My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer but my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood because it was full of gladness and good humanity.

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

I get whatever placidity I have from my father. But my mother taught me how to take it on the chin.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house they want places to play.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.