Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900Quotes
Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959The 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, 1919Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCMy father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989God is our father, but even more is God our mother.
—Pope John Paul I, 1978As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781