Fathers Day famous quotes
05-22-2025
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I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I've never been part of anything so great as those three kids.
-- Al Roker -
Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me everything he knows.
-- Al Unser -
For thousands of years, father and son have stretched wistful hands across the canyon of time, each eager to help the other to his side, but neither quite able to desert the loyalties of his contemporaries. The relationship is always changing and hence always fragile; nothing endures except the sense of difference.
-- Alan Valentine -
I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
-- Alexander the Great -
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth -
There will always be a few people who have the courage to love what is untamed inside us. One of those men is my father.
-- Alison Lohman -
I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could. I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.
-- Ann Richards -
It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
-- Anne Sexton -
If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.
-- Antonio Gramsci -
Being a child that grew up with a single mom back in the 70s, Fathers Day to me was always a very uncomfortable time. At school, we would make Fathers Day cards for our dads, and I usually mailed one to my dad, and he hardly ever responded.
-- Art Alexakis -
That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all.
-- August Strindberg -
I think back to the day I drove Michelle and a newborn Malia home from the hospital nearly 13 years ago-crawling along, miles under the speed limit, feeling the weight of my daughter's future resting in my hands. I think about the pledge I made to her that day: that I would give her what I never had-that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father. I knew that day that my own life wouldn't count for much unless she had every opportunity in hers.
-- Barack Obama -
By our Heavenly Father and only because of God, only because of God. We're like other couples. We do not get along perfectly; we do not go without arguments and, as I call them, fights, and heartache and pain and hurting each other. But a marriage is three of us.
-- Barbara Mandrell -
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man.
-- Ben Okri -
Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.
-- Bill Cosby -
If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.
-- Bill Cosby -
A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.
-- Bill Cosby -
Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
-- Bill Cosby -
My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn't possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.
-- Bob Dylan -
My dad always used to tell me that if they challenge you to an after-school fight, tell them you won't wait-you can kick their ***** right now.
-- Cameron Diaz -
My father can not finish a sentence. When we were kids he would go, 'Girls the most important thing in life to remember is...' 'Daddy, what is it?' 'What's what, honey?' 'The most important thing in life to remember.' 'Oh, what's that?'
-- Caroline Rhea -
He has always provided me a safe place to land and a hard place from which to launch.
-- Chelsea Clinton -
My father... had sharper eyes than the rest of our people.
-- Chief Joseph -
Being Chinese immigrants in the United States, it was important for my parents to maintain ties that went back a long time. They led by example. My dad didn't bring his work pressures home. We were always aware of them and would go as kids to his office and run around. But when he came home, he was able to leave things behind, at least from our perspective, and focus on us.
-- Chien Chung Pei -
Men should always change diapers. It's a very rewarding experience. It's mentally cleansing. It's like washing dishes, but imagine if the dishes were your kids, so you really love the dishes.
-- Chris Martin -
My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
-- Clarence Budington Kelland -
The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.
-- Confucius -
My sisters and I can still recite Dad's grilling rules: Rule No. 1: Dad is in charge. Rule No. 2: Repeat Rule No. 1.
-- Connie Schultz -
Dad, wherever you are, you are gone but you will never be forgotten.
-- Conrad Hall -
Growing up, I've enjoyed hunting with my father.
-- Dale Earnhardt -
Parenting is about being competent and responsible. It's not about gender, necessarily.
-- Dan Savage -
I would want my legacy to be that I was a great son, father and friend.
-- Dante Hall -
Far too often, we fathers avoid the subject because it's so awkward. The subject I am referring to is: buying gifts for women. This is an area where many men do not have a clue. Exhibit A was my father, who was a very thoughtful man, but who once gave my mother, on their anniversary, the following token of his love, his commitment, and-yes-his passion for her: an electric blanket.
-- Dave Barry -
The kind of man who thinks that helping with the dishes is beneath him will also think that helping with the baby is beneath him, and then he certainly is not going to be a very successful father.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt -
I just sit there and make up songs and sing to [my son] in gibberish. I'm very good at gibberish now.
-- Elton John -
A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.
-- Enid Bagnold -
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
-- Epictetus -
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.
-- Ernest Hemingway -
I don't have a kid, but I think that I would be a good father, especially if my baby liked to go out drinking.
-- Eugene Mirman -
Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes.
-- Euripides -
What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, 'Daddy, I need to ask you something,' he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.
