Quotes About Family

Perhaps what is really being proposed by the Evangelical fundamentalists is a return not to the 1950s family but to the family of biblical days. The Old Testament is clear that this was a strong patriarchal family. Men were permitted several wives and concubines. Children were legitimately conceived by these concubines outside of marriage. . . . Is this the Evangelical's idea of an ideal family?

There is also work to do in the evolution of a stable family life and values, and in ensuring that the Nigerian family is built on core values that will form the bedrock of the future society. We must showcase the ideals of family life and be models of family values.

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.

Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it...psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself.

Most of our life is miscommunication, and when you add a language barrier to it, it just becomes total mayhem and confusion... It just adds to it with all of the cultural differences. It could be an American family meeting another American family and you could still have a total clash. With family, it's like visiting another planet.

I didn't have a blueprint from my childhood that I could call on, which is an enormous deficit when you're trying to put together a family life. I didn't see a family life where men were thriving inside of it. You know, my dad tended to blame the family for his inability to achieve what he wanted to achieve, you know? So, unfortunately, I was coming from that particular frame of mind.

Religion is so focused on family. These days, for many people, being gay is also focused on family. The Mormon Church is especially focused on family, and I'd have hoped, therefore, that the Mormon Church would especially have celebrated how all of these people who might have been lonely and suicidal and childless are now able to lead this other life. I would have thought it would be a cause for immense celebration. Instead it has been, obviously, a cause of great concern to the Church and its leadership.

I never look back at all. All of my sentiment and emotion goes into my family. I'm an extremely family oriented person and I have a very, very happy family life. That doesn't just include blood relations. I have friends who are close to me.

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained. Having a family guarantees that you have a built in support system, and although that support system may not always be what you want it to be, when it comes down to the wire, your family will love you and stand behind you, no matter what.

The hours spent viewing TV are hours not available for actively participating in the real world, or playing, or being involved with friends and family. Watching television is an individual activity that tends to discourage interaction with others; as viewing time increases, family communication time decreases. As family communication decreases, people grow more distant from each other and may even forget how to carry on a good conversation.

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be? Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you. Morrie Schwartz

Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl angst over which family they visit at Thanksgiving and which one in December and whether or not it's best to serve turkey or goose for the family feast. When first faced with the reality that the family you married into does things differently, the warmth of tradition can take on a chill.

In its effect on family relationships, in its facilitation of parental withdrawal from an active role in the socialization of their children, and in its replacement of family rituals and special events, television has played an important role in the disintegration of the American family.

This is the kind of upbringing we had instead of sitting in front of a damn television set all day long and never answering to anybody else unless somebody spoke up from a television set. It's an altogether different way of living today that you wonder how it really affects the family? I know how it affects the family because I have my own son who has his children and also my daughter. It's one of those things. Everybody eats in their own way and off they go. You know? It's not family oriented anymore."

In a morally healthy family the good of each member of a family includes and overlaps with the good of other members. When one family member flourishes, so typically do the others.

I feel like I've been lucky that I've never been put in a situation where I had to keep a serious secret. But what is true of me - and has to be true of everyone who's ever been in a family - is that our idealization of reality when we're children always has to fall apart. It's the narratives we didn't know about that pop up and redraw reality. You have to be able to integrate secrets into who you are. My family does not look now like it does when I was a kid. There was divorce. There were family secrets. There was definitely a difference between what I thought was true and what was true.

I have family dotted everywhere - Dad's in California; I've got aunts in Scotland and Virginia; family in Kansas City; family in Manchester and London.

I think family matters to me enormously. In fact, family is the first priority. If my family is good, I can do anything. If they're not, I'm a basket case.

To be a baby elephant must be wonderful. Surrounded by a loving family 24 hours a day. Touched by the family, cuddled and comforted. A tremendous love and compassion exuded by every family member. I think it must be how it ought to be, in a perfect world.

