The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957Quotes
Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
—Gertrude Stein, 1940My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended—and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
—Robert Frost, 1939By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986