Quotes & Sayings About Big Families

watching TV when your children are around, snacks, exercise, and bringing their own kids to the job matter a lot to some families but not to others. Of course the big ones are yelling at a child, ignoring a child, lying, stealing, cursing, and any form of physical or verbal abuse. Whatever you feel strongly about, your nanny needs to know just how strongly you feel up front, and you need to present these issues to her in the interview as definite Deal-Breakers - no excuses. — Tammy Gold

Anger is often a big problem for people who grew up in families where the overt expression of anger was an everyday occurrence. They have too much opportunity to practice anger and not enough sense of the other possibilities. Rage becomes, for them, the habitual response of the mind to unpleasant situations ... When people begin to see that anger, like any other mind energy, is just a transient phenomenon and therefore workable, they are very relieved [p. 83]. — Sylvia Boorstein

If you go to old houses on Long Island you will see painted Chinese wallpaper, which was big in the 18th century. Throughout history, notable, established families have always tried to link to the 18th century. — Catherine Martin

Today, big families are like waterbed stores; they used to be everywhere, and now they are just weird. — Jim Gaffigan

The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home. — Lisa Kleypas

It is tempting to call for better leadership, but we probably expect too much from the leaders of the nations. Those nations are too big, the connections not strong enough, the commitment to the future not long enough. It is better to look smaller, to our now-smaller organisations, to local communities and cities, to families and clusters of friends, to small networks of portfolio people with time to give to something bigger than themselves. We have to fashion our own directions in our own places. — Charles Handy

To my mind, if we do not get a handle on money in politics and the degree to which big money controls the political process in this country, nobody is going to bring about the changes that is needed in this country for the middle class and working families. — Bernie Sanders

People don't know anymore why we've had eight years of war. Why their children have died ... This entire war was just a big setup to destroy both the Iranian and the Iraqi armies. The former was the most powerful in the Middle East in 1980, and the latter represented a real danger to Israel. The West sold weapons to both camps and we, we were stupid enough to enter into this cynical game ... eight years of war for nothing! So now the state names streets after martyrs to flatter the families of the victims. In this way, perhaps, they'll find some meaning in all this absurdity. — Marjane Satrapi

Unequipped to hold their own in the ferociously competitive world of White America, in which even the language is foreign to them, the Navajos sink ever deeper into the culture of poverty, exhibiting all of the usual and well-known symptoms: squalor, unemployment or irregular and ill-paid employment, broken families, disease, prostitution, crime, alcoholism, lack of education, too many children, apathy and demoralization, and various forms of mental illness, including evangelical Protestantism. Whether in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the barrios of Caracas, the ghettos of Newark, the mining towns of West Virginia or the tarpaper villages of Gallup, Flagstaff and Shiprock, it's the same the world over - one big wretched family sequestered in sullen desperation, pawed over by social workers, kicked around by the cops and prayed over by the missionaries. — Edward Abbey

With both parents in the workforce 100 percent of the time, there's just no way to care for somebody on the side - either somebody has to take time off work or somebody has to pay someone to provide that care. In either it represents a big financial blow, and families just don't have the flexibility to deal with it. — Amelia Warren Tyagi

One of the big changes in politics has been because families, individuals, have felt worried, insecure ... worried about the economy, worried about their jobs, worried about their kids' futures ... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller. — Nick Clegg

I do not believe in a simplistic and inflammatory view of good and evil. I believe this is a big world full of men, women, and children who struggle to eat, to love, to work, to protect their families, their beliefs, and their dreams. — Sean Penn

Today the game is rigged - rigged to work for those who have money and power. Big corporations hire armies of lobbyists to get billion-dollar loopholes into the tax system and persuade their friends in Congress to support laws that keep the playing field tilted in their favor. Meanwhile, hardworking families are told that they'll just have to live with smaller dreams for their children. — Elizabeth Warren

Trapped in the bureaucracy nightmare, real families suffer when the big banks and their servicers force foreclosures. The emotional toll on children packing up their rooms and on parents struggling to find a temporary roof is a deep one. — Sheldon Whitehouse