Whether we like it or not, a breakdown in home-life will eventually lead to a breakdown everywhere. This is, surely, the most menacing and dangerous aspect of the state of society at this present time. Once the family idea, the family unit, the family life is broken up - once that goes, soon you will have no other allegiance.

You don't have to give birth to someone to have a family. We're all family - an extended family.

A family is not built just by marrying a woman and producing children. Family is built with a timeless sacrifice which must represent purity, unity, standard of ethics, righteousness, grace, dignity, divinity and principles.

A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village." "Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?" "Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.

My first memory of loving music happened so early. We would always go to the beach in the summer and I would run from blanket to blanket, from family to family and just sing Lion King songs acapella.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

Treat other animals as friends and they become friends. Treat other animals as family and they become family. Give other animals your love and they will love you in return.

I'm Winnie the Pooh - that's as sexy as I am. I meet ladies and they talk about their family and I talk about my family. It's about as sexy as a bag of Brussel sprouts.

Usually a family is led through the mom or the dad and their career and for the family to be led by my career, even though God has led it, could be a lot of pressure.

What is the biggest obstacle facing the family right now? It is over-commitment; time pressure. There is nothing that will destroy family life more insidiously than hectic schedules and busy lives, where spouses are too exhausted to communicate, too worn out to have sex, too fatigued to talk to the kids. That frantic lifestyle is just as destructive as one involving outbroken sin. If Satan can't make you sin, he'll make you busy, and that's just about the same thing.

Going through a divorce after twenty-five years of marriage was the most difficult time for me. It was challenging to reorient my life from being centered around family, a family home, and a long-term relationship.

I have an identity crisis which is not resolved because I'm a dual citizen. My whole family is American, and I was born in India but I was raised in Canada. But all my extended family is American, I've held an American passport and I've spent my whole adult life in between New York and LA. So I feel like an American... and I also feel like a Canadian! I wish more people were dual citizens and then I wouldn't feel like such a freak.

I've always wanted to be a poet at the beginning. I would look at my grandparents' books and my parents' books. And in my family, a typical aspirational Jewish family, being a writer was very much exalted, and it seemed impossible to me, that I could ever do something like that.

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.

As people get older, we all know, you get married and you have a child and that becomes your family, but when you're 16 years old, especially, your family is your friends.

I was funny around my family. My family, they're pretty funny, too.

When you work on a movie or a TV show, you're a family, so if something that's a two-minute thing in the movie is causing a rift in the family, you also have to think about at what point do you fight this, and at what point is this rift worth having in this very small, very tight group of people who are just there to make something great and funny.

I had a family. They can be a nuisance in identity but there is no doubt no shadow of doubt that that identity the family identity we can do without.

A monumental decision such as starting a family requires persuasive dissertations, licences, spreadsheets and field research. That's what I assumed until one night when we were lying in bed and, if I recall correctly, I asked Tracy if we were ready to have a family now, and she said sure. That was it.

By four years of age, the average child in a family receiving public assistance has heard about 13 million words, compared to 45 million for a child from a wealthier family. The disadvantages developed during their first four years are usually still present in high school.

I come from a big family, so I'd like to have a big family.

The family is where we are formed as people. Every family is a brick in the building of society

I think that it's important for judges to understand that if a woman is out there trying to raise a family, trying to support her family, and is being treated unfairly, then the court has to stand up, if nobody else will. And that's the kind of judge that I want.

If you organize your family life to spend even ten or fifteen minutes a morning reading something that connects you with these timeless principles, its almost guaranteed that you will make better choices during the day--in the family, on the job, in every dimension of life. Your thoughts will be higher. Your interactions will be more satisfying. You will have a greater perspective. You will increase that space between what happens to you and your response to it. You will be more connected to what really matters most.

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man.

The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have

One feels very blessed to be born into a family like the Birla family, which is a household name in India, which stands for tradition, is yet contemporary, stands for trust.

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.