Parents Quotations | Page 2

Moving is easy, exciting, an adventure - when you're young. Later, not so much. I love Massachusetts, my old home. Sometimes, late at night, I even study the real estate ads in my old hometown. But it's not even a fantasy. My parents are both gone. The world I left doesn't exist anymore. Neither does the person I was.

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.

I grew up in Brooklyn, and my parents were Holocaust survivors, so they never taught me anything about nature, but they taught me a lot about gratitude.

When you take the time to understand why your parents did the things they did, you stand a good chance of learning more about your own behavior.

Ice Cube's the coolest dad. A lot of parents - a lot of kids do not think their parents are cool. Oh, no. My dad's cool... You know, I was born in 1991. That's when 'Boyz n the Hood' came out. So I've always see him on TV. I don't see everybody else's dad, you know. So I've always had a sense of, you know, he's cool. He's in the light.

When I sold my first business, I wanted to do something nice for my dad. I wanted to give my parents a bunch of money, but they wouldn't take anything from me. They were so happy for me; they felt they didn't need money.

Growing up, my parents did everything they knew how to do to support me. My dad was always kinda my roadie; he drove me from gig to gig. But I got my own gigs. I was this 12-year-old kid, shuffling business cards, calling people, telling them I wanted to play.

I had the worst birthday party ever when I was a child because my parents hired a pony to give rides. And these ponies are never in good health. But this one dropped dead. It just wasn't much fun after that. One kid would sit on him and the rest of us would drag him around.

My dad does watch my work now. My parents watch everything I'm on. I think the first time they saw something was 'Captain America,' and he called me, and he was so elated.

I was thinking about how fleeting and precious life is. Life is also arbitrary. For example, the choices that you make, the luck of being born into the right bed, to parents who support and help you and who love you. That doesn't always happen - and then, what happens when it doesn't?

My father worked in high-energy nuclear physics, and my mother was a mycologist and a geneticist. After both parents completed postdoctoral fellowships in San Diego in 1962, my father took a faculty position in the Physics Department at Yale, and so the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut.

My dad is a lawyer and my mom is an artist. So growing up was exactly what it sounds like - strict household but a lot of creativity. They are so psyched that I get to make music for a living. My parents rule.

The government gets it right on Head Start. We are providing opportunities for children in underserved areas where parents may not be able to afford preschool so they can begin their schooling with a running or Head Start.

So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from.

When I was seven and told my mom, 'I'm gonna be a writer,' she said, 'Oh, that's a terrible idea. You'll live in misery and die teaching other people's children badly.' My parents wanted the safer path for me, and I think they failed miserably achieving that.

Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies.

I want to be a good example for my son. That's the best way to parent - to be the example of what you want to see in them. That's definitely how my parents parented and how my grandparents parented. And it works.

I'm very proud of my Nigerian heritage. I wasn't fortunate enough to be raised in a heavy Nigerian environment, because my parents were always working. My father was with D.C. Cabs and my mother worked in fast food and was a nurse.

Rich, smart parents tend to have rich, smart kids - not because it's genetic but because they can create a home environment and sensory stimulation that lower-income kids often don't get.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I figured I'm really going to make an attempt to become a real actor. And when I did that, I thought it was time for me to face my parents and tell them what I did.

My parents instilled a really good work ethic from when I was little - if you want to have money to spend on holidays, you earn it. So I've always been someone who wanted to be able to survive by myself, but I think you have to let down the barriers a little bit - let other people in.

I may not be the number one movie star, or my films might not be doing too good. I am grateful for what life has offered me. I have got a great family, parents are together, have a great sister, I get to holiday. All these things make me grateful towards life, for everything. I always say - have an attitude of gratitude.

My parents said that sitting at home playing video games all day won't bring you anywhere in life.

I decided to move out of the apartment I was sharing with my best friend before graduation and move back home. My parents had recently separated, and I wanted to move back home with my mom and my siblings.

I have the support of my parents and my teachers. They made it very possible for me to go to a school that is open and supportive of me being gone at times and pursuing acting. But school always comes first for me.

I come from the kind of family where work is work; my parents always taught me that it's better to be doing something than sitting around doing nothing.

My parents are divorced, and seeing that was really painful for me. Really painful for me. But that's also a big part of why I'm intrigued by the dynamics between people - because I was close to something that fell apart.

I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table.

I think my parents recognised that I'd always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn't think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.

I grew up in a funeral home. Both my parents were morticians.

We busted a lot of family secrets with this. But to make a long story short, my parents relationship was built heavily on security issues for my Mom, and when my Dad couldn't provide security, the relationship unraveled.

