Father Quotes

Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere.

~ Andre Dubus Iii

When my father bid $5,000 for the 1962 Championship Game, that was a huge amount. It was double the bid the year before. Pete Rozelle was flabbergasted. Who was this guy who was willing to spend so much money on what seemed like relatively worthless rights to the NFL Championship Game?

~ Steve Sabol

And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11. So I just picked baseball.

~ Willie Mays

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.

~ Joel Kinnaman

My father was a Presbyterian minister, working among the poor in West Virginia. He had taken what amounted to a vow of poverty when he accepted that call and so we never had much money.

~ James Green Somerville

I was born on the 24th of September 1755 in the county of Fauquier, at that time one of the frontier counties of Virginia. My father possessed scarcely any fortune and had received a very limited education - but was a man to whom nature had been bountiful, and who had assiduously improved her gifts.

~ John Marshall

When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing.

~ Lou Gehrig

My father superintended the English part of my education, and to his care I am indebted for anything valuable which I may have acquired in my youth. He was my only intelligent companion, and was both a watchful parent and an affectionate friend.

~ John Marshall

I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, 'That's the company that honoured me, even though I don't have an education'. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.

~ Howard Schultz

My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all.

~ Emmeline Pankhurst

I did not come from an academic background. My father was a smart man, but he had a fifth-grade education. He and all his friends were plumbers. They were all born around 1905 in great poverty in New York City and had to go to work when they were 12 or 13 years old.

~ Leonard Susskind

My father said there were two kinds of people in the world: givers and takers. The takers may eat better, but the givers sleep better.

~ Marlo Thomas

I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.

~ Eric Clapton

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father's care.

~ William Penn

While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline.

~ Henry Rollins

I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's Morris Minor. I drove it around my father's farm. But my favorite car is still a McLaren F1, which I have had for 10 years.

~ Rowan Atkinson

I had a fairly enlightened dad, though if you looked at his resume, it might not seem that way. He was a chartered accountant for Price Waterhouse. He was strict, and we had a very ordered life. To this day, I am the least materialistic person I know, because my father didn't raise me to just go out and buy this or that car.

~ Hugh Jackman

I remember having my father stand over me when I had driven over my own foot; one leg was out of the car and one leg was in the car. He looked at me and told me that I was a drunk and that he was ashamed to call me his son. That night, I stopped drinking and I never drank again; I was twenty four.

~ Randy Bachman

I am really looking forward to driving another of my father's car at the show in Rotterdam.

~ Nelson Piquet

I've loved car racing all my life. I watch NASCAR regularly, and drag racing because we have Raceway Park in New Jersey. I think I got it from my father.

~ Queen Latifah

I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.

~ P. J. O'rourke

I'm a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.

~ John Lasseter

To this day, I am the least materialistic person I know, because my father didn't raise me to just go out and buy this or that car. The only reason I wanted to make money as an actor was because I'm passionate about food!

~ Hugh Jackman

Peace and not war is the father of all things.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

My father was the superintendent of the churches in the state of Montana. He was content in his beliefs. He befit the term 'true Christian.' He would turn the other cheek. He was truly a man of peace.

~ Phil Jackson

When I received the news of the Nobel Peace Award, I could not believe it. I told my father, 'I think they have the wrong name, Dad. Please, can you talk to this man on the phone? I'm busy cooking!'

~ Betty Williams

It was my father who taught me to value myself. He told me that I was uncommonly beautiful and that I was the most precious thing in his life.

~ Dawn French

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

~ Miriam Toews

I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I know virtually no one of my age who can remember a hug, or a smile from their father, or a 'Let's go play football.'

~ Peter Mullan

My father was short for a man, with a child's plaything for a name - Spinner. He had flawless dark brown skin and a head full of big, wet-looking curls, black as oil. And he had the smile of a scoundrel - the kind of smile that disarmed men and undressed women.

~ Charles M. Blow

I was brought up by my father to think that the best thing in life was to be charming, to have a nice smile, always to be liked.

~ Miranda Seymour

I absolutely love Ireland. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I have strong ties here. Both my grandmothers are from Ireland, and I have spent every summer in Bantry since my father, who is an artist, had the romantic idea 20 years ago to buy an old farmhouse on the west coast and renovate it.

~ Emily Ratajkowski

My father has been an actor since 1964. Things were tight a lot of the times, financially. It wasn't like a big romantic adventure.

~ Chris Pine

It's so interesting that the romantic side of my life comes from my father, who I really didn't even know that well.

~ Sophie B. Hawkins

My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.

~ John Edgar Wideman

We all know the personal relationship between Michel Platini and President Blatter. It was like a mentor and protege, or even father and son.

~ Chung Mong-Joon

He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression... I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent. I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.

~ Ronan Farrow

In 'Hardflip,' you have a relationship where the father and son haven't seen each other in 18 years, but they find they're very alike: pigheaded, stubborn, passionate. It's a wonderful story of how you can't get away from how similar you and your children are.

~ John Schneider

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

~ James A. Baldwin