Quotes & Sayings About Families

I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story. — John Boyne

I'm gonna take all my sadness, frustration, anger and energy and channel it into becoming the best possible student.

I am going to become a learning machine...

Go ahead, go to all your parties. Go ahead and go home to your families and friends every weekend. You are probably smarter than me. But it doesn't matter. While you are goofing around, I'm gonna be studying, and I'm gonna catch you. — Peter Rogers

I have unemployed my girlfriend. She had a job working for a cardiologist and now she can hang out, put her feet up, buy all the things she wants, have a nice breakfast with you and me in the Four Seasons. Any fights in families like mine come from everyone worrying about money. I'm taking all those worries away. That makes me feel happy, makes me really proud of what I do. — Conor McGregor

There's a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of divorced families. I come from a divorced family. And you have parents meet someone and they have kids and you're with that whole having to meet new people and be your family. That's always a hard thing to do. — Selena Gomez

If homes are going to survive, it will be because husbands and fathers again place their families at the highest level on their system of priorities. — James Dobson

The number one thing I will take with me is my experience as a social worker who saw what happened to families who couldn't find jobs, struggled to take care of their health and saw opportunity slipping away for their kids. I ran for Congress because politicians were fighting with each other instead of looking out for these families. — Kyrsten Sinema

Things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities, the love we receive from those around us. — Thomas S. Monson

[Ted] Cruz railed against his fellow senators for not appreciating the risk that Obamacare would destroy healthcare for America's families ... Cruz then lodged a more general complaint against his Senate colleagues who, he said, seemed more concerned with "cocktail parties in Washington, D.C." than with their constituents. Referring to calls that he said were pouring in from around the country, begging legislators to resist and defund, Cruz noted, "It is apparently an imposition on some members of this body for their constituents to pick up the phone and ask for assistance." As I heard him say that, I picked up the phone and called Cruz's local constituent service office in Houston. "Could someone there give me information about how to enroll in Obamacare?" I asked, when I was put on the phone with one of the senator's case workers. "No. We don't support the bill, and think it's a bad idea," I was told. — Steven Brill

[A]s we celebrate 75 years of the minimum wage, we must also recognize that it is no longer achieving its potential impact in our economy or for America's working families. Every American deserves the chance to build a better life for his or her family - and raising the minimum wage will provide that opportunity. — Tom Harkin

All families are silly in their own way. — Alan Hollinghurst

If responsibility for the upbringing of children is to continue to be vested in the family, then the rights of children will be secured only when parents are able to make a living for their families with so little difficulty that they may give their best thought and energy to the child's development and the problem of helping it adjust itself to the complexities of the modern environment. — Suzanne La Follette

Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, harbor this feeling that we - individually - are special. A patch of ice or a pea-sized blood clot makes a mockery of that illusion in a heartbeat. We are not special at all. — Michael Perry

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time ... We are everywhere. — Ann Brashares

I think families find a dynamic that works for them. — Treat Williams

Safe Sex
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;
if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another's cry; if they employ each other
as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,
no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated
apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond's edge — Donald Hall

I think, for all of us, enjoying time with our kids and our families helps us stay grounded. — Shawn Stockman

Look, I've been doing this a long time. If I'm honest with you, then yes. The Families could have done both. The car thing is absolutely their style, like you said."

Luc frowned. "But you don't think they did it."

David shook his head. "No. Because you're alive. The Families wouldn't screw up twice." He left, closing the door behind him.

