Quotes & Sayings About Family Background

No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn't understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted. — Andrea Jung

My family is my biggest critic. Since they come from a non-filmi background, they give me an audience's point of view. They have been very supportive of me. — Randeep Hooda

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking. — John C. Maxwell

I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line. — Bob Newhart

I'm of Russian-Jewish background. Like many Soviet Jews, my parents were engineers. My family migrated from Ukraine to Israel when I was six. They arrived in Israel with very little ... Within a year of arriving in Israel, the Yom Kippur War happened. — Sasha Roiz

Everyone wants to be happy; happiness is a right. And while on a secondary level differences exist of nationality, faith, family background, social status and so on, more important is that on a human level we are the same. None of us wants to face problems, and yet we create them by stressing our differences. If we see each other just as fellow human beings, there'll be no basis for fighting or conflict between us. — Dalai Lama

Another night then,' Mom said. 'Maybe on the weekend we can have a barbecue and invite your sister.'
'Or,' I said turning to Rafe, 'if you want to skip the whole awkward meet-the-family social event you could just submit your life story including your view on politics religion and every social issue imaginable along with anything else you think they might need to conduct a thorough background check.'
Mom sighed. 'I really don't know why we even bother trying to be subtle around you.'
'Neither do I. It's not like he isn't going to realize he's being vetted as daughter-dating material.'
Rafe grinned. 'So we are dating.'
'No. You have to pass the parental exam first. It'll take you awhile to compile the data. They'd like it in triplicate.' I turned to my parents. 'We have Kenjii. We have my cell phone. Since we aren't yet officially dating I'm sure you'll agree that's all the protection we need.'
Dad choked on his coffee. — Kelley Armstrong

My family background has always been very supportive. They're going to be there for me no matter what. — Mark Sanchez

To all my readers. I don't need my daughter's okay to do anything. I was a writer before she was my daughter. The CRANK books were inspired by my desire to keep others from following in her path, but they are FICTION. And seriously, WTF do I need her permission for? Are you effing kidding me? I'm her MOTHER. — Ellen Hopkins

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings. Nothing ties me down. — Margaret Atwood

My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another. — Ailyn Perez

She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him. — Jhumpa Lahiri

When an individual from underprivileged background gets higher education, he/she uplifts the entire family. 90% of students at Namal college are from underprivileged backgrounds. I look forward for your support in this noble cause — Imran Khan

My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it's a very mixed background. — Nouriel Roubini

If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background ... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, I and my family could have a tragedy. — Lee Kuan Yew

Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation. — V.C. Andrews

I came from a very poor background. I came from children's homes; I came from a violent family, and against all the odds, I succeeded. — DeObia Oparei

I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there straight into the heart of family life, despite there always being, no matter whom I visited, an uncomfortable side, because even though people always try to keep existing tensions in the background whenever guests are present, the tensions are still noticeable, and you can never know if it is your presence that has caused them or whether they are just there and indeed your presence is helping to suppress them. A third possibility is, of course, that all these tensions were just tensions that lived their own lives in my head. — Karl Ove Knausgard

We talked about politics constantly in my family growing up in North Carolina. There were always debates. Being of Greek background, it's in our blood to drink coffee and talk politics. — Zach Galifianakis

I'm from a lower middle class background; all my family were immigrants. — Billy Corgan

My family background was deeply Christian. — Abbe Pierre

perhaps we are not as free as we might think in the first place. Given your background, your friends, your family, the books you read, and the movies you watch, how surprising is your vote in a federal election? — Tyler Cowen

At the turn of the twentieth century, the first wave of academic political scientists attacked some of their theoretical predecessors for the supposed mistake of assuming that human beings were entirely rational. This mistake had allegedly been made by politicians and theorists who had tried to appeal to voters in terms of purely rational argument. The new political scientists triumphantly pointed out that image, stereotype, the emotions arising in crowds, family background, and many other irrational factors were actually the main determinants of political behaviour. — Kenneth Minogue

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage. — Anne Tyler

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was. — Reese Witherspoon

Further Education should be about the ability to learn, not the ability to pay - everyone who is able should have the opportunity, regardless of their family background. I don't want to see students struggling with huge debts or frightened off even going to university in the first place. — Charles Kennedy

