Quotes about mother
page 12

Camille Paglia photo
Gangubai Hangal photo
Kunti photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La maternité comporte une suite de poésies douces ou terribles. Pas une heure qui n’ait ses joies et ses craintes.
Part I, ch. XLV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Bernie Sanders photo

“The revolution comes when two strangers smile at each other, when a father refuses to send his child to school because schools destroy children, when a commune is started and people begin to trust each other, when a young man refuses to go to war and when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has 'taught' her and accepts her boyfriends (sic) love.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

"The Revolution Is Life Versus Death" https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2157415-sanders-revolution.html, in Vermont Freeman (1969), as quoted in "The origins of Sanders' ideology, in his own words" http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/bernie-sanders-own-words/ by Brianna Keilar, CNN (29 February 2016)
1970s

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Barney Frank photo

“There are a lot of ways to mispronounce my name. That is the least common […] I checked with my mother. In 50 years no one's ever called her "Elsie Fag."”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

Responding to Dick Armey's referring to him as "Barney Fag", unidentified publication/date
Quoted in [Solomon, John, 1 November 1998, http://www.sollyonline.com/content.cfm?copy=article&header=portfolio&portfolio=yes&SID=27, "America's Funniest Politicians", George, Solly Online, 2008-03-05]

Phillis Wheatley photo
Christopher Gérard photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Claudette Colbert photo

“Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy—the mother.”

Claudette Colbert (1903–1996) French-American actress

Time (September 14, 1981)

Albert Einstein photo
Indra Nooyi photo
Anne Rice photo
Baba Amte photo
Richard R. Wright Jr. photo
Geert Wilders photo
Gregory of Nyssa photo
Zach Galifianakis photo

“When John Ryder, for instance, writes "I utter valediction to the author of my being," he means simply that he said goodbye to his mother.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

How to Be a Collector (1995).

Bell Hooks photo

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Derren Brown photo

“How many powerful memories are triggered by smell and taste? Your mother’s old perfume, the smell your father’s breath, the taste of the soap they’d make you eat.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

“All of my decisions I made when I was a kid were decisions, would my mother and father be proud of.”

Ken Venturi (1931–2013) Professional golfer

Interview Ken Venturi http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=5285, Kemper Insurance Open, Potomac, Maryland. ASAP Sports - Golf, June 3, 2000.

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“All dharmas hide inside the mother's heart. To receive is dhamra.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

आमाको दिल

Jane Roberts photo
Maneka Gandhi photo

“Three years ago, I came to you as a bride. Today, I come as a widow who, with a small child, was thrown out of her mother-in-law's house.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

During an election campaign speech in Amethi, as quoted in Mrs. "Gandhi's feisty daughter-in-law: more than a political nuisance?" http://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0406/040644.html, The Christian Science Monitor (6 April 1983)
1981-1990

Nicholas Sparks photo
Henry Moore photo
John Constable photo
George Grosz photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Suze Robertson photo

“. In the beginning I was struggling very much with [painting] children, for that painting by Br. [probably, Henk Bremmer? ]. It has an almost square format. The woman must look to the right [and] there must be a child with her... But I painted only a few children with mothers, and recent times not at all; and then that size (square), I don't know how to handle it. I now think to come back to The Hague Sunday afternoon [and] to leave Heeze early. Monday here is another holy Day [catholic region]. So I can not work then..”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson's brief:) .Ik heb hier in het begin nog al erg getobd met kinderen, voor dat schilderijtje van Br. [waarschijnlijk, nl:Henk Bremmer?]. Het formaat dat bijna vierkant is. De vrouw moet naar rechts kijken [en] er moet een kind bij.. .Maar kinderen bij moeders heb ik weinig geschilderd tenminste in de laatste tijd heelemaal niet en dan kan ik met dat formaat (vierkant) niet goed klaarkomen. Ik denk nu haast Zondagmiddag in den Haag te komen vroeg hier uit nl:Heeze te gaan. Maandag is hier weer heilige Dag [katholieke bevolking]. Dus kan ik ook niet werken..
In a letter of Suze Robertson from Heeze, 11 August 1904, to her husband Richard Bisschop in The Hague; as cited in Suze Robertson 1855-1922 – Schilderes van het harde en zware leven, exhibition catalog, ed. Peter Thoben; Museum Kemperland, Eindhoven, 2008, p. 11
1900 - 1922