"If that was supposed to make me feel better," Curtis said, "it needed way more puppies. Or something from the chocolate family. — Nathan Burgoine

Anytime you spend 15 or 16 hours a day with someone, five days a week for six months, that's more time than some people spend with their own families, so it does affect the dynamic between the actors. — Eddie McClintock

When you journey inwardly exploring yourself, a sense of personal trust begins. — David W. Earle

Daisy chains are pretty fragile, and it turns out that families are too. — Cathy Cassidy

He (God) never promises that our families will be safe. Not in the way we think. He does promise his presence, though. — Emily P. Freeman

What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by granting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law. — Liza Lugo

More broadly, we are going to have to examine the safety net programs to make sure they are poised to catch the families before they fall even more, especially in the areas of unemployment benefits, child care assistance, and foster care. — Richard Neal

In Hawaii, we go to this wonderful place, all families. My wife and I go directly from breakfast to a beach chair where we read all day. My daughter goes from water to pool to running around with friends she meets, some of whom are regulars there. — Stephen Collins

Whether it's making sure that families have access to quality health care and child care, or making sure that our children receive the best educational opportunities we can give them, we must remain committed to these needs because our children are our future. — Blanche Lincoln

Florida has its own rhythm, too. People go to work, they watch their children learn and grow and start families of their own. They play in the sun and pass their lives enjoying the outsized blessings that make our state unique. — Jeb Bush

I found myself with a wife and kids, and some of my friends weren't around as much. They weren't calling as much, and I didn't quite know what it was. Someone said, "Yeah, I recently lost one of my closest friends. He got his finger stuck in a wedding ring." And I thought, "Oh, that's what's happening! We're all going off and making our own families." — Scott Foley

During these years in the small-talk wilderness, I also wondered why Americans valued friendliness with commerce so much. Was handing over cash the sacred rite of American capitalism - and of American life? On a day that I don't spend money in America, I feel oddly depressed. It's my main form of social interaction - as it is for millions of Americans who live alone or away from their families. — Karan Mahajan

Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. — Joan D. Chittister

The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families. — Robert Wuthnow

In the U.S. Senate, in the short term we need to reduce the tax burden on hard working individuals, families, and small businesses. — Joni Ernst

Don't be fooled. Charlie remembers things exactly the way he wants to remember them. I suppose we all do ... And then we spend the rest of our lives basing the way we think about our families on what we THOUGHT happened
instead of what really did. — Janette Oke

Cities that tend of have better schools for middle-income families, they tend to have much better prospects for kids moving up in the income distribution. — Raj Chetty

My obsessions tend to cluster, so I often have families of poems in which only a couple of them make it to the book. It can be satisfying to banish poems to my "crappy poems" file. — Anna Journey

If we're by ourselves we come to feel crazy and alone. We need to make alternate families of small groups of women who support each other, talk to each other regularly, can speak their truths and their experiences and find they're not alone in them, that other women have them, too ... It makes such a huge difference. — Gloria Steinem

May this colloquium be an inspiration to all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, families, communities, and whole societies. — Pope Francis

In our families, we are finding that abandoning that sense of masculine entitlement actually enables us to live happier lives. — Michael S. Kimmel

Europe today is the most secular region in the world. Europe is the only region in the world experiencing population decline. Wherever you turn today the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families. — Jonathan Sacks

If more husbands and fathers would put as much energy into their marriages and families as they do their jobs, the world would change. — Mark Hart

Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other. — E.W. Howe

Families are families. We've all got them, more or less, and we all know what it's like to be bullied by another generation. — Tamsin Greig

I don't think that everything on Broadway relates to us, and I think that's why we as black people don't always go to Broadway shows, but shows like 'What's on the Hearts of Men' has a lot of issues that can relate to black families, and that's why I enjoy it. — Stephanie Mills

I get very jealous of my friends who have traditional families and 9-to-5 jobs, because I feel like just by the nature of being a comedian ... — Chris Gethard

I have spent the better part of my adult life standing up and fighting for working families. — Bernie Sanders

I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like. — Amanda Peterson

Fifth of American families lived on farms in the 1930s, — Gail Collins

It was so easy to decide their fate, when they were nothing more than numbers on the sheets, presented to us for a signature by our adjutants. Now they were real people, with broken lives, torn families, and memories which would haunt them for the rest of their lives. — Ellie Midwood

