We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.

Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.

Having children is like living in a frat house - nobody sleeps, everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

There really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Your children are not your children, they come through you, but they are life itself, wanting to express itself.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.

Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.

One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.

If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don't make him afraid of the unknown,give him support.

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Everything depends on upbringing.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.

We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves.

To bring up a child in the way he should go - travel that way yourself.

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.

A good book should leave you slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

When my wife gets mad at me, I remind myself that she is much smarter than I am and so I probably deserve it, even if I don't really understand it!

Between 12 and 14, I shot up a ridiculous amount. The muscles were struggling to stretch and grow at the rate my bones were growing. It gave me problems with my back and my hamstrings.

I have relationships. I date. But it takes a lot to say I'm going to be married and have children.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

I'm so positive.

The first step into justice begins with the politicians. You have to demand from yourself what you demand from people.

John Hughes loved improvisers.

A mere ape in our world may be a scholar in its own and the low life of any beast may be a source of deep satisfaction for the beast itself.

Nevertheless, this one fact should be apparent: turning the other cheek is a bribe. It is a valid form of action for only so long as the Christian is impotent politically or militarily.

Climate change is part of the normal order of things and we know it was happening before humans came.

I think happiness is a choice. If you feel yourself being happy and can settle in to the life choices you make, then it's great. It's really, really great. I swear to God, happiness is the best makeup.

Many of the crew members I work with and continue to work with were friends or have become close friends, and so we keep working together. And I like casting friends of mine or people I know in parts I know would be perfect for them. I like to bring things and people that mean something to me in to my work.

For the next three plus years, I really was not in creative shape. That part of my brain was not functioning.

Follow your dreams and use your natural born talents and skills to make this a better world for tomorrow.

Orlando is such a kind person. He's so generous and one of us, 'us' meaning a theater person. What a lot of people don't know about him is that, before 'Lord of the Rings,' he went to theater school like a lot of us. He is just really sweet and hard working.

When people say 'that's risky,' or when the odds are not in my favor, I'm more motivated than ever.

I am a gypsy. I havent' had a home for a long time. Call me a homeless person - I just throw everything in a bag and I'm good to go.

I had beautiful wavy hair and a waxed mustache.

The cognitive skills prized by the American educational establishment and measured by achievement tests are only part of what is required for success in life. Character skills are equally important determinants of wages, education, health and many other significant aspects of flourishing lives.