Archive

Quotes

The 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 BC

Men are what their mothers made them.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

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

—Friedrich Schiller, 1781

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.  

—Gertrude Stein, 1940

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

—Paul Johnson, 1989

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

—Herodotus, 440 BC

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

—V.S. Pritchett, 1968

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.

—André Gide, 1897

Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them. 

—Homer, c. 750 BC
  •