Parents Owe You Nothing Quotes & Sayings

Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. — Amy Chua

If children learn of sex as a relation between their parents to which they owe their own existence, they learn of it in its best form and in connection with its biological purpose. — Bertrand Russell

My parents taught me everything and set me up for life. I owe to them all the things I'm passionate about: music, art, the people I love, my career and family life, the fact that I have children and the way that I raise them. — Olivia Williams

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children. — Nancy Friday

Parenting is the greatest pay it forward system on earth. We don't owe our parents anything. We owe our children everything. The same was true for our parents. The same will be true for our children. — Dan Pearce

We owe our existence to our parents, but we actually didn't have a choice. — Leon Kass

Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school. — J. C. Watts

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.
The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — David Brin

But feel what happens in the soul when you imagine children saying to their parents, "What you gave me, first of all, wasn't the right thing, and secondly, it wasn't enough. You still owe me." What do children have from their parents when they feel that way? Nothing. And what do the parents have from their children? Also nothing. Such children cannot separate from their parents. Their accusations and demands tie them to their parents so that, although they are bound to their parents, the children have no parents. They then feel empty, needy and weak.

This is the second Order of Love, that children take what their parents give in addition to life as it comes. — Bert Hellinger

You're really going to do it, aren't you? You're really going to go back to war?" Gregor said. He could feel something boiling up inside of him. "So, we'll just forget about what happened. The jungle, the Firelands, the Bane." His voice was rising and he could feel the rager side of him taking over. "Forget about everybody who's dead! Tick and Twitchtip and Hamnet and Thalia and Ares! And your parents, Luxa! And your pups, Ripred! Let's just forget about everybody who gave their lives so that you could have this moment where you could - could make things right again! So you could stop the killing! We were fighting for the same thing, remember? You two owe each other your lives! You owe me your lives! And now you stand there and ask me to choose between you? To help you kill each other?" Gregor yanked Sandwich's sword from his belt and swung it so violently that even Luxa and Ripred stepped back. "Well, guess what? The warrior's not fighting for either of you! — Suzanne Collins

The baby boomers owe a big debt of gratitude to the parents and grandparents - who we haven't given enough credit to anyway - for giving us another generation. — Steven Spielberg

I owe a lot to my parents, especially by mother and my father. — Greg Norman

You've got it wrong." His voice was harsh.

"Jackson - "

He cut her off. "No, it's my turn to talk. You've given your speech. And I get it, Mollie, I do. Madison is your sister, and she made you PB&J as a kid when your parents checked out, and that's fine. But open your eyes. You don't owe her anything anymore. You are your own woman, and you are a woman, Mollie. You're not a kid. You're not a girl. And if I've been a complete asshole lately, it's because I'm having a hell of a time coming to grips with the fact that I want you. And fuck, Mollie, I want you. I want you so bad, I'm dying."

Mollie had never made the first move on a man in her life. She was old-fashioned like that. But she made the first move now.

She took a step forward, placed a hand at the back of his head, and pulled his mouth to hers. — Lauren Layne

Just remember something, okay? And this is neither here nor there but it's something I really want you to know. Not that I think you have much trouble with this, but let's be clear: you don't owe your parents anything if they don't respect you. That's bullshit, to be taught that just because they created you and made sure you didn't roll over in your crib and die, you owe them anything. So what I'm saying is use him. Use him if you can, if he lets you. But then don't think you ever have to look back if he doesn't respect you. — Vee Hoffman

Jump to one time, late one night, driving between Nowhere, Wyoming, and WhoKnowsWhere, Montana, when Seth says how your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. "Then puberty makes you Satan," he says, "just because you want something better." J — Chuck Palahniuk

Conscience is strong in women. Children are very violently taught that they owe all to their parents, and the parents are not slow in foreclosing the mortgage. But the home is not a debtor's prison - to girls any more than to boys. This enormous claim of parents calls for extermination. Do they in truth do all for their children; do their children owe all to them? Is nothing furnished in the way of safety, sanitation, education, by that larger home, the state? What could these parents do, alone, in never so pleasant a home, without the allied forces of society to maintain that home in peace and prosperity. These lingering vestiges of a patriarchal cult must be left behind. Ancestor-worship has had victims enough. Girls are human creatures as well as boys, and both have duties, imperative duties, quite outside the home. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

