Parents In Quotes

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}

He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.

Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.

He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable. ~ Ernst W. Mayr

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. ~ Terry Pratchett

International adoption does not begin to solve the problems of the world's orphaned children. It's truly not the answer. At the same time, it solves a problem for a few. I think it can be a brilliant solution to the problem of adults wanting a child in their lives or wanting more children in their lives and the problem of children who want parents in their lives. ~ Melissa Fay Greene

We all live our lives blindly believing in the people who make the decisions. Believing in science. Because the world is inscrutable and all information is hazy. We accept the existence of a round globe, of an atom's nucleus that sticks together like drops, of a shrinking universe
and the necessity of interfering with genetic material. Not because we know these things are true, but because we believe the people who tell us so. we are all proselytes of science. And, in contrast to the followers of other religions, we can no longer bridge the gap between ourselves and the priests. Problems arise when we stumble on an outright lie. And it affects our own lives ... that of a child who for the first time catches his parents in a lie he had always suspected. ~ Peter Hoeg

toddler named Huey Newton was spirited from Monroe to Oakland with his sharecropper parents in 1943. His father had barely escaped a lynching in Louisiana for talking back to his white overseers. Huey Newton would become perhaps the most militant of the disillusioned offspring of the Great Migration. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

Our parents would not be 'The best parents in the world' (to us) if they were not our parents. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The question haunts me still, and will, I suppose, until I join my parents in our final reunion. If the doctor had known what horrors awaited us not only at the cemetery that night, but in the days to come, would he still have insisted upon my company? Would he still have demanded that a mere child dive so deep into the well of human suffering and sacrifice - a literal sea of blood? And if the answer to that question is yes, then there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride. ~ Rick Yancey

After every battle, he ritually dips his hood into the blood of his enemies. I've seen the hood, kept under glass in the armory. The fabric is stiff and stained a brown so deep it's almost black, except for a few smears of green.
Sometimes I go down and stare at it, trying to see my parents in the tide lines of dried blood. I want to feel something, something besides a vague queasiness. I want to feel more, but every time I look at it, I feel less. ~ Holly Black

I think I have the only parents in the world who would not have said something against become an actress. ~ Gena Rowlands

Around Christmas 2003, we visited Chris's parents in Texas. I found myself exceptionally hungry, though I couldn't figure out why. When we came back to California, I just felt something was off.
Could I be…pregnant?
Nah.
I bought a pregnancy test just in case. Chris and I had always planned to have children, but we weren't in a rush about it. In fact, we had only recently decided to be "a little less careful." It was a compromise between our spontaneous impulses and our careful planning instincts, which we both shared. We figured, if it happens somewhere in the next year…
I was upstairs in the house working when I decided to take a break and check things out.
Wow.
WOW!!!
Chris happened to be home fiddling with something in the garage. I ran downstairs, holding the stick in my hand. When I got there, I held it up, waving.
"Hey, babe," he said, looking at me as if I were waving a sword.
"Come here," I said. "I have to show you something."
He came over. I showed him the stick.
"Okay?"
"Look!"
"What is it?"
"Look at this!"
Obviously, he wasn't familiar with home pregnancy tests. Maybe that's a guy thing-given that the tests reveal either your worst nightmare or one of the most exciting events of your life. I'd wager every woman in America knows what they are and how they work.
Slowly it dawned on him.
"Oh my God," he said, stunned. "Are you…?"
"Yes!"
We confirmed it at the doctor's soo ~ Taya Kyle

Grandiosity is when we are wrapped up in winning life's false contest. This happens only when we live to impress the abusive parents in our heads, not when we are soberly and philosophically working to advance civilization. ~ Steven Franssen

All in all, the communally reared children of Israel are far from the emotional disasters that psychoanalytic theory predicted. Neither have they been saved from all personality problems, as the founders of the kibbutz movement had hoped when they freed children from their parents. In any reasonable environment, children seem to grow up to be themselves. There is no evidence that communal rearing with stimulating, caring adults is either the ruination or the salvation of children. ~ Sandra Scarr

If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life. ~ Linus Roache

What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room. ~ Juan Felipe Herrera

