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Quotes

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

—Herodotus, 440 BC

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself… it seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1966

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

—Tecumseh, 1810

The 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, 1939

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

—Philip Roth, 1969

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

—Paul Johnson, 1989

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986

God is our father, but even more is God our mother.

—Pope John Paul I, 1978