Parents Quotes

My parents wanted me to be a doctor. So I took up science, but then realised that my heart was not in it at all. The thought of treating ailing people was very depressing.

~ Kangana Ranaut

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities.

~ Amity Shlaes

There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let's stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.

~ Thomas Friedman

If you put down a list of jobs, doctor, lawyer, janitor, teacher or movie star, everybody would pick the movie star. And why? So you could lie around the pool, drink margaritas and send money to your parents. So that's what I did.

~ Steve Guttenberg

My parents made it clear that I should never display even the slightest disrespect to individuals who had the power to let me skip a half grade or move into more challenging classes. While it was all right for me to know more about a topic than my sixth-grade teacher had ever learned, questioning her facts could only lead to trouble.

~ James D. Watson

No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.

~ Harold Pinter

My name is James Edward Franco. Ted is a nickname for Edward. That's what my parents called me. I also got 'Teddy Ruxpin' a lot. It just got to a point where I got sick of it, so when a teacher called out 'James Franco' my junior year of high school, I didn't correct her.

~ James Franco

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.

~ Chinua Achebe

The first one I remember singing on stage was 'Somewhere Out There' from 'An American Tail.' I was around 7, and my choir teacher at school asked me if I would sing it. My parents told me that I needed to move around the stage, so for the entire time I just walked back and forth from side to side while I was singing - there's videotape of it.

~ Carrie Underwood

My parents are the last of the middle class. My father worked for the government designing sea mines. My mother was a substitute teacher. Together, they worked really only until they were sixty.

~ Lewis Black

My dad is an English teacher, and my mom is a textiles artist. My parents made my sisters and me feel that if we wanted to pursue something creative, it could be done. They've always been supportive of everything from the beginning.

~ Tavi Gevinson

I did imitations of anyone who came to my parents' house, and that was my identity at school - if there were ten minutes to lunch, and the teacher was done with the lesson, he'd say, 'Okay, Leo, get up there and do something.'

~ Leonardo Dicaprio

The very rough story is this: Melbourne boy, out of both my parents' houses at a young age, lived with my grandmother, drama teacher twisted me into doing this TV thing that I thought my mates were doing, too.

~ Ben Mendelsohn

In March 1943, my parents, four-year-old sister and I were interned with other foreign civilians at Lunghua camp, a former teacher training college outside Shanghai, where we remained until the end of August 1945.

~ J. G. Ballard

I was attending the University of Alberta. I was going to be a high school teacher, like my parents. I failed - no, I didn't fail a class, I just barely passed. I really didn't try. It was Canadian history, through the plays of the time. My God, those were boring plays.

~ Nathan Fillion

Parents can shape a child, but a great teacher can, too.

~ Susanne Bier

As a former teacher and someone who has devoted her entire career to children and public schools, I understand the pain and frustration of parents who feel their children are not receiving the education they deserve.

~ Randi Weingarten

Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.

~ Randi Weingarten

Maybe I was unpopular a bit because I was a teacher's pet. But even the teachers complained about me. They would say to my parents, 'For every one question any pupil asks, Walter asks 10.'

~ Walter O'brien

As a teacher you can see the difference in kids who have parents who were involved. That difference, by the time these kids get to the third grade, is drastic.

~ Jenna Bush

My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher.

~ Dwight Yoakam

My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.

~ Benmont Tench

Catholic schools in our Nation's education have been paramount in teaching the values that we as parents seek to instill in our children.

~ Joe Baca

My parents being Bengali, we always had music in our house. My nani was a trained classical singer, who taught my mum, who, in turn, was my first teacher. Later I would travel almost 70 kms to the nearest town, Kota, to learn music from my guru Mahesh Sharmaji, who was also the principal of the music college there.

~ Shreya Ghoshal

I was 11 when a teacher suggested to my parents that they should send me to drama classes to curb my disruptive ways in the classroom. The next Saturday I was acting, and thereafter it became a ritual of my youth to see a show at the Belvoir on Sundays and, if I was lucky, another at the Opera House on Monday after school.

~ David Wenham

As a teacher myself I've been in situations where parents come at you, and sometimes parents come across like the teacher doesn't want the best for their kid and it can be really, really hurtful.

~ Rosalind Wiseman

I remember this song by Clay Walker that came out in the '90s called 'This Woman and This Man,' and it was about breaking up, loss, the pain of moving on, and my parents were just getting divorced at the time, so I listened to it over and over again.

~ Cole Swindell

I think people who have good parents come into the world with a strength, yes, and an advantage.

~ Oprah Winfrey

I think the biggest difference is that I've noticed Western parents seem much more concerned about their children's psyches, their self-esteem, whereas tough immigrant parents assume strength rather than fragility in their children and therefore behave completely differently.

~ Amy Chua

Thank God my parents had an abundance of patience.

~ Lexa Doig

When you read about a car crash in which two or three youngsters are killed, do you pause to dwell on the amount of love and treasure and patience parents poured into bodies no longer suitable for open caskets?

~ Jim Bishop

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.

~ Ezekiel Emanuel

Following Michael Brown's death, I went to Ferguson and met with his parents. I stood with them as they tried to hold their heads high and deal with both their immense loss and the larger issues of police-community relations.

~ Al Sharpton

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

~ Paulo Coelho

God gave our first parents the food He designed that the race should eat. It was contrary to His plan to have the life of any creature taken. There was to be no death in Eden. The fruit of the trees in the garden was the food man's wants required.

~ Ellen G. White

Growing up, my parents treated my brother and me with absolute equality.

~ Anushka Sharma

When I was coming of age, I remembered reading and studying the initial ideas within the feminist movement. There was this idea with my parents' generation that in order to find equality, a woman would need to behave like a man.

~ Bryce Dallas Howard

When I was growing up, my parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.'

~ Thomas Friedman

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

~ Marian Wright Edelman

Let us develop an agenda for children that says we can do something about teen pregnancy. Let us make sure that parents are old enough, wise enough, and financially able to take care of their children.

~ Janet Reno