Like many parents in middle age, he's quick to spot changes in the world, slow to note shifts in his own perspective. ~ Kathleen Rooney

Now and then some one says that the religion of his father and mother is good enough for him, and wonders why anybody should desire a better. Surely we are not bound to follow our parents in religion any more than in politics, science or art. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

the only adopting parents in the area." "Oh, very well," she said, and pushed her beak ~ Chris Conquer

My parents played by parents, in the second season [of Suits]. We had a Skype scene and they were my real parents. My parents are cartoons. When they come up and visit, they're hilarious. My mother somehow finds a way to get in the way of everything. ~ Rick Hoffman

What a type of happy family is the family of the Sun! With what order, with what harmony, with what blessed peace, do his children the planets move around him, shining with light which they drink in from their parent's in at once upon him and on one another! ~ Augustus William Hare

Hopefulness is the heartbeat of the relationship between a parent and child. Each time a child overcomes the next challenge of hislife, his triumph encourages new growth in his parents. In this sense a child is parent to his mother and father. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

And so her parents-in-law, whom she still regarded as the most eminent people in France, declared that she was an angel; all the more so because they preferred to appear, in marrying their son to her, to have yielded to the attraction rather of her natural charm than of her considerable fortune. ~ Marcel Proust

I think that's why Meryl Streep is working so much, because she looks like a woman we can all relate to. I look at her and I think, 'I'm chasing my kids, I've moved my parents in with me, I'm coping with food spills - that looks like me in real life'. Meryl looks like an unmade bed, and that's what I look like. To me, that looks true. ~ Sharon Stone

Like most parents in the US, they are trying, with a little help from UNICEF, to do the best they can to help their children reach their full potential ... ~ Susan Sarandon

You read all the way through to the end of one, only to find out that the husband dies. You hurl the book across the room, breaking the bedside lamp. When your mom comes home that night, you tell her what happened. You ask her for books to read where no one dies.

Two days later, you find both of your parents in the living room with a pile of novels on the coffee table. They are skimming through them one by one, making sure every character lives to the end. That night, you have a new stack of books to read and you open up the first one, confident it won't break you down.

It is the first time in a long time that you have felt safe. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

During the week, my days are consumed with school commitments, play-dates and work for Baby Buggy, a nonprofit I started, which collects kids' gear for parents in need. So on weekends, I look forward to uninterrupted time with my family. ~ Jessica Seinfeld

In the Netherlands, the government health plan provides for a specially trained nurse/lactation expert to help each new baby's parents in their home for a full ten days following each birth (with a small co-payment). Hired for three, five, or eight hours according to individual families' needs, this maternity nurse serves the new parents breakfast in bed, feeds any older children their breakfast, walks the dog, helps the new mother with breastfeeding if necessary, cleans the house, and notifies the midwife if the mother or baby should need medical attention for any reason. The Dutch consider the care provided each family by the maternity nurse to be an investment in good health, which benefits the entire society because it so effectively reduces the number of illnesses mothers and babies experience during the first year of the baby's life and thus saves money ~ Ina May Gaskin

With relish, Kevin explained the boy's claim to fame: An elderly couple in an adjacent apartment had complained about how loudly he played his CDs of the Monkees at three in the morning. The next weekend, the couple's daughter discovered her parents in their bed, slit from crotch to throat. "That's appalling," I said. "I can't believe anyone still listens to the Monkees. ~ Lionel Shriver

A little girl was threatened by a wolf while walking through the forest, and as she fled from him she met a woodsman with an ax, but in this story the woodsman did not merely kill the wolf and restore the girl to her family, oh no. He cut off the wolf's head, then brought the girl to his cottage in the thickest, darkest part of the forest, and there he kept her until she was old enough to wed him, and she became his bride in a ceremony conducted by an owl, even though she had never stopped crying for her parents in all the years that he had kept her prisoner. And she had children by him, and the woodsman raised them to hunt wolves and to seek out people who strayed from the paths of the forest. They were told to kill the men and take what was valuable from their pockets, but to bring the women to him. ~ John Connolly

