If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

I’d like to think that I’m a calm and sweet person. I tend to be very playful at home with my children, but in life… we have to fight our battles – our work battles, our political battles, our personal battles – and we’re focused.

My family has never been there for me. They expect things because we’re blood.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

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.

Being the only man in the household with my mom definitely helped me grow up fast.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

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

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

My mom and I are very close.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

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.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

Most of us believe, or should believe, that every child can learn, given the opportunity, but try substitute teaching just once and you will see firsthand the socioeconomic issues that distract our kids from taking advantage of that opportunity.

People are always coming up to me and saying, ‚I heard your dad’s speech, and it’s really great.‘ And they’ll mention some place I didn’t even know my dad was going to.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

All great peoples are conservative.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

I teach children to be winners.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.

Ultimately this issue is on us. We’re the ones who make the decisions about what our kids eat.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.