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, 1966Quotes
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, 1969My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.
—Mencius, c. 270 BCIt is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Family! 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, 1886