Pat Robertson photo

“So, can demonic spirits attach themselves to inanimate objects? The answer is yes. But I don't think every sweater you get from Goodwill has demons in it. But, in a sense, you're mother's just being super cautious, so hey, it isn't going to hurt you to rebuke any spirits that happen to have attached themselves to those clothes.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2013-02-25
Pat Robertson
The 700 Club
Television, quoted in * 2013-02-28
Colbert Report Consumer Alert - Demonic Goodwill Items
The Colbert Report
Television
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/424278/february-28-2013/colbert-report-consumer-alert---demonic-goodwill-items
Responding to letter asking "I buy a lot of clothes and other items at Goodwill and other second-hand shops. Recently my mom told me that I need to pray over the items, bind familiar spirits, and bless the items before I bring them into the house. Is my mother correct? Can demons attach themselves to material items?"

Calvin Coolidge photo

“The first duty of a government is to be true to itself. This does not mean perfection, it means a plan to strive for perfection. It means loyalty to ideals. The ideals of America were set out in the Declaration of Independence and adopted in the Constitution. They did not represent perfection at hand, but perfection found. The fundamental principle was freedom. The fathers knew that this was not yet apprehended. They formed a government firm in the faith that it was ever to press toward this high mark. In selfishness, in greed, in lust for gain, it turned aside. Enslaving others, it became itself enslaved. Bondage in one part consumed freedom in all parts. The government of the fathers, ceasing to be true to itself, was perishing. Five score and ten years ago, that divine providence which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world a new life destined to save a nation. No star, no sign foretold his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years from her deathbed in humble poverty, she endowed her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Duty of Government (1920)

Germaine Greer photo

“Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It had no mother.”

The Psychological Sell (p. 104)
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Halldór Laxness photo
Gene Simmons photo

“My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.”

Gene Simmons (1949) Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and actor

Fresh Air interview (February 4, 2002)

Marc Chagall photo

“For me, Christ has always symbolized the true type of the Jewish martyr. That is how I understood him in 1908 when I used this figure for the first time... It was under the influence of the pogroms. Then I painted and drew him in pictures about ghettos, surrounded by Jewish troubles, by Jewish mothers, running terrified with little children in their arms.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

quote from: From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, Matthew B. Hoffman; Stanford University Press, 2007, p. 218
Chagall started in 1912 (in Paris) to paint his 'Golgotha' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Chagall,_1912,_Calvary_(Golgotha)_Christus_gewidmet,_oil_on_canvas,_174.6_x_192.4_cm,_Museum_of_Modern_Art,_New_York.jpg and later more Crucifixions. In this (later! quote) Chagall looks back on this question.
1910's

Eminem photo

“(imitating Norman Bates) Mother, are you there? I love you! I never meant to hit you over the head with that shovel!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Role Model" (Track 9).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

John Calvin photo

“It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Calvini Opera, Braunshweig-Berlin, 1863-1900, Volume 45, 348, (1877-78)

Tyler Perry photo
Taryn Manning photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“It was fitting that such a holy Son should have a holy Mother.”

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

Ulrich Zwingli E. Stakemeier, De Mariologia et Oecumenismo, K. Balic, ed., (Rome, 1962), p. 456.

Tamsin Greig photo
Alec Baldwin photo

“My dad turned 40 in October 1967 … in April '68 Martin Luther King was killed. In June '68 Robert Kennedy was killed. And in the fall of '68, my dad's mother died. He was left, on an existential level, saying, "This is what I am. I've got the love of my students and I've got nothing else. My country is going to hell."”

Alec Baldwin (1954) American actor, writer, producer, and comedian

After 1968, he was never the same again. All the air went out of him.
As quoted in "Smart Alec" by Alec Gross, in New York magazine, Vol. 30, No. 35 (24 November 1997), p. 43.

Thomas Hood photo

“Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

St. 4.
1840s, The Song of the Shirt (1843)

“Life as Hunter Thompson's mother was no weenie roast.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 1, Getting Away With It, p. 1

Thorstein Veblen photo

“[H]ere and now, as always and everywhere, invention is the mother of necessity.”

