Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
—P.J. O'Rourke
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
—Ogden Nash
Many of us have no long-range vision in much of our struggle. We think only of the moment, this time, this place, this circumstance. But think of the ten generations of children that inherit love, and their children, and theirs.… Anyone can count the seeds of an apple. Who can count the apples in a seed?
—Stephen Covey
The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.
—Polly Berrien Berends
All good qualities in a child are the result of environment, while all the bad ones are the result of poor heredity on the side of the other parent.
—Elinor Goulding Smith
Being asked to decide between your passion for work and your passion for children was like being asked by your doctor whether you preferred him to remove your brain or your heart.
—Mary Kay Blakely
Why not have your first baby at sixty, when your husband is already dead and your career is over? Then you can really devote yourself to it.
—Fran Lebowitz
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.
—Peter De Vries
Kids are like buckets of disease that live in your house.
—Louis C.K.
Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own.
—Doug Larson
Without your wounds where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.
—Thornton Wilder
To embrace the child may threaten the adult who values information above wonder, entertainment above play, and intelligence above ignorance. If we were really to care for the child, we would have to face our own lower natures—our indomitable emotions, our insane desires, and the vast range of our incapacity.
—Thomas Moore
A child does not thrive on what he is prevented from doing, but on what he actually does.
—Marcelene Cox
Too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.
—Walt Disney
You wake up one day and say, "You know what, I don't think I ever need to sleep or have sex again." Congratulations, you're ready to have children.
—Ray Romano