Jobs mean freedom for workers to support their families. — Nancy Pelosi

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

Who are the advertising men kidding, besides the European tourist? Between the tired, sad, gentle faces of the subway riders and the grinning Holy Families of the Ad-Mass, there exists no possibility of even a wishful identification. — Mary McCarthy

It is important for practical and psychological reasons to call any reasonably stable group that rears children a family ... The advantage of this view is that traditional and nontraditional families can all be seen to serve the interests of children. Children can also feel comfortable with an approved family form, even if it is not traditional. — Sandra Scarr

Companies aren't families. They're battlefields in a civil war. — Charles Duhigg

There'd been an epidemic, the man had told him. Thirty people had died incandescent with fever, including the mayor. After this, a change in management, but the tuba's acquaintance had declined to elaborate on what he meant by this. He did say that twenty families had left since then, including Charlie and the sixth guitar and their baby. He said no one knew where they'd gone, and he'd told the tuba it was best not to ask. — Emily St. John Mandel

A Japanese woman friend whose infant son died seven days into his life - no detectable reason - just the small breathing becoming nothing until it disappeared, told me that in Japan, there is a two-term word - "mizugo" - which translates loosely to "water children." Children who did not live long enough to enter the world as we live in it. In Japan, there are rituals for mothers and families, practices and prayers for the water children. There are shrines where a person can visit and deliver words and love and offerings to the water children. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Graduations are full of joy and celebration, but they are also full of broken hearts. It is one of those days when you miss the people you love so much it hurts, when imperfect families and dashed dreams weigh so heavily that you begin to think that everyone else is sitting on top of the world but you. — Susan Estrich

We are what our families have made us. But sometimes you can escape that. You can close a door on it and walk into another room. This room is furnished differently. It's all things you chose yourself. My room is furnished with Elizabeth and Tom. The light illuminates them through the window. They glow as brightly as the setting sun. — Kate Hamer

But wishing our Kansas soldiers 'God speed' is not enough. We need to comfort, care for, and protect their families. And we should ease the financial burdens that these families often face. — Kathleen Sebelius

Families need to have a time when they can cook together. They can eat at the table and you can look eye-to-eye. Phones are put away and there are no interruptions. And what you do is concentrate on each other. Listen to what they have to say, and let them listen to you. — Kay Robertson

We have to create security for the working families of Britain, and that's what I'll do — Ed Miliband

All the talk about virgins recently had made him secretly yearn for some of the Nectar that they produced in their young wombs.It must have been at least fifty years since he had last tasted a virgin's Nectar. And that came from the lovely Metis, the neighbour's daughter, who subsequently became his wife.
Virgins were supposed to have hymens, yet he had never seen his wife's hymen."You don't notice such things when you are young", he told himself. All his three daughters had grown up from virgins to adults without him ever noticing them having hymens. They were all happily married now, with families of their own.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, 'I'll be damned. we're Republicans.' — Susana Martinez

I really love to be with people. It's nice, that. To have achieved sudden intimacy with strangers is perhaps the most human thing you can do. We all love our friends and families, as much as we hate them. When you can achieve intimacy with strangers, it's very exciting and heartening. — Russell Brand

We should recognize that schools will never solve the bedrock problems of education because the problems are problems of families, of cultural pressures that the schools reflect and thus cannot really remedy. — David Guterson

Families ought to be noisy. — Benjamin Franklin

So many of us get caught up into the race game that we forget that in the end we are just people trying to do better for ourselves and our families. My father use to have a saying, that in order to be great you have to do great things that change the world of people around you. — D.E. Rogers

The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [ ... ] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War. — John Coleman

More and more lower-middle-income families either live their lives in debt or leave the city altogether. The boom is strictly at the penthouse level. — George Steiner

People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other. — Wendell Berry

Many families amass more objects than their houses can hold. The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices cluttered with boxes of stuff that haven't yet been taken to the garage. Three out of four Americans report their garages are too full to put a car into them. Women's cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike when confronted with such clutter (men's, not so much). Elevated cortisol levels can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body's immune system. — Daniel J. Levitin

