In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

I do not raise brats!

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

The ‚Billionaire‘ song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It’s funny.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

I look at how my kids view exercise. They have a complete understanding that nutrition and exercise go hand in hand. I didn’t think like that when I was a kid. But they have a real consciousness about it that I’d like to think comes from the years of attention we’ve put into this.

The only time my records are going to be broken is by my own spawn. I’m going be training that child out the womb.

People are underestimating the force of angry kids.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout’s obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired.

When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.

When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment’s notice.

I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that’s scary. It is what it is, man, I don’t be trippin‘. I couldn’t tell God when I wanted to be born.

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

If something inconveniences my children too much or takes me away from them, I won’t do it.

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

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.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Do I worry about being in the public eye and raising kids? Yeah. Any situation you’re in, you’re gonna worry about raising kids. But it’s champagne problems, too. There are people who can’t feed their kids.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

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.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

I love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

My next baby will be my new record.

I have spent the greater part of my life in a hotel room with seven or eight kids, looking after everyone, sorting out fights, wiping noses, handing out towels, not having a clean towel left for me.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

When I started analysing games in 2001, I had a DVD recorder. I’d be at home watching the games just on a normal TV, watching what I could and trying to figure out what we would be facing a few weeks later. The problem was, in the team meetings, I’d always have to keep going back and forwards with the footage, trying to get to the right part.