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

It's always a bit overwhelming when you arrive on set and everyone's new, but you soon become a big family. I find the hardest thing about acting is that you have to say goodbye to everyone at the end of a shoot. — Nicholas Hoult

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand. — Jodi Picoult

Once you have a firefighter in your family, your family and the families from his crew become one big extended family. — Denis Leary

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use. — Nancy Gibbs

All of the third-world flights docked here, families waiting days for their connections, squatting on the floor in big bacterial clumps, and it was a long trek to where the European-North American travelers came and went, making those brisk, no-nonsense flights with extra leg-room and private TV, whizzing over for a single meeting in such a manner that it was truly hard to imagine they were shitting-peeing, bleeding-weeping humans at all. Silk and cashmere, bleached teeth, Prozac, laptops, and a sandwich for their lunch named the Milano. — Kiran Desai

Big banks churn out page after page of incomprehensible fine print to obscure the cost and risks of checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and other financial products. The result is that consumers can't make direct product comparisons, markets aren't competitive, and costs are higher. If the playing field is leveled and the broken market fixed, a lot more money will stay in the pockets of millions of hard-working families. That's real stimulus - money to families, without increasing our national debt. — Elizabeth Warren

In the Thirties all of us who were young had been united by anger and the obviousness of our plight; in the war we had been united by fear and the obviousness of the danger. But now, prosperous under the bomb, we all seemed to have become atomized. Wherever I looked I saw people trying to live private lives for themselves and their families. Nobody asked the big questions any more. Why think, when the thing to be thought about is so huge it is impossible to think about it? Why ask where you are going, when you know you can't stop even if you wish? Why ask why, when it does no good to know why? — Hugh MacLennan

Jail time is still too cruel," Von Edeco shook his head. "You don't want to be depriving children of their parents, people from their families, even if it's just for a short period. I think flogging is the best method. It's immediately painful, which is a good deterrent. People don't like to get flogged." "No they don't," Geiseric agreed. "But," Von Edeco shrugged, "it's not that big of a deal in the end. It doesn't affect you in any long-term way. It doesn't leave scars. It doesn't injure them. It doesn't deprive them of any time with their loved ones, which is the worst thing you can do to a person." Geiseric looked off with piqued brow. "Flogging, huh? — Rick Friar

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. — Jonathan Safran Foer

She loved airports. She loved the smell, she loved the noise, and she loved the whole atmosphere as people walked around happily tugging their luggage, looking forward to going on their holidays or heading back home. She loved to see people arriving and being greeted with a big cheer by their families and she loved to watch them all giving each other emotional hugs. It was a perfect place for people-spotting. The airport always gave her a feeling of anticipation in the pit of her stomach as though she were about to do something special and amazing. Queuing at the boarding gate, she felt like she was waiting to go on a roller coaster ride at a theme park, like an excited little child. — Cecelia Ahern

I come from big families. My momma was the oldest of three and my daddy was one of six - and I've always loved children. They bring a lot of joy to the world and they make us adults look at things in a better way. — Josh Turner

Watersheds come in families; nested levels of intimacy ... As you work upstream toward home, you're more closely related. The big river is like your nation, a little out of hand. The lake is your cousin. The creek is your sister. The pond is her child. And, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your sink. — Michael Parfit

Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. — Charles Wheelan

Big cities have a lot of 'younger brothers' who have left traditional parts of the world and their families for a more liberal lifestyle. But cities are filled to the gills with 'elder brothers' too. — Timothy Keller

The world looks at China as a big place with a lot of people, a good place to make money. And because so many Chinese families send their kids abroad to study, they are familiar with foreign cultures, so Hollywood films are very successful in China. — Gong Li

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves? — Peter Thiel

One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together; their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other's homes at weekends - and these would be people who were political adversaries. — Robert M. Gates

Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last, we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor, like my dad did, while their children, tucked in bed, dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring, but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead. — Chuck Schumer

I grew up in a big ol' Latin family, so that's all the music we used to play - salsa music. We'd always dance and have fun. You know how families get down, man! We just had fun with it. — Ryan Guzman

