Barbara Bush Quotations

I think togetherness is a very important ingredient to family life.

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.

Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people - your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way.

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children, they just about throw up.

Family and friends and faith are the most important things in your life and you should be building friendships.

Believe in something larger than yourself... get involved in the big ideas of your time.

Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They're working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.

I may be the only mother in America who knows exactly what their child is up to all the time.

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.

I mean Afghanistan is a very rugged, complicated country.

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

I hate abortions, but just could not make that choice for someone else.

Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That's hard. But it's the only way.

Bias has to be taught. If you hear your parents downgrading women or people of different backgrounds, why, you are going to do that.

You just don't luck into things as much as you'd like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it's friendships or opportunities.

Life has changed enormously, and I hope - I hope more people read good things.

I'm a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.

Suddenly women's lib had made me feel my life had been wasted.

People who worry about their hair all the time, frankly, are boring.

You can't tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die.

I'm not a competitive person, and I think women like me because they don't think I'm competitive, just nice.

And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!

Nancy Reagan was a perfectionist, and I am not.

You don't just luck into things as much as you would like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it is friendships or opportunities.

The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions. You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not going to change each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time.

The state dinner is almost a formula, but you try to make it interesting. You try not to overload it with too many political types. You try to get a cross section.

I hate the fact that people think 'compromise' is a dirty word.

It seems to me I spent my life in car pools, but you know, that's how I kept track of what was going on.

I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's.

My son, George, has been a bad, bad boy! Right, George?

Nobody likes a child to die or losing an election.

The winner of the hoop race will be the first to realize her dream, not society's dream, her own personal dream.

You get nothing done if you don't listen to each other.

I'm not going to jump out of airplanes or anything like someone else I know.

If you are the wife of a governor or the wife of a vice president, I think you can be prepared for it.

Raising five boys is a handful, trust me.

I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.

I really built myself up, darn it, to be very strong.

I really feel very strongly that the person who runs for office is the courageous one, and the one who everybody has to know.

It was the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but it's a family thing, and I guess it's clean.

You know sit with your arm around a little kid and read. It not only teaches them to read but it keeps the family strong.

You know, for one glorious half hour, I was the mother of the president-elect.

You may think the president is all-powerful, but he is not. He needs a lot of guidance from the Lord.

I do have the most marvelous husband, children, and grandchildren.

I mean you can learn how to build a bullet or build a gun or build a bomb on the Internet.

Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.

You try to do something every single day that will help an American or maybe someone overseas.

I really loved living in the White House, but I don't miss it at all.

I want to still be able to garden while I can bend over.

I'm not being outspoken or pro or con abortion.

Let's judge a man on what he's done.

One thing I can say about George... he may not be able to keep a job, but he's not boring.

The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, out of platforms and conventions.

Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to publish your book.' I said, 'Well, I don't have a book,' and they said well it's a well known fact that you have kept diaries.

When your heart feels as if it is sitting in your stomach, there is less room for food.

To this day George Sr. is the soft touch and I'm the enforcer. I'm the one who writes them a letter and says 'Shape up!' He writes, 'You're marvelous.'

Raising George Walker was not easy.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this (chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.

I'm not saying to be happy you must be married. Nor am I saying that to be happy you need children. I'm saying that if you opt for children - be you man or woman - you have to take care of them.

Describing life out of the public eye to David Letterman, December 6th, 1996 It's been different. I started driving again. I started cooking again. My driving's better than my cooking. George has discovered Sam's Club.

Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life's blood . . . but everyone has something to give.

Where will our country find leaders with integrity, courage, strength-all the family values-in ten, twenty, or thirty years? The answer is that you are teaching them, loving them, and raising them right now.

. . . learning never ends, and as we enter the next century, it will be more and more important for all Americans to be lifelong learners. . . . every one of us can contribute in some way to a better-educated America.

Whether you are talking about education, career, or service, you are talking about life. And life must really have joy. It's supposed to be fun.

I'm tired now of the elections.

My worst expectations never happened.

There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run.

Whatever the era...one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children, they must come first.

I think the country has had enough Bushes.

Show me a wife who doesn't offer advice and I'll show you one who doesn't care very much.

Why be afraid of what people will say? Those who care about you will say, Good luck! and those who care only about themselves will never say anything worth listening to anyway.

If more people could read, write, and comprehend, we could be much closer to solving so many of the other problems our country faces today.

George is the best little dishwasher in Texas.

As if we don't have enough volence on television. After her husband accidentally hit two spectators with golf balls during a celebrity golf tournament.

I don't like attacking.

I'm a little old-fashioned.

Value your friendship. Value your relationships.

I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.

I'm taking a vow not to advise.

The First Lady is going to be criticized no matter what she does.

The darn trouble with cleaning the house is it gets dirty the next day anyway, so skip a week if you have to. The children are the most important thing.

I think a lot of our problems are because people don't listen to our children. It is not always easy. They're not always so brilliant that you want to spend hours with them. But it is very important to listen to them.

Libraries have always seemed like the richest places in the world to me, and I?ve done some of my best learning and thinking thanks to them. Libraries and librarians have definitely changed my life ? and the lives of countless other Americans.

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The Titanic was built by professionals. The Ark was built by volunteers.

Future of his nation does not depend on what happens at the White House, but what happens at your house

I love talking to people, but what I really love is to feel you're doing something instead of sitting home and twiddling your thumbs.

The home is the child's first school, the parent is the child's first teacher, and reading is the child's first subject.

Your success as a family... our success as a nation... depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

I'm a liberal when it comes to human rights, the poor; so's George Bush. . . . But Liberal and Conservative don't mean much to me anymore. Does that mean we care about people and are interested and want to help? And if that makes you a Liberal, so be it.

I was so sad to read recently that 32 percent of fourth- graders say they never read a book for pleasure,

I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich.

Today, I broaden the challenge by making this pledge, ... The United States is ready to eliminate tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same.

Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life, ... This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind.

He should, if he wants to come home.

I think the Gore campaign has made an enormous issue of the fact that George is not smart, ... Did Al Gore graduate from law school, did Al Gore graduate from divinity school? No.