-- Garrison Keillor -
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
-- George Herbert -
One father is enough to govern one hundred sons, but not a hundred sons one father.
-- George Herbert -
Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.
-- Gloria Naylor -
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass'; 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys.'
-- Harmon Killebrew -
My dad used to say 'Always fight fire with fire,' which is probably why he got thrown out of the the fire brigade.
-- Harry Hill -
I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much.
-- Hedy Lamarr -
A man's desire for a son is usually nothing but the wish to duplicate himself in order that such a remarkable pattern may not be lost to the world.
-- Helen Rowland -
For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.
-- Homer -
I have never been a material girl. My father always told me never to love anything that cannot love you back.
-- Imelda Marcos -
Every dad, if he takes time out of his busy life to reflect upon his fatherhood, can learn ways to become an even better dad.
-- Jack Baker -
What makes Will the best father in the world to me is that he's there, not just there in a way that's traditional. The emotional support he offers his children is immeasurable.
-- Jada Pinkett Smith -
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 -
I thought I would be more inspired to have all these new feelings to talk about, but I really just want to hang out with my daughter.
-- Jay-Z -
The most amazing feeling I feel Words can't describe what I'm feeling for real Maybe I paint the sky blue My greatest creation was you.
-- Jay-Z -
My wife is so analytical with raising kids, and I am not. My feeling is if they turn out good, then that means I was a good daddy and put a lot of effort into it. If they turn out bad, it means they took after her side of the family.
-- Jeff Foxworthy -
When I was a kid, I said to my father one afternoon, 'Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?' He answered, 'If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you',
-- Jerry Lewis -
There should be a children's song: 'If you're happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad sleep'.
-- Jim Gaffigan -
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
-- Jim Valvano -
Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said, "Box about: twill come to my father anon."
-- John Aubrey -
I'm so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.
-- John Green -
The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you're unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.
-- John Green -
Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch.
-- Jon Stewart -
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
-- Joseph Addison -
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.
-- Joseph Joubert -
It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
-- Kent Nerburn -
Being a father helps me be more responsible... you see more things than you've ever seen.
-- Kid Rock -
It is unreasonable [for a father] to expect moral success with [his] children without submitting to the laws of morality.
-- Larry Christenson -
Father taught us that opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand. I think we all act on that principle; on the basic human impulse that makes a man want to make the best of what's in him and what's been given him.
-- Laurance Rockefeller -
To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.
-- Li-Young Lee -
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
-- Lillian Hellman -
My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.
-- Louis Adamic -
Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.
-- Louisa May Alcott -
My father would lift me high. And dance with my mother and me and then. Spin me around til I fell asleep. Then up the stairs he would carry me and I knew for sure I was loved.
-- Luther Vandross -
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.
-- Lydia M. Child -
Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.
-- Margaret Mead -
It's only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own career and your own home-it's only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it. Pride reinforces love.
-- Margaret Truman Daniel -
A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.
-- Marlene Dietrich -
I think that my strong determination for justice comes from the very strong, dynamic personality of my father ... I have rarely ever met a person more fearless and courageous than my father ... The thing that I admire most about my dad is his genuine Christian character. He is a man of real integrity, deeply committed to moral and ethical principles. He is conscientious in all of his undertakings ... If I had a problem I could always call Daddy.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
-- Martin Mull -
If your dad is anything like mine, then you have no clue what to buy him for Father's Day. The only Father's Day tradition in my family is the annual conversation he and I have where I say, 'Hey, Dad, what do you want for Father's Day this year?' and he says, 'Nothing.' Then I ask my mom what I should get him and she says, 'He likes sandalwood soap, dangly jewelry and Chanel No. 5 perfume.'
-- Michael Showalter -
Having a kid is like falling in love for the first time when you're 12, but every day.
-- Mike Myers -
Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.
-- Olive Schreiner -
I think my mom put it best. She said, 'Little girls soften their daddy's hearts.'
-- Paul Walker -
My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.
-- Pete Rose -
It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
-- Pope John XXIII -
An angry father is most cruel towards himself.
-- Publilius Syrus -
My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.
-- Quentin Crisp -
On this special Fathers Day, we'd like to wish all of you a very Happy Birthday.
-- Ralph Kiner -
If my father had hugged me even once, I'd be an accountant right now.
-- Ray Romano -
The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat.
-- Robert Frost -
Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.
-- Robert Orben -
A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.
