Top 100 Parents First Quotes
#1. On many young actors that don't give their parents proper credit: I'm still waiting for some actor to win, say, an Oscar ... and deliver the following acceptance speech: I would like to thank my parents, first of all, for letting me live.
Bill Cosby
#2. It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
Ama Ata Aidoo
#3. Almost forty-five years after my parents first became Americans, I stand before you and them tonight as the proud governor of the state of South Carolina.
Nikki Haley
#4. We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.
Tim McGraw
#5. When my parents first arrived there, North Dakota had just been admitted to the Union, and the country was still wild and harsh.
Lawrence Welk
#7. My older brother, Jake, and I had a bohemian childhood. My parents are deeply unconventional people from the beatnik generation. They weren't married, and I thought that was normal. We called them by their first names.
Rachel Kushner
#8. Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder, Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives being embarrassed by our parents and the last part being embarrassed by our children.
Ogden Nash
#9. My first singing role was as Susanna in a school production in a shortened form of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. I loved to sing and I was given lots of encouragement by a wonderful music teacher Mrs Ann Hill and by my parents who suggested I go to drama school.
Elaine Paige
#10. I like mechanical things; my first book was a mechanics guide - that was what my parents couldn't pry away from me; that was the blanket.
Philipp Meyer
#11. Here he tells us that the new birth is first of all 'not of blood'. You don't get it through the blood stream, through heredity. Your parents can give you much, but they cannot give you this.
E. Stanley Jones
#12. Water helped ancient man learn those first lessons about the rights of others and responsibility to a larger society ... It became part of the moral and mental legacy parents passed on to their children.
Max Meyer
#13. When we leave our child in nursery school for the first time, it won't be just our child's feelings about separation that we will have to cope with, but our own feelings as well-from our present and from our past, parents are extra vulnerable to new tremors from old earthquakes.
Fred Rogers
#14. The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.
Henry Rollins
#15. My second Christian name is John. Good solid bourgeois Christian name, like my first name, Peter, a rock. Minerals. Build on rock, rocks, uranium. Peter and John were two of the twelve apostles - arguable the two most significant. Were my parents hedging their bets?
Peter Greenaway
#16. Especially with our first child, we tend to take too much responsibility
both credit and blame
for everything. The more we wantto be good parents, the more we tend to see ourselves as making or breaking our children.
Polly Berrien Berends
#17. Now that I'm a grandfather myself, I realize that the best thing about having grandkids is that you get the kid for the best part of the ride - kind of like owning a car for only the first 10,000 miles. You can have your grandchildren for a couple of days and then turn them back over to the parents.
Willard Scott
#18. For the first time, a whole generation had the economic & educational opportunity to turn their backs on the dead end factory jobs of their parents, who, traumatized by two world wars, had responded by creating a safety blanket of conformity.
Pete Townshend
#19. The only marriage I've observed for any length of time is my parents - 35 years. I asked my pop, I go, 'Pop, 35 years - what do you hope for?' He's like, 'I hope you die first.'
Adam Ferrara
#20. My family moved - first to Washington, D.C., and then, in the spring of 1975, to Lebanon, where my father worked as a diplomat at the American embassy. My parents were enthusiastic about the move, so my older brother and I felt like we were off to some place kind of cool.
Greg Kinnear
#21. There must be a profound recognition that parents are the first teachers and that education begins before formal schooling and is deeply rooted in the values, traditions, and norms of family and culture.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
#22. When I sold my first business, I wanted to do something nice for my dad. I wanted to give my parents a bunch of money, but they wouldn't take anything from me. They were so happy for me; they felt they didn't need money.
Robert Herjavec
#23. The first 13 years of my life, I lived in China. My parents were missionaries there, and I was an only child. Often I felt lonely and out of place. Writing for me became my private place, where no one could come.
Jean Fritz
#24. When I was around eleven or twelve, my board got hung up on the top of a bowl, and I got a concussion, and I knocked my teeth out. That was the first time that I got seriously injured, and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and my parents briefly doubted.
Tony Hawk
#25. When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.
Sam Abell
#26. My particular historical vantage point is a product of my upbringing as that odd duck, a native Washingtonian whose parents were not in government. The first presidential transition of my sentient lifetime, Kennedy's, I remember vividly.
Frank Rich
#27. My first strong musical memory is of the Villa-Lobos Sixth Quartet which my parents were rehearsing. I remember that it reminded me of big teddy bears dancing around.
Leonard Slatkin
#28. It is said that the way to prevent obesity is not to allow kids to become overweight in the first place. But it takes a multi-pronged approach that has to start with parents. Kids are just too young to understand the consequences of obesity.
Lisa Ling
#29. I'm a father myself for the first time in my life, and I had very very loving parents.
David Keith
#30. I was raised in restaurants. My parents opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Queens when I was just 3. This business has always been my way of life. As a kid, home was reserved only for sleeping. After school, you could find my sister and I helping out at the family restaurant.
Joe Bastianich
#31. Your life is given to you by your parents. If you don't want to live, you have to ask them first.