My background is that I came from a middle class family, and I think those values stay where ever you go. — Nita Ambani

You have to set big goals for yourself. And you have to put aside all the negativity in your life that tells you that if you came from a certain education or a certain family background that you can't achieve big goals. That's one of the things that America has. — Brian Tracy

I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week. — Jon Stewart

When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family. — Edward Norton

Coming from an African background, obviously the foundation of the family home is education, probably because my parents had to work a lot harder for everything that they've got in this country. — Tinie Tempah

They will have difficulties to overcome,' I admitted. 'Including the differences in their religions. However, marriage is always a chancy business, Katherine. I have known individuals who appeared perfectly suited, by family background, religion, and nationality, who were thoroughly miserable.'
'So you believe in taking the chance?'
'Certainly. What is life without some risk? — Elizabeth Peters

We were a very politically active family. My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president. — Trevor Rabin

I feel like I grew up being babysat by a television, and all I ever wanted to do was be in movies, direct movies, make movies, but it took me a really long time to be honest with myself about it because my background is that my family was very poor. — Noel Wells

The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought, not through one's family background. — Kim Jong Il

Love yourself! You don't need a man or a boy or a self-proclaimed love expert to tell you what you're worth. Your power comes from who you are and what you do! You don't need all that noise, that constant hum in the background telling you whether or not you're good enough. All you need is you, your friends, and your family. And you will find the right person for you, if that's what you want - the one who respects your strength and beauty. — Amy Schumer

As a regent, I hope to bring that important perspective of a typical family visitor in combination with my background as a Member of Congress and a proponent of the Smithsonian's efforts to reach all Americans. — Xavier Becerra

Most people might think that I've come from a musical background, but nobody in my family was in any kind of band or played anything. I just picked up music from breakdancing really, that's what got me to listen to music, and in general I was just a creative guy. — Lunice

I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isn't always the best way, and it took me taking my son to therapy after the divorce to really see it. — Regina King

My background is in biology. Before getting into the family business, I worked at the Predatory Bird Research Group at the University of California at Santa Cruz, fundraising for them. — Nell Newman

Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country. — Robert Galbraith

One Mongolian leader became a very, very brutal dictator and eventually became a murderer. Previously, he was a monk, and then he became a revolutionary. Under the influence of his new ideology, he actually killed his own teacher. Pol Pot's family background was Buddhist. Whether he himself was a Buddhist at a young age, I don't know. Even Chairman Mao's family background was Buddhist. So one day, if the Dalai Lama becomes a mass murderer, he will become the most deadly of mass murderers. — Dalai Lama

When an office-holder facing a multi-count indictment says that he has decided to spend more time with his family, the proper response is a horse-laugh. When an accused politician explains that a charge of corruption is 'really' an attack on his or her race, religion, ethnic background or gender, the odds that something felonious happened jumps. — Jeff Greenfield

Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels. — James S. Coleman

The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever ... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear. — Jhumpa Lahiri

My background is not typical hip-hop. I didn't grow up in the projects. I grew up in a single family home in a middle-class suburb. That doesn't mean I didn't experience hardship, but to me it's not about that, it's about the future and where we are trying to take it. — Kid Cudi

Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it's culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with. — Aasif Mandvi

"Joy" is based, albeit loosely, on the life of Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur, inventor and QVC shopping network star with the mega-selling Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Joy, but the film starts off on the wrong foot with woeful depictions of her background as the only sane person in her dysfunctional family. — Kenneth Turan

My family background was heavily slanted toward business and seafaring matters. — William Standish Knowles

I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. [ ... ] I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents. — Stephen Jay Gould

If you follow these simple truths, you will gain control over your financial future, and probably be able to accumulate millions and millions of dollars. These truths are not just about money, but about self discipline and the proof of love between yourself and your family. While I have gleaned these truths from the wisdom of the Jewish people, they will work for anyone in any setting regardless of religious background or income level. This is the oldest financial system in history and the only one that has survived the test of time. — Celso Cukierkorn

I am quite international. My background, born in Turkey. My family is a Jewish family from Iran, so I went from Turkey to Iran to Israel, and then grew up in Italy and ended up in U.S. for graduate school. So I tend to look at things from an international perspective, and I think that gives you a little bit of a broader view of what's going on. — Nouriel Roubini