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American academic

Veblen (1914) "The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts". p. 314

“We can accept any and all events in our existence if we believe our mothers love us. For, as I say, she was, and still is, all the world to us.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Veneration of Life: Through the Disease to the Soul (1999), p. 54

George W. Bush photo

“If you're a single mother with two children—which is the toughest job in America, as far as I'm concerned—you're working hard to put food on your family.”

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

Speech to the Nashua Chamber of Commerce in New Hampshire (27 January 2000), quoted in Fort Worth Star-Telegram (28 January 2000) "Campaign 2000 Highlights From The Campaign Trail Yesterday" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j76bLFbpuLQ#t=0m27s
2000s, 2000

Honoré de Balzac photo

“A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must exercise paternal authority.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Une veuve a deux tâches dont les obligations se contredisent: elle est mère et doit exercer la puissance paternelle.
Source: A Bachelor's Establishment (1842), Ch. I.

Michael Swanwick photo
Steven Chu photo

“I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, “That’s nice — and when are you going to see me next?””

Steven Chu (1948) American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate

NY Times, April 16, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19wwln-q4-t.html?_r=4

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Lana Turner photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 508

Indra Nooyi photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Raymond Cattell photo
James Frazer photo
Larry Andersen photo
Sarada Devi photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.”

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

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.
1890s and attributed from posthumous publications

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Sophie B. Hawkins photo

“I am everything
Tonight I'll be your mother— I will
Do such things to ease your pain
Free your mind and you won't feel ashamed.”

Sophie B. Hawkins (1967) American musician

Tongues and Tails (1992), Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

Edmund White photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo

“It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case…how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers)…He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs…Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade…he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts…he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Burnley chamber of commerce (19 May 1903) in the aftermath of Joseph Chamberlain's speech advocating Imperial Preference tariffs on imports, as reported in The Times (20 May 1903), p. 12. The Times reported Rosebery's speech in third person.

Boris Karloff photo

“It was a family name on my mother's side, and I thought my own name Pratt, if I ever got known in the theatre might be unfortunate.”

Boris Karloff (1887–1969) English actor

This is your Life Boris Karloff https://archive.org/details/TIYL_Boris_Karloff (1957)

Lyndall Urwick photo
Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Jean Froissart photo

“If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
Book 2, p. 212.
Froissart is again quoting John Ball.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Thaddeus Stevens photo

“You must be a bastard for I knew your mother's husband and he was a gentleman and honest man.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Confucius photo
Hermione Gingold photo

“My family were of good English peasant class from St. John's Wood. My father dealt in stocks and shares and my mother also had a lot of time on her hands.”

Hermione Gingold (1897–1987) English actress

The World is Square [her autobiography], Pt. I. Pub. 1945 by Home & Van Thal Ltd.

Yuval Noah Harari photo

“It's me versus Mother Nature and me versus me. I want to see how far a human can fly with six kilograms of high-tech nylon over his head with no engine. Ultimately though, I love being able to fly like a bird.”

"SMH Article 3 Feb 2007" http://www.smh.com.au/news/new-south-wales/the-thriller-in-manilla/2007/02/01/1169919460467.html?page=3

Giacomo Casanova photo
Fred Astaire photo
Joseph Strutt photo
H. G. Wells photo

“Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.”

Book II, Ch. 8 (Ch. 25 in editions without Book divisions): Dead London
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Muhammad photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh photo

“Seán Óg Ó hAilpín…. his father's from Fermanagh, his mother's from Fiji, neither a hurling stronghold.”

Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh (1930) Gaelic games commentator

Famous quotes, Miscellaneous

Gloria Estefan photo
Tom Morello photo

“Can you explain to the mothers
And the fathers of those
Who come riding home in coffins
In their military clothes?”

Tom Morello (1964) American guitarist and singer-songwriter

Battle Hymns.
Lyrics

Rahm Emanuel photo

“(Mother's Day) is a tough holiday for Rahm Emanuel because he's not used to saying the word "day" after "mother."”

Rahm Emanuel (1959) politician, investment banker, White House Chief of Staff

President Barack Obama, during the 2009 White House Correspondents Dinner. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-white-house-correspondents-association-dinner-592009
About