My personal beliefs were shaped more by experience and by watching the news when I was young: images of angelic-looking college students in Mississippi crying like the world was ending because black people were being allowed on their campus; the slow mounting horror of Vietnam on the evening news every night; sitting with my parents in front of the TV and being appalled at the way the Chicago police were treating the protesters during the '68 Democratic convention. Being eyed with suspicion because of my age and the way I wore my hair. ~ James Vance

Later, Nima told us that the son of one of his friends, a ten-year-old, had awakened his parents in horror telling them he had been having an "illegal dream." He had been dreaming that he was at the seaside with some men and women who were kissing, and he did not know what to do. He kept repeating to his parents that he was having illegal dreams. ~ Azar Nafisi

Uh, what are you doing?"
"Nothing much. Just erasing all of Calinda's good grades and replacing them with incompletes. Eventually, the administrators will figure out what happened, but I'm making it look like a computer error. Still, I imagine she'll get some nasty lectures from her profs and parents in the meantime. ~ Jennifer Estep

My parents, you see, were a little square. They cared more about being good parents in the general sense than being good parents for me. They wanted to appear normal; respectable and responsible. But they weren't prepared to acknowledge my individual needs. ~ Joss Sheldon

My parents came from Calcutta. They arrived in Cambridge, much like the parents in my novel. And I found myself sort of caught between the world of my parents and the world they had left behind and still clung to, and also the world that surrounded me at school and everywhere else, as soon as I set foot out the door. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Some parents in our neighborhood do everything they can to keep their children away from violent images. And then, when something terrible happens, like murder or rape or genocide - well, then a conversation has to be had with these young innocents to explain that, yes, goodness is sometimes a fiction, like Santa Claus, and that humanity is, underneath all the cookie baking and song singing, a shameful and secret nastiness. Me, I'm going to raise my son differently. What he will be made to know is that there is violence in everything - even in goodness, if you're passionate about it. ~ Joshua Gaylord

I conducted an off-site consisting of 25 parents in the Seattle area with an income of $200K+ and whose children are entering kindergarten. The headline is that Galer Street is considered a second-tier school, a fallback option for those who don't get accepted to their first-choice school. Our objective is to move the needle on Galer Street and kick it up into the First-Choice Cluster (FCC) for Seattle's elite. How do we achieve this? What is the secret sauce? ~ Maria Semple

Individuals who are prepared unflinchingly to confront the truth about their childhood and to see their parents in a realistic light. Unfortunately, it is very often the case that therapeutic success can be seriously endangered if therapy (as frequently happens) is subjected to the dictates of conventional morality, thus making it impossible for adult clients to free themselves of the compulsive persuasion that they owe their parents love and gratitude. The authentic feelings stored in the body remain untapped, and the price the clients have to pay for this is the unremitting persistence of the severe symptoms affecting them. I assume that readers who have themselves undergone a number of unsuccessful therapies will readily recognize their plight in this problem. In ~ Alice Miller

Like other parents in this country, we want to give our children the best opportunities, to shower them with love, to teach them respect and a love for the rich and diverse traditions America has to offer them. ~ Jennifer Chrisler

Remember that every child and every parent has a completely unique and special rela- tionship. That child knows his dad and loves his dad. Our job is to watch that communication, to nurture it, and to support the parents in their heart-to-heart relationships with their children ~ Vimala McClure

The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service. ~ Laura Riding

My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn't pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn ... If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year's time. ~ Bob Feller

I had parents in the business and they made sure that the art was the biggest concern. ~ Nat Wolff

Sleep resistance, bouts of insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, crawling into bed with parents in the middle of the night - all these are so common among children, it seems fair to call them 'normal.' ~ Siri Hustvedt

You know, I have the best parents in the world and I got really, really lucky because they think that everything I do is Oscar-worthy. ~ Kaitlin Olson

What we think of as the soul is just a mingling of genetics and our parents, in my case, slowly torturing me, or in your case giving you complete unconditional love. ~ Sarah Ruhl

I love my parents in the way most children would: for having been there at every point in my youth and childhood, ready to pick me up when I fell and support me when I stumbled. ~ Michael Gove

