As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Quotes
Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
—August Strindberg, 1886To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1954The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCAll women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668