The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989Quotes
If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCMother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1957By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended—and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
—Robert Frost, 1939Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
—August Strindberg, 1886A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BC