Parenting & Family Quote by Bradley Whitford

"I grew up in a family where the internalized understanding was that the kids were going to grow up into a better world. I worry, because I don't think my kids are going to have that. The world is very scary. The world would be scary without the choices the current administration made, but they just exacerbated it. And it ticks me off. I want my kids to have a good life"

Bradley Whitford, Actor

About this Quote

Whitford’s anger lands because it’s pointedly unglamorous. No soaring platitudes, no performative “as a parent” theatrics - just the blunt admission that the most basic American inheritance, forward motion, feels broken. He frames his childhood as an “internalized understanding,” a phrase that does real work: optimism wasn’t a pep talk, it was family infrastructure, as assumed as dinner on the table. By contrast, his worry isn’t abstract dread; it’s the fear that the default setting has flipped from progress to damage control.

The quote also stages a generational pivot. He isn’t claiming the past was safe; he’s saying it carried a promise that things would trend better. That’s the postwar middle-class script many Gen Xers absorbed, even if it was unevenly distributed. When he says the world would be scary anyway, he concedes complexity - climate, economic instability, polarization - then tightens the screw by insisting leadership still matters. “Exacerbated” signals policy as accelerant, not just backdrop, and “current administration” keeps it political without turning it into a stump speech.

What makes it persuasive is the emotional economy. “It ticks me off” is almost comically plain, the kind of phrasing people use when they’re trying not to curse in front of their kids. It reads as restraint, which makes the outrage feel more credible. The closer, “I want my kids to have a good life,” is deliberately small-bore - not utopia, not greatness, just livability. That modesty is the indictment: we’re arguing over whether normal should still be possible.

Quote Details

Topic	Parenting
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by Bradley Add to List

About the Author

Bradley Whitford (born October 10, 1959) is a Actor from USA.

25 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what's happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don't seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids"

Steve Jobs, Businessman

Steve Jobs

"I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there's no way that we're going to have a peaceful world for our children"

James Wolfensohn, Businessman

"Each one of us has to take responsibility for reality, and present it so that kids will grow up familiar with that and say, OK. I've seen that before. I'm not afraid of it"

Thuy Trang, Actress

Thuy Trang

"Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say"

Wayne Dyer, Psychologist

Wayne Dyer

"I feel that its our children who do give us hope because they are the ones who are going to save the world"

Blythe Danner, Actress

"I get bitter, angry and disbelieving and I tell my kids there a lot of idiots out there. I also want them to know that being successful is not the real world - that their parents get treated better because they're on TV"

Al Roker, Entertainer

"It's the continuation of everyone's childhood to see these young children who grow up full of life, full of intelligence, full of a sense of wonder. And within an instant they're gone from this world. It's terrible"

Lucien Bouchard, Lawyer

"I feel bad for the kids that are in school right now and the young people all across America who don't realize that the grownups who are supposed to be running this country are the verge of leaving them as the first generation of Americans worse off than the generation before"

Marco Rubio, Politician

Marco Rubio

"Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?"

Colin Powell, Statesman

Colin Powell

"I think through education, belief in God, and good engineering, our children become a lot better at what they're doing than we did, and that starts with the very first sign of life on the face of this earth"

Evel Knievel, Entertainer

"Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made"

Bill Cosby, Comedian

Bill Cosby

"It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children"

Kingsley Amis, Novelist

"If you're a good parent, see the changes that are happening in your kids"

Keith Emerson, Musician

"I was one of those kids who always thought that we should know how the world works around us"

Saul Perlmutter, Scientist

Saul Perlmutter

"If you tell children they are bad, that's what they believe they are and that's probably what they will become"

Louise Hart, Writer

"There are certain realities we must speak of with our children that were not present when I was a child"

Gloria Estefan, Musician

Gloria Estefan

"When I was born in 1942, World War II was still going. And I began to realize when I became a young adult that if we don't teach our kids a better way of relating to their fellow human beings, the very future of humanity on the planet is in jeopardy"

Graham Nash, Musician

"It's no longer good enough for us to tell kids who are different that it's gonna get better. We have to make it better now"

Rick Mercer, Comedian

"There are millions of kids who, naturally, if we could only remember how it is - you know, you resent authority, you are impatient for change, you want to fix things up"

Thomas Foran, Writer

"Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio"

Melinda Gates, Clergyman