My time in the Army gave me an understanding for what it takes to provide for our national security and what it means to our service members and their families. — James Inhofe

The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030. We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it ... Families will have to get used to only using power when it was available, rather than constantly. — Steve Holliday

I'm nearly always at home at the weekends; that's important for every working woman today, not just me. I don't encourage people to come in at the weekend and work; I encourage people to go home and create great families. — Angela Ahrendts

If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten. — Albert Pike

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful. — Ben Bernanke

As an artist, I try and be controversial, and I have been a bit offensive at times. I have a view on the burka, and I'm sure a few of the Muslim girls and their families would have a view of me on stage in next to nothing! — Jessie J.

Childhood hunger in America is as much a paradox as it is a tragedy. Why, in the wealthiest country in the world, should hunger darken the lives and dreams of 12 million children and their families? I believe that, when Americans learn the facts and understand how their involvement can make a difference, banishing childhood hunger will be a national, local and personal priority. — Martin Sheen

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed. Their States being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. — Confucius

A faraway-father is distant from his children; not necessarily in geography, but socially - either by choice or by force. Our country has many fathers who are figuratively-forced far and away from their families. Legal force brings to bear disparate dads through such innovations as no-fault divorce, legal precedence, and post-divorce incrimination. I am one of these parents - portrayed or profiled as 'perpetrator'. — H. Kirk Rainer

I started to see it Eunice's way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began. — Gary Shteyngart

It was an age of lavishness. Of enormous meals, enormous families, enormous spreading skirts and an enormous, spreading Empire. An age of gross living, grinding poverty, inconceivable prudery, insufferable complacency and incomparable enterprise. — M.M. Kaye

Most families are destroyed from the inside, because they allow themselves to be conquered by others from the outside. — Carlton Young

The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209) — Dorothy Allison

Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it. — Frank A. Oski

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant. — Erma Bombeck

The thing that got me about the Orphan Trains was that the experiences were so varied. Some of the kids went from neglect and hunger in New York to loving farm families who couldn't wait to fatten them up, who gave them medical care, an education, affection. And some of the kids became the victims of terrible cruelty, and more hunger, and more neglect - it all depended on who adopted them off of the train. — Laura Moriarty

The trouble was, Elizabeth thought, they did not tell the children of colonial families not to love these foreign lands, not to fall in love with their birthplaces. While parents dreamt of retiring in peace to another place called 'home', their children soaked up knowledge of the only world they knew: its different peoples, its spicy food, its birdsong, the way warm rain fell like a curtain through the palm trees. Their souls would be forever torn. — Anne M. Chappel

They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. — Ayn Rand

We are giving assurance to the American families that help is on its way. — Edward Kennedy

There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty. To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.
This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth. — Brigham Young

Everyone knows dogs. Most people love dogs. I think most American families probably have a dog, but I don't think people really realize or understand just how wonderful and special dogs are. — Robert Crais

Trusting each other is the beginning of a certain secular faith, a faith that allows us to live in families and communities and nations. Democracy, above all other forms of government, requires this faith ... — Sue Halpern

We needed to take a discrete population to give people the confidence that if we can end veterans' homelessness , we can attack chronic homelessness, families and other populations like foster youth, who each have distinct needs. — John Carlos Frey

Reminded of favorite poem by Wendy Cope which goes:
At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle.
The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle.
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle,
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you're single. — Helen Fielding

War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost. — Ruta Sepetys

These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand. — James F. Cooper

The nights were advantageous, too. After they kissed their families goodnight, it was expected that they would share a bed, their bodies close, their movements obscured under the covers. — Alexis Coe

When families observe a later, deeper stage of cult involvement they may find it necessary to consider the involvement of a professional such as myself in an intervention effort. — Rick Ross

One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it. — Frantz Fanon

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. — Anais Nin

I don't begrudge rich people running for office. God knows that FDR and JFK both came from very wealthy families but I think did more to help impoverished Americans than anybody else. — Julie Roginsky