Instead of following through on their promise to concentrate on jobs, Republicans have attacked seniors, working families, women, and the most vulnerable among us. They have pursued an extreme agenda that would end Medicare as we know it and cut Social Security benefits in order to continue giving tax breaks to Big Oil and millionaires. — Dina Titus

Arranged marriages are big business in the U.K. Second- and third-generation immigrant families, with no extended family structure, limited networks and religious restrictions on acceptable ways to meet future spouses, are turning to external matchmakers for help. — Jemima Khan

It was like a big family, since so many of us brought our kids. We all went surfing. It was so relaxed and easy. — Elle Macpherson

'The Big Girls' has always seemed to me to be a story about different kinds of families - a divorced mother with a child; a father with his child and his girlfriend; a mother of three children, suffering from postpartum depression; and the rigid artificial families maintained by women in prison - all potentially perilous. — Susanna Moore

Unlike George Bush and his friends at the big oil companies, I'm going to work for a real energy policy for this country that decreases America's dependence on foreign oil and helps lower the costs to American families. — John F. Kerry

Here in Tennessee, instead of the big spending, big government, job killing agenda of the Obama Administration, Tennesseans have tightened their belts and are struggling to find jobs that will enable them to support their families. — Marsha Blackburn

Being named a great school at a great price means that we offer both high-quality academic programs and real affordability for families. We offer a personal touch that's hard to match at a big school but without a big price tag. — David McFadden

I want every movie to be like a big family and a great adventure. — Virginia Madsen

I come from a very big family ... nine parents. — Jim Gaffigan

I always hear people talk about 'dysfunctional families.' It annoys me, because it makes you think that somewhere there's this magical family where everyone gets along, and no one ever screams things they don't mean, and there's never a time when sharp objects should be hidden. Well, I'm sorry, but that family doesn't exist. And if you find some neighbors that seem to be the grinning model of 'function,' trust me - that's the family that will get arrested for smuggling arms in their SUV between soccer games.
The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice. — Neal Shusterman

I get upset when so many people say there are all sorts of problems in Africa and India where they have these big families. They don't realize that 10 children in rural Tanzania will use less natural resources in a year than one middle class American child. People don't think like that. — Jane Goodall

The world might be sunny-side up today.
The big ball of yellow might be spilling into the clouds, runny and yolky and blurring into the bluest sky, bright with cold hope and false promises about fond memories, real families, hearty breakfasts, stacks of pancakes drizzled in maple syrup sitting on a plate in a world that doesn't exist anymore.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it's dark and wet today, whistling wind so sharp it stings the skin off the knuckles of grown men. Maybe it's snowing, maybe it's raining, I don't know maybe it's freezing it's hailing it's a hurricane slip slipping into a tornado and the earth is quaking apart to make room for our mistakes. — Tahereh Mafi

But the people in the old country love their children. We have big families, and by the time a child is a year old he knows where he fits in the family and what he should do and what he shouldn't do. He knows his parents love him but that they're not going to stand for any nonsense and tantrums. So he is satisfied and feels safe. American children never feel safe. -The Listener — Taylor Caldwell

I always thought I desperately wanted a husband and a big family, because I didn't have it growing up. — Drew Barrymore

These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. — John Perkins

Yeah so - nothing gets lost. Cal isn't, and not just because he'll still be a little part of my life. I get to carry him with me, the way you do all your memories and mistakes. He started out a mistake I had no memory of, and he wound up being, well, my kid.
Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment - or a whole chain of them - even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than their is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Taxi September along Jessore Road Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load past watery fields thru rain flood ruts Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts Wet processions Families walk Stunted boys big heads don't talk Look bony skulls & silent round eyes Starving black angels in human disguise. — Allen Ginsberg

I've written a number of songs over the years and it's a big part of my life, this sort of tension between a longing for home and the call for the open road. It's sort of like a tug between two families. I even love to miss my home. — James Taylor

The big problem is how hard it is to achieve equal relationships in a society whose work policies, school schedules, and social programs were constructed on the assumption that male breadwinner families would always be the norm. Tensions between men and women today stem less from different aspirations than from the difficulties they face translating their ideals into practice. — Stephanie Coontz

In the Latina/o culture, blessing is a big deal. Growing up, I was brought up to see the blessings that surrounded me and my family. As a child, after I'd said my prayers, my mom would send me to bed with a blessing for a good night's rest. Whenever I would leave my abuelita's (grandmother's) house, she would tell me, "Dios te bendiga, mijito" ("God bless you, my little one"). In my family and in many Latina/o households, the women are the vessels of God's blessing, and thus bestowers and distributors of this blessing to their families. To this day, even though I am grown and have two children of my own, whenever I travel somewhere distant or am undertaking a major project, my mother will sit me down, lay hands on me, and say a prayer of blessing. — Francisco J. Garcia Jr.