I'm a war baby: I was brought up with rationing, and my parents always had to struggle. I remember when I was sent to boarding school - Prior Park College in Bath - my father was asked how he was going to pay the fees, and he replied: 'In arrears.'

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

I had been a real problem child, but once I got into acting, my parents never had any more trouble with me because all of that energy was directed in a positive way.

The Bible is big in my teaching. It's a wonder the ACLU didn't get after me pretty good. I really kept thinking they would. I took my boys to church. I took my football team to church. I only did it two times a year. Before I signed a kid, I'd write the parents and I'd tell that parent we were gong to take your son to church twice.

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.

My parents were funny. My brothers were funny. We just laughed and had a good time. Growing up, it breeds that. It breeds your funny. It breeds your creativity.

I think my generation has had an unbelievably easy time profiting from the world that was made for us by our parents and grandparents. We are essentially a rather frivolous generation. The Blair government was my generation's shot at power. It had some good things, but it had some flaws.

I come from great stock. I didn't come from money. My parents both worked really hard to keep food on the table and give my sister and me opportunities to play sports and see what we were good at.

This movie will actually increase the sex life of parents everywhere because they can put this on, with the 45 minutes of extras and they've got almost two hours to do whatever they've got to do while the kids watch the movie.

Among the other values children should be taught are respect for others, beginning with the child's own parents and family; respect for the symbols of faith and the patriotic beliefs of others; respect for law and order; respect for the property of others; respect for authority.

I have a slightly bourgeois upbringing, I guess. My parents paid for me to go to school, which is nice, but I haven't gotten a dime since then. I have no trust fund. I wish I did.

I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won, and I got a camera in about 1948, a Voigtlander.

When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.

As our parents planted for us, so will we plant for our children. When Charlie and I began our philanthropic journey, we wanted to focus our resources on planting seeds that would help perpetuate Jewish values and traditions for future generations and also contribute to repairing our world.

I was just a kid and I didn't have a dad. That's hard, because when you're a kid, you blame yourself for everything. And I blamed myself for him not being around, for my parents not being together.

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke.

My parents live near the ocean, and I've spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.

I never wanted to be a puppeteer. I stopped puppeteering when I was about 18. I puppeteered when I was eleven years old to 18 to make extra money to go to Europe, which I made half of and my parents gave me half.

Even though I played national level badminton, I told my parents when I was in 10th that I was not interested in continuing. Being a model or actor fascinated me from a young age, and I even did a couple of ads when I was just eight years old.

Too often, parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But great stories come out of great farming.

For dinner I want real sushi - not the Americanized kind. My parents are American Samoan so I don't go for any of those rolls. I'll have raw prawn or sea urchin or octopus. I love it.

Ethiopia's government is doing a commendable job of working closely with donors and humanitarian organizations to educate parents about child marriage, and to support organizations like the Hamlin Fistula Hospital.

There's no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student's achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children's education can also make a huge difference in a student's achievement.

My parents liked to go dancing, and they encouraged all of us to bring our friends home. My brother had a skiffle group, and there would often be dancing in the house. And my parents would come and dance with us.

When I was 13, I won a scholarship to boarding school. My parents let me choose whether to go, and I decided I wanted to. Afterwards, I went to Cambridge to study law - in a way, I was carrying the academic hopes of my family, as Mum and Dad left school at 14.

I would be lying if I said I'm not flattered being voted as the 'Time's' Most Desirable Man of 2012. Frankly, I have no idea how the desirability quotient is arrived at. If it is just drop dead good looks, then I have to thank God and my parents for it.

Growing up, I always wanted a dog, but my parents never wanted one.

If the parents are too busy to read, it's a safe bet the children will feel the same way. Set aside time for family reading each night. It doesn't matter so much what the kids read, as long as you provide them space for reading and a sense that it is a valuable part of your daily routine.

This is how I started: My mom was crazy for antique shops and junk shops, and my sister and I would play this game where, if we were driving with my parents and saw a junk shop or an antique shop, we'd scream at the top of our lungs. My poor father would have heart failure and screech to a halt, and we'd leap out and go and explore.

I was lucky enough to have an older brother who shared the splatter flicks with me, and I had parents who were cool and involved enough in my life to allow me to see them. I think my folks appreciated that I looked at these movies as a creative outlet... almost like magic shows, if you will.

My earliest interest in game design came when I was in primary school, and my parents bought a Commodore 128 computer. I taught myself to write programs in BASIC, and then I made my own games.

