Quotes about parenting

A collection of quotes on the topic of parenting, parent, children, doing.

Quotes about parenting

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Anne Frank photo
Joachim Peiper photo
A.S. Neill photo
C.G. Jung photo

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Robin Williams photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“I like my name. My parents were in the Uffizi Gallery looking at a Leonardo Da Vinci when my mom felt me kick. That's how I got my name. My parents were real hippies.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

John Locke photo
Byron Katie photo
Anne Frank photo
John Milton photo

“The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Tractate of Education (1644)

Donald J. Trump photo
Sunisa Lee photo

“I just didn’t want to see myself fall back. I don’t want to disappoint my coaches or my parents.”

Sunisa Lee (2003) American artistic gymnast; first Hmong American Olympic gold medalist

"You Can’t Stop Suni Lee" in Elle (29 July 2021) https://www.elle.com/culture/a36503849/suni-lee-olympics-gymnastics-tokyo/

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Hiro Mashima photo
Martin Luther photo
Henry Rollins photo
Martin Luther photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“Self Confidence has always been the parent of great actions.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

History of the Thirty Years War - Volume II
The Thirty Years War

Tertullian photo
Martin Luther photo
Stig Dagerman photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Charles Manson photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Kailash Satyarthi photo

“If they cry for their parents, they are beaten severely, sometimes hanged upside down from trees and even branded or burned with cigarettes.”

Kailash Satyarthi (1954) Indian children's rights activist

Kailash Satyarthi’s crusade to save childhood continues… (2014)

Colette photo

“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

My Mother’s House, "The Priest on the Wall" (1922)

Michael Oakeshott photo
Warren Buffett photo

“I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.”

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

" My Philanthropic Pledge http://givingpledge.org/pdf/letters/Buffett_Letter.pdf" at the The Giving Pledge (2010)
Context: Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U. S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.) My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.
The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude. Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs. My pledge starts us down that course.

James D. Watson photo

“If the child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Children from the Laboratory (May 1973), An Interview in Prism Magazine
Context: Watson: Our society just hasn't faced up to this problem. In a primitive society, if you saw that a baby was deformed, you would abandon it on a hillside. Today this isn't permissible, and with our medicine getting better and better in the sense of being able to keep sick people alive longer, we are going to produce more people living wretched lives. I don't know how you get a society to change on such a basic issue; infanticide isn't regarded lightly by anyone. Fortunately, now through such techniques as amniocentesis, parents can often learn in advance whether their child will be normal and healthy or hopelessly deformed. They then can choose either to have the child or opt for a therapeutic abortion. But the cruel fact remains that because of the present limits of such detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If the child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.

Paulo Coelho photo

“The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist — perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time.”

Source: The Valkyries (1992), p.132.
Context: The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist — perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time. Or, who knows, perhaps they thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels. Disenchanted, the angels had returned to God's side, knowing that they could no longer impose their presence.

Sappho photo
Robert Lewandowski photo
Katherine Paterson photo
Woody Allen photo

“I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
John Irving photo
Brandon Mull photo
C.G. Jung photo
Jim Morrison photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo
Harlan Coben photo
Frank Zappa photo

“The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Ben Watson interviews Frank Zappa", in MOJO magazine (October 1993).

Maya Angelou photo
Ruth Ozeki photo
Henry Adams photo
Norman G. Finkelstein photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

As quoted in InfoWorld https://books.google.gr/books?id=qjgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49&dq=, Vol. 23, No. 16, 16 April 2001, p. 49. This had been attributed previously to many other sources from 1908 on, according to this analysis https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/ by Quote Investigator.
Misattributed

Abraham Lincoln photo
Lisa See photo
Rick Riordan photo
Ogden Nash photo

“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"The Parent"; paraphrased variants:
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
Happy Days (1933)

Barry Lyga photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Frank Zappa photo

“Drugs will turn you into your parents.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Mark Twain photo

“[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" http://www.mtwain.com/What_Paul_Bourget_Thinks_of_Us/0.html, in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897)

Thomas Bernhard photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Bill Cosby photo
Aristotle photo

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

Book II, Section VI ( translation http://archive.org/stream/aristotlespolit00aris#page/69/mode/1up by Benjamin Jowett)
Politics
Context: One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Oscar Wilde photo

“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Children+begin+by+loving+their+parents+after+a+time%22+%22they+judge+them+rarely+if+ever+do+they+forgive+them%22&pg=PA187#v=onepage, Act IV
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Variant: Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Sherman Alexie photo
R.L. Stine photo
Michael Ondaatje photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Barbara Bush photo
Bob Keeshan photo

“Back in the old days, when I was a child, we sat around the family table at dinner time and exchanged our daily experiences…. It wasn't very organized, but everyone was recognized and all the news that had to be told was told by each family member. We listened to each other and the interest was not put on; it was real. … A child needs to be listened to and talked to at 3 and 4 and 5 years of age … Parents should not wait for the sophisticated conversation of a teenager.”

Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) United States Marine

Essay in The New York Times (1979); as quoted in "Bob Keeshan, Creator and Star of TV's 'Captain Kangaroo,' Is Dead at 76" in The New York Times (24 January 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/arts/bob-keeshan-creator-and-star-of-tv-s-captain-kangaroo-is-dead-at-76.html?pagewanted=all

Jeremy Hardy photo

“It is a stupid observation, but the Labour Party are not an smart lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same town, you would blame bad parenting, wouldn't you all?”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, July 1997 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 23 July 1999)
Variant: It seems a shallow observation, but… the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?

Elizabeth I of England photo

“Was I not born in the realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country? Is there any cause I should alienate myself from being careful over this country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to others' harm? What turmoil have I made in this commonwealth, that I should be suspected to have no regard to the same? How have I governed since my reign? I will be tried by envy itself. I need not to use many words, for my deeds do try me.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

Speech to a joint delegation of the House of Lords and the House of Commons (5 November 1566), quoted in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 95.

Barack Obama photo

“There is some irony in the fact that children imagine that parents can do what they want, and parents imagine that children do.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=YnY10fNqqp4C&q=%22There+is+some+irony+in+the+fact+that+children+imagine+that+parents+can+do+what+they+want+and+parents+imagine+that+children+do+When+I+grow+up+parallels+Oh+to+be+a+child+again%22&pg=PA102#v=onepage
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Wangari Maathai photo
Claude Monet photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child – this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin. It should be noted that in his talk of "the race", he is referring to "the human race". Smith married Russell in December 1894; they divorced in 1921.
1890s

Barack Obama photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Barack Obama photo

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama: 'If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon' http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/03/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon-118439, Politico (23 March 2012)
2012

Mark Hamill photo
Hans-Hermann Hoppe photo

“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Thomas Paine photo
Harvey Milk photo
José Saramago photo

“[The Jewish people no longer deserves] sympathy for the suffering it went through during the Holocaust. … Living under the shadows of the Holocaust and willing to be forgiven for anything they do on behalf of what they have suffered seems abusive to me. They didn't learn anything from the suffering of their parents and grandparents.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Quoted in News Brief http://www.jta.org/2003/10/15/archive/nobel-laureate-jose-saramago-said-the-jewish-people, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 15, 2003.

Ali al-Hadi photo

“A parents' dissatisfaction causes poverty and leads to humiliation.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Misnad al-Imām al-Hādī, p. 303.
Religious Wisdom

Carl Linnaeus photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Virginia Woolf photo