Yu Hua
#32. I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children's future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.
Rob Reiner
#33. I have done everything I can to make sure my daughter knows her father because you form your own identity by rebelling against your parents - but first you have to know them.
Greta Scacchi
#34. I remember when I first wanted to act my parents were supportive, but it was that they were like please, if you can find something else in the world, don't do this. So it wasn't even they're like 'Oh we've been waiting for you to arrive, welcome to the family business' kind of thing.
Troian Bellisario
#35. Parents may be always working, parents may be in and out. When you're dropping them off with coaches, the first thing kids should be coming back and saying is, 'Mom, guess what I learned today? Guess what coach taught me today?'
Ray Lewis
#36. My parents were so old-fashioned in their attitude to sex that I would rather get in trouble with the police or at school because at least I would be punished less.
Clive Worth
#37. When my parents send me emails the first 3 are blank.
Wanda Sykes
#38. I am my parents' daughter, and I always want to be. But I first wanted to make sure that I was standing on my own two feet.
Lily Rabe
#39. Our kids are the first generation in the history of America that has a shorter life span than their parents.
Jen Hatmaker
#40. I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.
John Fowles
#41. A mother is the person who takes care of you when you're sick. The one who holds you when you're afraid. The one who follows the bus to school on the first day to make sure you made it okay. I have only one mother, Nana; he just happens to be my father, too.
Kat Attalla
#42. I think it's good that [my granddaughter] here because I lost my parents and now it's great that there's a new generation. And she's taught me new things that I've forgotten. Like, when you're on holiday and see what it's like to see a shell or go into the water for the first time.
Carine Roitfeld
#43. You first parents of the human race ... who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#44. I called all adults by their first names, and my mum was just another adult. I was the firstborn of my generation in the family, but because I was so close to my parents in age, they treated me with a kind of adult respect. They talked to me as an equal.
Nile Rodgers
#45. We all need to have heroes, people to admire and look up to. To find a hero, first look to your parents or older brother or sister. Then look to the people who share the same morals and values that you have, and have accomplished the goals that you strive to achieve.
Robert Cheeke
#46. When I made 'Who Needs Pictures,' my first album, I had been west of the Mississippi River one time in my life, and that was in fourth grade. We traveled to California for vacation and stayed with some friends of my parents. It was culture shock, and it was different.
Brad Paisley
#47. Every child should be taught to cook in school, not just talk about nutrition all day. Good food can be made in 15 minutes. This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.
Jamie Oliver
#48. The first question we usually ask new parents is : "Is it a boy or a girl ?".
There is a great answer to that one going around : "We don't know ; it hasn't told us yet." Personally, I think no question containing "either/or" deserves a serious answer, and that includes the question of gender.
Kate Bornstein
#49. When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We're a strange vicious people.
Isabel Miller
#50. My parents are responsible for the two things I like doing most - driving and magic tricks. They bought me my first go-kart and a magician's kit.
Fernando Alonso
#51. Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable.
Pope John Paul II
#52. I was a rebel. I went to Carmel Convent in Delhi where I was a complete rebel. I thought I was 12 going on 18. I wanted to go out with friends older to me, stay out late - my parents were horrified. It was then that we began having our first disagreements.
Lillete Dubey
#53. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.
Sherman Alexie
#54. First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
Chuck Palahniuk
#55. Growing up in Atlanta I always had a sense of what fashion was, a sense of style - my parents always talked about the importance of making a first impression and that's stayed with me.
Cam Newton
#56. My parents were the first in our family to go to grammar school. My grandparents were in service.
Sarah Waters
#57. My parents have been incredibly supportive from perhaps the first real independent decision I made to become a vegetarian at 11, which was certainly not consistent with their diet at the time.
Chelsea Clinton
#58. First, I'm not getting married, so you can forget the wife. Second, if I was insane enough to get married, I wouldn't have kids. Third, if I was insane enough to get married and have kids, it would be a cold day in hell I'd let you babysit.
Jennifer Crusie
#59. If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.
Robert B. Parker
#60. Soccer was the first sport that my parents put me in, and ultimately, all the parents kind of came over to my mom and were, 'We think Channing would be better at football ... We love him, he's really great, but he's kind of hurting our children.' I was just a little wild.
Channing Tatum
#61. So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
Dustin Hoffman
#62. Children copy their parents, friends, and teachers. They will develop the habits of the people around them. So if you want your child to be honest, peaceful and happy you should be that way first.
Baba Hari Dass
#63. I should have known something was wrong with my first wife. When I brought her home to meet my parents, they approved of her.
Woody Allen
#64. The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can't impart what you don't possess.
John Piper
#65. During the first 10 years of my life, while my parents were married, I enjoyed a privileged upbringing. After their divorce, my life was difficult.
Bianca Jagger
#66. There is nothing intrinsically better about a child who happily bounces off to school the first day and a child who is wary, watchful, and takes a longer time to separate from his parents and join the group. Neither one nor the other is smarter, better adjusted, or destined for a better life.
