The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957Quotes
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, 1886The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCAs the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BCIf parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910To 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, 1954A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977