The Christian right, which trumpets the theme of family values, damns contemporary culture for undermining older traditions. Yet many individuals from this camp are not concerned first and foremost about family values per se. Family is a codeword for constraint; families and family values place constraints on individuals more effectively than any other institution, including government. The Christian right seeks a society in which all are constrained; they reject big government for failing at constraint, and for undermining those institutions, like the family, that have a chance at succeeding. — Tyler Cowen

The big boss wants to take us both out for dinner tonight. Apparently he's into getting to know the families of key employees or something."
"Well, that sounds potentially boring," Elaine remarked. "Do you know where you're going?"
Completely off the top of my head, I named the swankiest restaurant that I could think of.
"You'd better dress up," Elaine warned. "I think that's one of those places where, if you show up not wearing pantyhose, they give you some."
"That is so gross," I said. — Cameron Dokey

We are all human beings. As such, we are part of a big family: the human family. The pain of any human being will somehow affect the entire family. — Samael Aun Weor

I never played sports or got into the whole guy camaraderie of, like, 'I love you, man! Seniors forever!' So suddenly being in the military with these guys who were under these very heightened circumstances, isolated from their families, living this very kind of Greek lifestyle, it changed my life in a really big way. — Adam Driver

Adolf Hitler and his Brownshirts had surged to power. Now they held Germany by the throat. The Gestapo was rapidly creating a cruel and brutal police state that treated all but true Aryans like dogs and swine. That was certainly true for Jews like the Weisz family. In just the last few years, they and all of the Jewish families in Germany had been stripped of their citizenship and denied many of their most basic rights. Jacob's father, an esteemed professor of German history, had been summarily fired from his prestigious post at Frederick William University in Berlin. The Weisz family had been forced out of their beautiful, spacious home in the suburbs of the capital. They'd had a big red J stamped on their official papers and had been denied permission to leave the country. So they had left Berlin and made a new home in Siegen. — Joel C. Rosenberg

The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind. Builders in the way most American families are. They used whatever tools they had - whatever God gave them - and whatever life in America provided - and built better lives and better futures for their kids. — Hillary Clinton

People get burned out in big families, you can even see it in the naming of children. Like the first kid, "You were named after Grandma." The seventh kid, "You were named after a sandwich I had. Now get your brother, Reuben." — Jim Gaffigan

My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles. — Mike Krzyzewski

When you're and only child in a family with an only parent, you look at other, bigger families with envy. Mary Alice had a family with a station wagon, a split-level house, and a pool.
But then I looked up and saw Mary Alice's toes, as she stood at the edged of the diving board. Her second toe lay on top of her big toe on each foot. I had never seen such a thing. I wondered if Mary Alice's toes would ever prevent her from doing the things she wanted to do in life.
"Look, y'all!" she said, forming her perfect body into a perfect swan's dive. I decided then that any time I got frustrated with my overall situation in life, mad or jealous of knee socks or a pink canopy bed in a pink room, I'd take a deep breath and think about Mary Alice's toes. At least I didn't have Mary Alice's toes. — Margaret McMullan

People are patronizing the theatres with renewed enthusiasm - there is an entire picnic-like attitude when families go out to see movies, which is a very good sign. They want to see larger-than-life characters on the big screen and not just watch movies on television or on DVDs. — Salman Khan

My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It's not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their humanity as they're dying. Losing your memories, you lose so much of who you are as a person. — Rosecrans Baldwin