Ellen Galinsky
#67. First my husband, then my parents died. After that I lost my two sisters. When death comes to someone's home it's as if it wants to get as much done as quickly as possible to save coming again for a long time.
Guy De Maupassant
#68. According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.
Bill Gates
#69. The first concert that my parents took me to was in this canyon in Saudi Arabia called Buttermilk Canyon. You sleep under the stars in the desert, and ex-pats - German, Swiss, Canadian, American - would play classical music that filled the whole canyon.
Hannah Simone
#70. Relatively many autists are first-born children. There is also a pretty widespread conviction that the parents of autists are somehow different - for instance, many of them are very serious people or people who are themselves under some sort of strain.
Nikolaas Tinbergen
#71. Mr. Beecher used to say that the first thing for a man to do, if he would succeed in life, was to be careful to "choose a good father and mother to be born of.
John C. Carlile
#72. My parents always knew that I wanted to act, so it didn't really come as a big surprise. The only thing they told me was that I had to wait until I was 18 so I could get my education out of the way first.
Rumer Willis
#73. Generations hence, parents will take their children to these woods to show them how the land must have looked to the first Pilgrims and pioneers. And as Americans wander through these forests, climb these mountains, they will sense the love and majesty of the Creator of all of that.
Ronald Reagan
#74. Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.
Blaise Pascal
#76. Here in Los Angeles, school's out for summer. For thousands of school kids, this is the first week of summer vacation. And for thousands of parents, it's the first week of hell.
Craig Ferguson
#77. I'm not good at making promises. But I would like you to know I've never been serious about a girl until I met your daughter, and now that I know I'm the first man she's brought home, I'm aiming to be the last.
Katy Evans
#78. My parents wanted me to be a doctor, and they weren't very happy at the idea of me choosing acting as a career. Everyone in my family went to university - my older brother is a lawyer - but when they saw me for the first time at the theatre, they thought, 'OK.' They like it very much now.
Caterina Murino
#79. Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them: "The first duty of love is to listen."
Paul Tillich
#80. It is critical that parents and other trusted adults initiate conversations with kids about underage drinking well in advance of the first time they are faced with a decision regarding alcohol.
Xavier Becerra
#81. Learning can take place in the backyard if there is a human being there who cares about the child. Before learning computers, children should learn to read first. They should sit around the dinner table and hear what their parents have to say and think.
Dixie Carter
#82. My parents weren't religious at all. I remember the first time I heard about Jesus was at school.
Bill Callahan
#83. The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
Clarence Darrow
#84. The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books,
Shirley Jackson
#85. When I first made the team I didn't even know there was a national team. So to meit was all new. When I got asked to go on the trip to China I was 16. I said, 'well you know what I have to ask my parents.' So I called home and I am like, 'Mom and Dad can I go to China?' They were like 'sure.'
Kristine Lilly
#86. Some parents manufacture an affirmative construction of their child's disability to disguise their despair, while others have a deep and genuine experience of joy in caring for disabled children, and that sometimes the first stance can generate the second.
Andrew Solomon
#87. Because the perpetrators typically have little understanding as to why they are sexually assaulting children, they usually are unable to stop after the first assault. Abusive behavior continues until a crisis of some kind prevents further abuse.
Tony Martens
#88. A still-born son os superior to a foolish son endowed with a long life. The first causes grief for but a moment while the latter like a blazing fire consumes his parents in grief for life.
Chanakya
#89. If you were sexually abused & could not go to your family for support, you deserve to realize that your family failed you fundamentally. Your parents did not provide a safe atmosphere of support & protection for their children, which is a parent's first responsibility. It was not your fault.
Patti Feuereisen
#90. My parents demonstrated against the Vietnam war, they were into the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, they started the first vegetarian restaurant in Pittsburgh.
Justin Sane
#91. To parents who despair because their children are unable to master the first problems in arithmetic I can dedicate my examples. For, in arithmetic, until the seventh grade I was last or nearly last.
Jacques Hadamard
#92. I love Southeast Asia. As a child, I lived in that part of the world. My first time in Burma was in 1958 with my parents.
Muhtar Kent
#93. I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside,
Tommy Douglas
#94. I think I'd first just assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that...I guess, even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them.
J.D. Salinger
#95. I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#96. I'd let her sell it to Dad. They tended not to contradict each other so if one of them had already said "yes" it usually meant "yes." If one of them said "no", ditto
which was why I'd asked Mom first.
Steven Gould
#97. We were the first latchkey-kid generation. Our parents believed in free love, and for many of us, that meant broken homes.
Gudjon Bergmann
#98. In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.
Dominique Moceanu
#99. I had been brought up in an elementary school where, my first few grades, I remember being specifically told that my teachers were gay. I was just that age and that was just how it was, and my parents were very ... You know, that's how I was raised. Like super-progressive.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#100. With my first pay cheque I sent my parents to Jamaica, so they actually got passports! They're pretty grounded; it wasn't until they saw the trailer for 'Battleship' that they were like, 'Ooh, this is a big movie, isn't it?'
Brooklyn Decker
