We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

Treat your children like the blessings they are or don’t have them at all.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

My mother made me truly appreciate women.

I’m very disappointed in Obama. I was very much in support of him in the beginning, but I cannot support war. I cannot support droning. I cannot support capitulating to the banks.

If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.

The best thing about being a dad? Well, I think it’s just the thing that every man wants – to have a son and heir.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

I was brought up to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Lil Wayne, that’s my brother. Birdman, that’s family.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

I live in Puerto Rico, my family lives in Puerto Rico, my friends. What happens in Puerto Rico matters to me.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.

I come from a family of 12, so I kind of got a little lost as a child.

As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis‘ future.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

When I was young, my brother David and I were farmed off to foster homes, and I spent time in orphanages. My father abandoned us. Here’s the most important person in my life, and I never met him.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

I’m just a friendly person; that runs in my family.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

It’s hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don’t always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

My father opened a restaurant. It’s so amazing… it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

We will always be a family. Always.

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

My next baby will be my new record.

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

I’ve told Billy if I ever caught him cheating, I wouldn’t kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.