She has to live, Eliott. I owe her a lifetime of apologies."
"Sometimes I think that's all we owe our parents. — Bethany Griffin

I owe a lot to my parents, because they kept no genre off limits. Music was always playing in the house. They never told me to be quiet, turn the music down or anything like that. So I felt pretty free and experimental as a kid to kind of figure out my own voice. — Tori Kelly

The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane. — Robert Rowland Smith

Individuals who are prepared unflinchingly to confront the truth about their childhood and to see their parents in a realistic light. Unfortunately, it is very often the case that therapeutic success can be seriously endangered if therapy (as frequently happens) is subjected to the dictates of conventional morality, thus making it impossible for adult clients to free themselves of the compulsive persuasion that they owe their parents love and gratitude. The authentic feelings stored in the body remain untapped, and the price the clients have to pay for this is the unremitting persistence of the severe symptoms affecting them. I assume that readers who have themselves undergone a number of unsuccessful therapies will readily recognize their plight in this problem. In — Alice Miller

After all, it is quite normal for us to owe a debt of gratitude to our parents and grandparents (or the people standing in for them), even if the treatment we experienced at their hands was sheer unadulterated torture. This is an integral part of morality, as we understand it. But it is a species of morality that consigns our genuine feelings and our own personal truth to an unmarked grave. — Alice Miller

The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.
Not just wanted, but felt she deserved. If the world didn't owe her a living, as her mother repeatedly warned her, it owed her a break. She had a strong sense that a better, more exciting, more rewarding life than that which had been the lot of her parents and grandparents was hers by right. In this she was guilty of nothing more serious than the arrogance of youth, from which every generation suffers and by which it distinguishes itself from the preceding one. — James Robertson

I really owe everything to my parents and their devotion and drive to see to it that their children had the education which led to the opportunities that they never were able to have. — George J. Mitchell

I want to be the perfect child. I owe so much to my parents and the way I was brought up. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is, to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

I owe a lot to my parents. — Maria Sharapova

Each and every one of us who is still lucky enough to have our parents has a duty to them. We do owe them. — Ann Jillian

The only people I owe an apology to are my dead parents. Except my father because he's still alive. — Chelsea Handler

But it was him, not God or any other ... illusory power ... who tore me away from that fire. I give credit where credit is due. One human being made a choice, he acted, and I owe him my life. No god killed my parents, nearly killed James, and spared me. I know that, and I can't go back and believe in things that I used to believe in.. or that I used to want to believe in. I don't know how much faith I had to lose that night, but whatever I have is gone now — Jessica Park

I think we've met our quota for tearful reunions," she chuckled against the top of my head.
"When this is done, I promise I'm never going to leave the house ever again. We'll just stay in and order pizza and watch bad television."
Mom pulled away and looked over my shoulder. "Oh, I think you might want to get out every now and then," she said.
I felt the warm weight of Archer's hand on my waist. "Hey, I like pizza and bad TV."
I turned to him, surprised. "Your chest-"
"Cal," he said by way of explanation. "I owe that guy, like, a mountain of burgers. It's getting embarrassing."
Mom flashed me a little smile before saying, "You know, this isn't how I imagined meeting Sophie's first real boyfriend."
"Mom."
Archer gave me a little squeeze. "You mean I'm the first guy your parents have rescued from an enchanted island via use of a magic mirror? I feel so special. — Rachel Hawkins

Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better. — Chuck Palahniuk

Parents do not owe their progeny an inheritance no matter how much money they have. One of the surest ways to produce loafers and freeloaders is to let children know that their future is assured. — Ann Landers

It's about Nietzsche's theory of universal debt. Your parents make it possible for you to believe a far better myth than Santa. They let you think that you, as a kid, don't owe the world a thing. The world can give you, even if just for a few minutes, utter joy without requiring anything from you. It's not about consumerism. As far as you know, no one buys you these presents. They come out of nothingness, with fantasies of elves attached. You aren't required to be grateful to your parents or anything like that. They can give to you and nothing is required in return. When you get old enough, when you have kids, you get to enact this myth for them. It has nothing to do with any fat man in a red suit, no matter what we tell ourselves. It's about owing nothing, and then realizing that you have to do this job of perpetuating this ... this fantasy world, whether you like it or not. — Thomm Quackenbush