Father Quotes

"And I think that's why I was going to be a musician. I was very rebellious. And I didn't want to be an actor. My father used to say to me you should be an actor if you want to be in the arts"

Katey Sagal, Athlete

"We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us"

Wynton Marsalis, Musician

"I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters - I'm from an all female family. My father often quips that even the cat was neutered!"

Shirley Manson, Musician

"But very often in politics we have the experience called up from my father when someone was trying to help him in the campaign: I can take care of my enemies, may the Good Lord save me from my friends"

Robert Foster Bennett, Politician

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father"

Roger von Oech

"I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions"

Pete du Pont, Politician

"There will always be a father"

Gary Gilmore, Criminal

"My father was a waiter basically, and when I got my first professional job as an actor, I left a job that he found me for half the amount of money. So anyone would think that they're stupid, that that would be a stupid move"

Alfred Molina, Actor

"My father had a varied ear, from Hank Williams to Ravel"

Madeleine Peyroux, Musician

"My father was killed by a German mine, while I lost other relatives in Allied bombing attacks"

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Politician

"Later, at Stanford University, I thought I'd become a lawyer or businessman, but my father came to me and said he thought there was a big future in the fine-wine business"

Robert Mondavi, Businessman

"I have known Harold Ford Jr. since before he was born, in that his father was my driver in the 1966 governor's race, and has remained a friend of mine all these years"

John Jay Hooker, Businessman

"Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn't talking. He wanted me to go to theology school - I didn't want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him I was a minister through music"

Wyclef Jean, Musician

"That room was not available, and the only other room had been booked for a Jewish bar mitzvah. I called the father and told him I needed the room and I would pay him to move the bar mitzvah to an adjoining room which was smaller"

Lew Wasserman, Producer

"My father was an agnostic"

Jerry Falwell, Clergyman

"The Pirate is surrealism and so, in a curious way, is Father of the Bride"

Vincente Minnelli, Director

"We did an episode on Good Times which came out of a newspaper article about the incidence of hypertension in black males being higher than whites, and increasing. So we did a show in which James, the father on Good Times, had hypertension"

Norman Lear, Producer

"The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children"

Nancy Friday, Author

"To me, having kids is the ultimate job in life. I want to be most successful at being a good father"

Nick Lachey, Musician

"But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there"

Robert Klein, Comedian

"My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner"

Poppy Z. Brite, Author

"I was married at 16, a father at 17 and divorced at 18"

Placido Domingo, Musician

"I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character"

Vin Diesel, Actor

"For 50 years my father worked for the railroad"

Harold Evans, Journalist

"My mother and father, Joe and Theresa Montana brought me along and taught me to never quit, and to strive to be the best"

Joe Montana, Athlete

"I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject"

Sam Waterston, Actor

"My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish"

Stephen Greenblatt, Critic

"Beware the cute, hot guy who kind of reminds you of the parent you don't get along with: your cold, distant father who left when you were a kid or your hot-tempered mother whom you could never please"

Merrill Markoe, Author

"My father was a promoter of Fresh Fest, and they needed an opening act. He got me a slot as a dancer. We tried it out the first time in Atlanta and the crowd went crazy. I was the opening clown"

Jermaine Dupri, Musician

"I got a mother who's very strong after taking the whippings that she took from my father"

Missy Elliot, Musician

"My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life"

Michel Legrand, Composer

"My father was in the civil service. I can remember standing in a bus shelter in the pouring rain, and that we were allowed candy floss at the end of the holiday if we had behaved"

Honor Blackman, Actress

"I always wanted to be a father. I have a beautiful relationship with my dad and beautiful memories. I always knew I was going to have a family"

Ricky Martin, Musician

"I've said it before, but it's absolutely true: My mother gave me my drive, but my father gave me my dreams. Thanks to him, I could see a future"

Liza Minelli, Entertainer

"My mother was an artist and highly strung, whereas my father was much calmer"

Liza Minelli, Entertainer

"Tony knew me both as an athlete and as a person. He cared for me like a father"

Dennis Eckersley, Athlete

"I know the pressures of being the daughter of a great actress. But it's inspiring. You learn so much that other people don't get to learn until later on. My father being a director, I learnt a real work ethic"

Natasha Richardson, Actress

"When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer"

William Barclay, Theologian

"My father in the film - which we probably haven't seen in previous movies, and in British Asian movies you could probably count on one hand - he says exactly why, actually why he's frightened for his daughter. He came to this country, England, and had a bit of a crappy time"

Parminder Nagra, Actress

"My father was a lawyer and to my best knowledge nobody in my family before had interest in science"

George Andrew Olah, Scientist

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