Quotes About Upbringing

Politics scared the crap out of me because I didn't grow up in a family where we talked about anything, really, except, 'Pass the peas, and do this.'... We didn't really have political discussions at the dinner table. I didn't learn how to watch or listen to politics.

My parents were very protective of me and my brother, so they never talked to us about the situation in our country.

If you grow up and your mother or father is a doctor you talk about medicine at the dinner table. In our case we talked about politics at the dinner table.

I don't like the idea of talking down to kids. I think I was talked down to, and you rebel against that.

I grew up three and a half hours outside of Chicago, but people would call me a 'hick' or 'country boy.' Maybe it's because I talked with more of a country accent.

Neither of my parents are involved in politics or anything like that, but my dad is political, certainly, and we would have always talked about politics and religion and money, and all those things that you're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table, we did.

I grew up really kind of mixed up. I lived with my white grandparents and mom and got made fun of a lot because I talked like her.

I wasn't from a political family. Nobody talked politics.

I tried to explain in 'The Nine of Us' how we grew up with politics. At meals we talked about what was in the newspaper. We talked politics non-stop! Campaigning for our brothers was a part of our lives.

I'm a small-town kid from Winnsboro, La., who grew up not really being comfortable talking to people.

My sister and brother and I grew up speaking both languages - French to our father and English to our mother. But when we three kids are talking to each other, we use English.

In my mother's household, hit shows like 'The Love Boat' and 'Three's Company' were 'not appropriate for nice lit'tle girls.' So was the prospect of staying up past 8:00 P.M. - and don't even think about talking back.

I grew up sort of a geeky, tall kid, and I think I was always the one trying to make my friends laugh.

People ask me what it's like to be tall, and I don't know what to say because I don't know any different. I grew up in a very tall house, so I wasn't an anomaly there.

I grew up in my father's laboratory and played beneath the chemical benches until I was tall enough to play on them.

It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children. She took a keen interest in Psychology (the Art Babblative, Southey calls it). She was full of theories about their upbringing which she had not time to put into effect; but nevertheless she thought she had a deep understanding of their temperaments and was the center of their passionate devotion.

It's been said that parents should give their children roots and wings. That was a perfect description of my parents. Even in a wheelchair, my father was a dreamer with his head in the clouds and my mother was the roots with both feet planted firmly on terra quaking firma.

The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.

Is she the only one at fault? For though she's spoiled, and dreadfully so, A girl can't spoil herself, you know. Who spoiled her, then? Ah, who indeed? Who pandered to her every need? Who turned her into such a brat? Who are the culprits? Who did that? Alas! You needn't look so far To find out who these sinners are. They are (and this is very sad) Her loving parents, MUM and DAD. And that is why we're glad they fell Into the garbage chute as well.

My wife, Kristen, and I often talk about raising our kids in such a way that they have as little as possible to unlearn later on in life.

It comes from exercising care in the choice of parents.

It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has.