I've heard that lawyers' children, on seeing their parents in court in the
heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess. This was not true of Jem and me. We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose. I'm sorry that I can't provide any drama in this respect; if I did, it would not be true. We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers other than our father. I never heard Atticus raise his voice in my life, except to a deaf witness. ~ Harper Lee

What daughter thinks of her parents in flagrante delicto? Yet, my mother, even after years with him, dropped hints such as, 'You know, your father enjoys his matinees.' I never even saw them go to the movies together. What could she mean? All those afternoons, I thought she was upstairs listening to La Traviata, and those high notes apparently were not coming from the radio. ~ Joy Behar

In America, people rarely stay in the town where they grew up, rarely stay in close proximity to their parents throughout their lives. You rarely find parents in their old age being taken care of by their children. ~ Robert Benton

What do you mean? In Old Castle? I still live with my parents in case you haven't noticed, Jack. Those two strangers – that man and woman sitting on my sofa – are actually my parents. Oh, you mean your place? Yes, let's evict your parents…let's place them neatly in a cardboard box and leave it by the rubbish bins! ~ Jonathan Dunne

I suspect that Martians have pretty much always symbolized parents in those books." "They must, being that they're so ... otherworldly." "And terrifying." This ~ Marissa Meyer

India's sex ratio is 1000 boys for 940 girls. Who creates this disparity? It isn't God. Don't fill your coffers by sacrificing the mother's womb. People feel that sons will take care of them when they are old. But I have seen aged parents in old-age homes. I have seen families where one daughter serves parents more than five sons. ~ Narendra Modi

Quinn dropped her hand and avoided Thalcu's eye. "I . . . I don't want to kill you," she said to the floor. "Not if I could save you."

The woman smiled gently at Quinn, her lips curling behind her oxygen mask. "I will not really die," she said, drawing Quinn's surprised gaze. She looked at Quinn contently a moment and went on, "Do you know how worlds are born? From the first breath of a star. We are made of starlight. We can not bear to look into the sun, into the thing that birthed us, anymore than we can bear to look upon our parents in the throes of passion. It is our point of origin, and to it, we all must return. ~ Ash Gray

I don't think it's an accident who our parents are; I believe we choose them. So maybe I chose my parents in order to effect change. ~ Patti Davis

He brought up that game like it was yesterday. For me, it was eons ago. Those memories belonged to a boy who died alongside his parents in a house fire. ~ Katie McGarry

Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I grew up with my parents in the kitchen discussing the audition my dad had that day or moaning about something or other in the industry, so it was unglamourised and normalised for me from a very young age. ~ Bel Powley

As for free will, there is such a narrow crack of it for man to move in, crushed as he is from birth by environment, heredity, time and event and local convention. If I had been born of Italian parents in one of the caves in the hills I would be a prostitute at the age of 12 or so because I had to live (why?) and that was the only way open. If I was born into a wealthy New York family with pseudo-cultural leanings, I would have had my coming-out party along with the rest of them, and be equipped with fur coats, social contacts, and a blase pout. How do I know? I don't; I can only guess. I wouldn't be I. But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of "I" that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratches on the paper ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I. ~ Sylvia Plath

A still-born son os superior to a foolish son endowed with a long life. The first causes grief for but a moment while the latter like a blazing fire consumes his parents in grief for life. ~ Chanakya

I watched my parents battle, work night shift, work two jobs. That's toughness. That's toughness ... That's something; it all carries over from your parents, and I was fortunate to have both parents in my life. ~ Mo Williams

Our story begins eight years ago when Ms.
Jacobs was living in London with Mr. McAllister.
However, she had to leave the country urgently
due to a family emergency."
"Considering the 'he-was-dead' defence, I'm
sure this will be hugely entertaining." Lily didn't
see it but she heard the scoffing behind Nate's attorney's
tone, that would be attorney number two
or Sarcastic Attorney. Her startled eyes moved to
the man who, she noted distractedly, was staring
at her with extreme distaste.
"Well, I'm not sure one would describe losing
both of one's parents in a plane crash as 'entertaining',"
Alistair noted blandly. ~ Kristen Ashley