Karou was mysterious. She had no apparent family, she never talked about herself, and she was expert at evading questions
for all that her friends knew of her background, she might have sprung whole from the head of Zeus. And she was endlessly surprising. Her pockets were always spilling out curious things: ancient bronze coins, teeth, tiny jade tigers no bigger than her thumbnail. She might reveal, while haggling for sunglasses with an African street vendor, that she spoke fluent Yoruba. Once, Kaz had undressed her to discover a knife hidden in her boot. There was the matter of her being impossible to scare and, of course, there were the scars on her abdomen: three shiny divots that could only have been made by bullets. — Laini Taylor

I need you to scry for Lousha," he said. "You told me once that you could."
"Yeah, I can get you in her vicinity."
Garreth had taken Lucia's scent into him and could find her from miles away.
"That'll work."
Witches could come in handy, he supposed.
"But I don't do gratis."
Garreth bluidy hated witches! "Charge me what you will! Just give me the fucking coordinates."
In the background, he heard Bowen say, "Mari, never let it be said that I doona support your extortion
"
"Entrepreneurial-ness," she corrected.
"But a family discount, love, would no' be amiss."
"The whole family? Fine," she said. "I'm scrying." While Garreth waited, she groused about how extended the "MacRieve pack" was. — Kresley Cole

I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins. — Teddy Thompson

I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything. — Eugene H. Peterson

This has been my difficulty. The difficulty with my life. Those well-built trig points, those physical determinants of parents, background, school, family, birth, marriage, death, love, work, are themselves as much in motion as I am. What should be stable, shifts. What I am told is solid, slips. The sensible strong ordinary world of fixity is folklore. The earth is not flat. Geometry cedes to algebra. The Greeks were wrong. — Jeanette Winterson

When it comes to work - hurry, hurry, hurry. When it comes to payment - delay, delay, delay. Caste, religion, family background nothing. Talent everything. — Aravind Adiga

Life is a series of family photos in which you keep moving to the rear until finally you're a portrait in the background. — Robert Breault

You are making this fuss because I did not issue a proper proposal?
Very well." He began to kneel and she grasped a fistful of his hair
and yanked him back to a standing position.

He yelped and rubbed his head. "Even you cannot deny that your
background and family connections are less than desirable, yet I am
still willing to do the honorable thing and marry you. — Ally Broadfield

I think that the American people are curious about who a candidate is, what their background is, who their family is, what their faith experience has been, their education, their work experience. All of those are factors that voters look at because they want to take a measure of the individual. — Michele Bachmann

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction. — Donald Johanson

I come from a very working-class background, so my family would have been downstairs in the past, as opposed to upstairs. People are often quite surprised to hear that, that I'm not actually posh. — Michelle Dockery

I was brought up in a very naval, military, and conservative background. My father and his friends had very typical opinions of the British middle class - lower-middle class actually - after the war. My father broke into the middle class by joining the navy. I was the first member of my family ever to go to private school or even to university. So, the armed forces had been upward mobility for him. — Christopher Hitchens

Los Angeles is such a great meritocracy. Where can someone with my background - don't have the right family background, the right religion, the right provenance or whatever you want to call it - I come here and I'm accepted. The city's been good to me. And I want to give back. — Eli Broad

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. — Samuel Alito

The results indicate that heterogeneity of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on children from strong educational backgrounds. — James S. Coleman

My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland. — Alan Hovhaness

Needless to say, Lot kept his faith to himself. He told no one of his family background, for fear of them discovering his religion. He never told anyone who he really was. He also saw that the society that touted itself as the "Cities of Love" was actually quite inhospitable to strangers and visitors. Traveling merchants who came to sell their wares in the cities were usually beat up and run out of town, because they were considered greedy. In reality, it was because their prices were so cheap. But the local workers maintained a greedy control over the marketplace. The city took so much of the workers' income, they barely had enough to live on. So, they did not want anyone else to have what they could not. — Brian Godawa

Mom was always doing something for somebody. She came from a Czech background, one that made her a devout Catholic and gave her a strong belief in the family. — Eugene Cernan

Anger rose in me. Didn't they know how hard I'd been working to overcome my family background? Now all my efforts were wasted. — Ji-li Jiang

Head Start is designed to ensure that all children - regardless of their family's income, race, or ethnic background - are able to enter kindergarten ready to learn. — Lucille Roybal-Allard

I could give him business cards...multi-camoflauge background. David, woodworker, amateur computer coder, and decoder extraordinaire," Lily daydreamed.