My parents believed in exposing each of their children to an abundance of varied activities in the hope they would find something they loved. They each had found a passion - Dad with his music and Mom with her horses - so it was natural for them to encourage experimentation.

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.

I saw my parents come over. They were immigrants, they had no money. My dad wore the same pair of shoes, I had some ugly clothes growing up, and I never had any privileges. In some ways, I think the person that I am now, I think it's good that I had that kind of tough upbringing.

For parents - women in particular - good quality, affordable childcare is vital.

I have a difficult relationship with jazz. My parents really love it, and I went to a school where jazz was considered the best thing ever, so I had to leave it be for a long time. But now I'm rediscovering it. I'm approaching jazz in a different way.

I can remember that on the shelves at home, there were these books by Thomas Wolfe. 'Look Homeward Angel' and 'Of Time and the River.' 'Of Time and the River' had just come out when I was aware of his name. My parents had a hard time convincing me that he was no kin whatsoever. My attitude was, 'Well, what's he doing on the shelf, then?'

Both my parents had heart problems: my mother had type 2 diabetes, and my father had a stroke.

My parents are very competitive, so we are very competitive as kids. But it's a good kind of competition; it's not a jealousy. You always want to do your best, and if it can't be you, you want it to be your brother or your sister, you know what I mean?

I'm not superstitious about good luck charms and all that. I don't have any ring or any tangible thing as a charm. But I like to have at least one of my parents with me during my shows. It gives me strength to find their faces... or my brothers... in the audience. It comforts me.

My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.

I really thank my parents for giving me the good sense to not get into anything wrong. There are many people around who like controversies, and I actually wonder how do they do it. I don't have the courage to get into controversies. There are people who love it; I find it silly.

Support the athlete, encourage the team, help the coach. That's what good track parents do.

My honored father will permit the observation that, though I have not heretofore always appreciated, as I ought, the motives and the feelings of a father, I hope I have learned wisdom in that respect; and my highest earthly gratification would be to make easy the downhill of life of those parents to whom I owe all that I am and most that I have.

To me, Slow parenting is about bringing balance into the home. Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves, but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms.

I remember growing up singing; even when I was just three years old, I was singing all the time in the house. My parents said I was singing before I could even talk properly.

I remember times of anxiety, ups and downs, and times of unexpected windfalls. But my parents loved what they did. And because their work was also their hobby, it taught me that work could be fulfilling.

My parents were, had a marriage of passion, and the passion was about their religious beliefs. They were both immigrant families that - well, my father's family came as Puritans to Massachusetts.

My parents definitely sparked something in me. I'm sure of it. I saw how happy and fulfilled they were, and I knew I wanted the same job.

Anybody who has children and children who are well feels a sense of responsibility towards parents and kids and families that are struggling and that aren't well.

My parents are wonderful, and I'm really lucky - but my mom has always been almost exclusively a right-brained person.

I'm the rogue Canadian in my family - I just happened to be born here while my parents were studying here.

My parents were fine at 85. So 85's nothing. 100 is another thing. I have a friend whose mother is about to turn 101, and it's not great.

I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity.

Parents today are under a lot of stress, sometimes working two jobs just to make ends meet. They're trying to find day care for their kids and elder care for their own parents. The Federal Government shouldn't add to their worries by not living up to its obligations.

I had been living in Ohio in my own house with my own life when my marriage abruptly came to an end. I had nowhere to go with my two sons, very little money, and not much to do in Ohio except be someone's ex-wife. My parents instantly and very generously invited my family to move back home to New York, where I could begin again.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of 'like' has spread through the idiom of the young. And it's true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

My parents were amazing and wonderful, but there was a lot of pressure to do my best and in every way possible.

My father was always playing this ethnic blues stuff around the house, and both my parents played. Then one day my father brought home Big Bill Broonzy, and there he was sitting in our living room playing, and blues was in my heart from the time I was 12 years old.

My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we'll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music - you know, the good stuff.

My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

The only honourable work my parents knew was blue-collar. But while my father Robert ran a pawnbroker's shop, and my mother was a waitress, I moved into a middle-class world with a level of security they never knew.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

Society should see parenting as a public health issue and help parents to bring their children up feeling loved. We have birthing classes, but no parenting classes. The latter is desperately needed if we are to avoid self-destruction.

I lost my father when I was 13 years old. He was a great man, my father, and very intelligent. I love him very much. I believe it's very important that parents have a personal connection with their children. It helps kids feel more secure, have a feeling of family, makes them feel loved.

My parents were supportive. I didn't have good grades, but they could tell I wasn't lazy.