She kept wandering in and out of the rooms, wondering where she had put things. She went downstairs into the basement for no reason at all except that it amused her to own a basement. It also amused her to own a tree.
Her parents, in Maryland, had been very pleased that one of their children had at last been able to afford real estate, and when she closed on the house they sent her flowers with a congratulations card. ~ Lorrie Moore

It is not a church's job to spiritually develop your children. Scripturally, it is the job of the parents. The church body is supposed to support parents in raising children, not replace them. ~ George Barna

Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why. ~ Joe Schreiber

Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish. ~ Paula Polk Lillard

In 1991, Disney forced a group of New Zealand parents in a remote country town to remove their amateur renditions of Pluto and Donald Duck from a playground mural; and Barney has been breaking up children's birthday parties across the U.S., claiming that any parent caught dressed in a purple dinosaur suit is violating its trademark. The Lyons Group, which owns the Barney character, "has sent 1,000 letters to shop owners" renting or selling the offending costumes. "They can have a dinosaur costume. It's when it's a purple dinosaur that it's illegal, and it doesn't matter what shade of purple, either," says Susan Elsner Furman, Lyons' spokesperson. ~ Naomi Klein

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In ~ Alice Miller

I grew up in a very loving middle class family. My parents were educators. I'm not even the first PhD in my family. They tried to shield me, just as other parents in my neighborhood tried to shield their children. But you knew there was a reason that you couldn't go to that theme park or to a movie theater or to a hamburger stand. They couldn't shield you completely. What they did though was they never let it be an excuse for not achieving, and they always said racism is somebody else's problem, not yours. They tried in that way not to make us bitter about Birmingham. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Ever since, I've been looking everywhere for parents, in my lovers, in my friends, and it's all right with me to have nothing of my own - not any plans and not any worries. I like this kind of life, it's terrible but true. I don't know why it is, but the moment I wake up something in me feels things are going right. ~ Francoise Sagan

Teachers give so much to the future and to youth. So, when you see somebody make that type of sacrifice towards work - just parents in general, what they got to give to their kids is a lot - I'm inspired, man, to give and help those who didn't or don't have opportunities. And even those that may have some opportunities, [to] help them achieve their dreams. ~ Common

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

If the parents in each generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons' schools, the history of education would be very different. ~ C.S. Lewis

If I had received good instruction as a child I would be with my family today and at peace with my neighbors. I hope and pray that all you parents in the sound of my voice will train up your children in the way they should go. ~ Charles Portis

Some parents damage their children, but that does not mean that all troubled children have incompetent parents. In ~ Sue Klebold

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions? ~ Robert Sternberg

All beings are not only the parents in the past. They will become the Buddha in the future. If you free their lives, you are Buddha. ~ Gautama Buddha

Now you can get on Facebook and read an article, '10 Ways You Are Ruining Your Child Forever.' I'm sure it's making us better parents in some ways, but in other ways, it is sending us all a little crazy. ~ Liane Moriarty

Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed.
It puts parents in very foul moods
and since you're probably there to visit relatives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with. ~ Neal Shusterman

The best gift by god after your parents in this world is your sister. ~ Sacheenrjain

Day after day with them, I see more and more of my parents in me. I see where all my quirks come from. I see my future. ~ Roxane Gay

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports. ~ Mahesh Bhupathi

Children always wanted their parents in situ, in stasis. The faster they changed, the more their parents should remain the same. ~ Marge Piercy

Dorothy did feel threatened. Whose child was or wasn't she? Almost unconsciously, she detached her-self a little from love. She would be canny. She would not invest too much passion in loving her parents, her acting parents, in case the love turned out to be disproportionate, unreturned, the parent not-a-parent. ~ A.S. Byatt

But Saeed's father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and he knew above all else that his son must go, and what he did not say was that he had come to that point in a parent's life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one's child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down, and threaten them with drowning, for the child is now stronger than the parent, and the circumstances are such that the utmost of strength is required, and the arc of a child's life only appears for a while to match the arc of a parent's, in reality one sits atop the other, a hill atop a hill, a curve atop a curve, and Saeed's father's arc now needed to curve lower, while his son's still curved higher, for with an old man hampering them these two young people were simply less likely to survive. ~ Mohsin Hamid