Economic development is not a zero-sum game; the world does not need poor countries in order to have rich countries, nor must some people be poor in order for others to be rich. Families who live in public housing on the South Side of Chicago are not poor because Bill Gates lives in a big house. They are poor despite the fact that Bill Gates lives in a big house. For a complex array of reasons, America's poor have not shared in the productivity gains spawned by Microsoft Windows. Bill Gates did not take their pie away; he did not stand in the way of their success or benefit from their misfortunes. — Charles Wheelan

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big - big money, big businesses selling weed - after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing? — Michel'le

I grew up in the Midwest and had a lot of exposure to big religion. I went to church every Sunday - my mother even sang in the choir - and most families I knew where practicing Christians. — Michael McMillian

I kind of grew up in a commune, but it wasn't a hippie commune necessarily, but it was a big house with a lot of families, we all lived together and it was the 70s, whatever that means. — Gabriel Mann

Was a book by Arthur Raistrick called Quakers in Science and Industry and I glanced through it for a few minutes, then carried it to a nearby chair and sat reading for about half an hour, so unexpectedly absorbed did I become. I hadn't realized it, but Quakers in the Darbys' day were a bullied and downtrodden minority in Britain. Excluded from conventional pursuits like politics and academia, they became big in industry and commerce, particularly, for some reason, in banking and the manufacture of chocolate. The Barclays and Lloyds banking families and the Cadburys, Frys, and Rowntrees of chocolate renown were all Quakers. They and many others made Britain a more dynamic and wealthy place entirely as a consequence of being treated shabbily by it. It had never occurred to me to be unkind to a Quaker, but if that's what it takes to get the country back on its feet again, I am prepared to consider it. - — Bill Bryson

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites. — Michelle Alexander

Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question. — Bernie Sanders

No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved. It was like those stupid bell curves they'd had to study in math class. There was the big, swollen, happy middle, a whale lump full of blissful couples and families eating around a big dining room table and laughing. And then, at the tapered ends, there were the abnormal people, the weirdos and freaks, and zeros like her. — Lauren Oliver

The big dramas that fascinate me are the quiet ones that happen behind closed doors in so-called ordinary families. — Joyce Maynard

Children have empty erasable white boards upon which big people write indelibly imprinted messages into their tender subconscious minds. — David W. Earle

I do think that a school day that matches the work day makes a lot of difference for working families, but the big driver of this effort is education. Period. We have a lot of students not gaining the skills they need, and it is pretty clear that school does not offer enough time to get that job done. — Chris Gabrieli

The rich people are doing well but regular people suffer. We'll all be better off when we realize that we're part of one big family. — CeCe Winans

I have a big family and no one ever treated me like a child. They always treated me like an adult, like an equal. — Blake Lively

The holiday is clearly growing in importance for the industry. Halloweens fun, enjoyable and doesn't require a big investment to celebrate. The primary focus is the child and families typically do all they can to make sure the children have fun. — Richard Hastings

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Even Dad likes it," said Caddy, and her father agreed that he did. In a way. Being a broad-minded, tolerant, artistic sort of person. Or so people told him ...
"Oh, yes?" said Saffron, rolling her eyes.
"Yes," said Bill, sounding a little bit peeved. "So you thank your lucky stars, my girl, because in some families you would have come home to very big trouble! A nose stud! At your age! If you come down with blood poisoning, don't blame me! — Hilary McKay

I grew up in a world that was clannish - old Tasmanian-Irish families with big extended families. — Richard Flanagan

And like most big families, they were loud and secretly thought they were funnier and a little more special than everyone else. — Jennifer Close

Baby names are a big debate in my family. Like true Colombian and Puerto Rican families, everybody and their mother is putting their two cents in - everything from Jose to Francisco to Victorio to Rain has been suggested. — Paula Garces

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either. — Marilyn Monroe

Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment
or a whole chain of them
even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than there is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Big ideas, big ambitious projects need to be embedded within culture at a level deeper than the political winds. It needs to be deeper than the economic fluctuations that could turn people against an expensive project because they're on an unemployment line and can't feed their families. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people lived and ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said that described most families in the outside world. — Chuck Palahniuk

To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad ... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march. — William Tecumseh Sherman

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates. — Erma Bombeck