"Coder and decoder," Anna chuckled. — Kate Willis

If you're a Christian, here's the good news: who you really are has nothing to do with you - how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior, your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; His strength, not yours; His performance, not yours; His victory, not yours. — Tullian Tchividjian

Bin Laden comes out of a business background - he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise. — Peter L. Bergen

Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do. — Thomas Sowell

I didn't want to be the best at anything; I just wanted to blend in. And that was kind of my existence throughout my family experiences at home of just kind of blending in in the background through my other siblings, which was easy to do. — Misty Copeland

I don't come from money or an educated family background or any sort of supportive family life, so all of my choices are made on my own. — Cat Power

We can take our parenting fears to Christ. In fact, if we don't, we'll take our fears out on our kids. Fear turns some parents into paranoid prison guards who monitor every minute, check the background of every friend. They stifle growth and communicate distrust. A family with no breathing room suffocates a child. On the other hand, fear can also create permissive parents. For fear that their child will feel too confined or fenced in, they lower all boundaries. High on hugs and low on discipline. They don't realize that appropriate discipline is an expression of love. Permissive parents. Paranoid parents. How can we avoid the extremes? We pray. — Max Lucado

My father was a teacher and my mother also worked in the school, so the family has a background in education. — Nick Cave

I was raised on a family farm in western Minnesota. So I didn't have the background to prepare me for this business life. — Glen Taylor

My family making music was like a folk background, really: banging on tabletops, playing banjo and all kinds of things. — Dave Davies

Seriously, I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it meant endless possibilities. I came from a badly managed family background, so art was a way of reinventing myself. — Sam Taylor-Wood

I use myself as a template for my comedy. So first my background as a Muslim man, my being a doctor, I talk about my family quite a lot, my kids. Anything that resonates with me I talk about. The important thing is it should be able to work in a family setting. — Riaad Moosa

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here. — Ving Rhames

Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey family that the action of the book takes place in 1935; but if they do, they must not be querulously indignant because the King's Jubilee is not mentioned, or because I have arranged the weather and the moon's changes to suit my own fancy. For, however realistic the background, the novelist's only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offence in the world. — Dorothy L. Sayers

All children are really orphans. At heart, a child has nothing to do with its parents, its background, its last name, its gender, its family trade. It is a brand-new person, and it is born with the only legacy that all individuals inherit when they open their eyes in this world: the
inalienable right to be free. — Heather O'Neill

Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27); later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14). — Pope Benedict XVI

A liberal education ... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation. — Robert M. Hutchins

I like the fact that this kind of family has been seen in a movie a million times: teenage kids, the family is a bit strained and they don't have enough money, but in the background the guy used to be a Gene Simmons type. — Gary Cole

I come from a very big family from every economic background. Some of the streets I talk about, I've actually walked on because I have family from there. Jamaica has so many contradictions. — Marlon James

The term "musalman" refers to someone with "musallam iman", that means, a pure conscience. Thus, any individual whose conscience is pure and clear, who can think for himself or herself, is a musalman or muslim, regardless of socio-religious background. Likewise, any human being who loves the neighbor as much as his or her own family is a Christian. — Abhijit Naskar

One of the things I know about my family, my generation, and my ethic background is that we put in work and I'm not just talking about just to eat. You have to think about the civil rights movement, they were putting in work; marching, walking miles and miles, sacrificing, getting on the bus, feeding one another, they had schools, voter registration, they were working! They were hard workers so my advice is to work. — Eric Thomas

Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family. — Ian Kershaw

My filmmaking background has really just been making movies with my friends since I was 12 years old. That's how I feel I learned how to tell a story visually, by just going out with a video camera and making movies with my friends and family. — Rian Johnson

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier. — Michael Caine

With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally. — Alexander Chee

I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier. — Wang Jianlin