I knew I had been made to lead the party and that I was colder in temperament than the others, but I was not only deeply disturbed, I had lost respect for and trust in the Parents in some vital way. I did not entirely believe them when they said they would consider changing their plan. Their utter indifference to our personal fate was obvious. And not believing some of what they said, I came to question everything they said. I wanted really only one thing and that was to get away from them. ~ Anne Rice

They did the best they could with the knowledge they had." How the fuck did people know that? They didn't have no way of knowing that. Even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn't they have better knowledge? I mean, then nobody should ever fail an exam because everyone who Wright's an exam is doing the best they can with the knowledge they have. If I don't study for geography exam then I flunk out. Can I then say wait, just like the people who get a "A" I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had. That's not an excuse for a 6 year old with a goddamn spelling B. How the hell is it an excuse for parents in full control of a developing human mind?

If you don't study for the exam you fucking fail and if you don't study for parenting you fucking fail. You don't get to say that you did the best you could with the knowledge you had. Fuck that. That's a bullshit cop-out. You goddamn will study. It's a little more important raising a child than passing a spelling B when you're 6 goddamn years old. You goddamn will study and if you don't study youre more culpable. ~ Stefan Molyneux

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Paul thought of how they'd kept delaying buying plane tickets to visit his parents in Taiwan - in December, which was next month, he knew - as if in tacit understanding that their relationship wouldn't last that long. Paul felt himself trying to interpret the situation, as if there was a problem to be solved, but there didn't seem to be anything, or maybe there was, but he was three or four skill sets away from comprehension, like an amoeba trying to create a personal webpage using CSS. ~ Tao Lin

In Chinese culture, it wouldn't occur to kids to question or talk back to their parents. In American culture, kids in books, TV shows and movies constantly score points with their snappy back talk. Typically, it's the parents who need to be taught a life lesson - by their children. ~ Amy Chua

I do think that maybe, even subconsciously, a lot of parents in the West are wondering, have we gone too far in the direction of coddling and protecting - you know, you see kids, sometimes that seem very rude and disrespectful. And the more important thing is they don't seem that happy. ~ Amy Chua

I'm a military kid, both parents in the military - Mom did 12 years, Dad did 21, served in two wars. So discipline is something that was huge. ~ Robert Griffin III

This was typical of my parents: in their minds, no one was just an asshole. There was always something wrong with people other than just sucking: they had socialization disorders, or borderline personality syndrome, or whatever. ~ John Green

The difference between growing up like me and growing up like Will was that he wore his sense of entitlement lightly. I think if you grow up as he had done, with wealthy parents, in a nice house, if you go to good schools and nice restaurants as a matter of course, you probably just have this sense that good things will fall into place, that your position in the world is naturally an elevated one. ~ Jojo Moyes

The Truth Why we hate our younger siblings is because we see them loved and cared by our parents. But we shall never forget that we went through the same stage and were loved like them. After all which teenager likes to get spoon feed by parents in public? ~ Laksh Kishore

The child that never learns to obey his parents in the home will not obey God or man out of the home. ~ Susanna Wesley

There were so many other things that he could add, that he doubted whether life without her offered him any pleasure at all, that he had hoped to recreate the happiness that had existed between his own parents in his union with her. ~ Janet Aylmer

A speech-language pathologist named Michelle Garcia Winner told me that many parents in her practice became aware of their own autistic traits only in the wake of their child's diagnosis. ~ Steve Silberman

I borrowed a lot of money from my parents in the years leading up to the 2000 Olympics, and I worked odd jobs. ~ Bryan Volpenhein

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage. ~ Maria Montessori

Who am I? I'm a survivor. I'm a woman with tremendous inner resources and resilience. I care about people. I believe in 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,' and I live by that. I am becoming authentic, and that's important to me. I have surpassed both my parents in terms of emotional stability, happiness and well-being. And I'm a lucky woman. I've deserved my luck. ~ Jane Fonda

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie