human rights and it inevitably always does. Consequently, the irreligious and non-Christian framers of the American Constitution produced the first government ever to grant all its citizens the right to religious freedom, and they did so by forbidding the government from sponsoring or promoting one religion over any other. Because it is not possible to have freedom of religion without having freedom from religion.”

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

"5th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmbnxtnMB4, Youtube (January 14, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Tyler Perry photo

“I didn’t want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I’ve tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

Interview: Tyler Perry, movie mogul, 21 August 2010

John Ruysbroeck photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Richard Ford photo
Bouck White photo
Oliver Cromwell photo
Juhani Aho photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Acontece tener un padre un hijo feo y sin gracia alguna, y el amor que le tiene le pone una venda en los ojos para que no vea sus faltas, antes las juzga por discreciones y lindezas y las cuenta a sus amigos por agudezas y donaires.
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Prologue

Meister Eckhart photo
Kunti photo

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears.
Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/