Fathering Quotes:

Don't canonize me too soon. I'm perfectly capable of fathering a child.

- Francis of Assisi

source: "Saints in the Stars" by Mary Mann, logger.believermag.com. August 8, 2014.

topic: Children, Fathering, Capable

Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.

- David Gottesman

topic: Mother, Daughter, Father, Inspirational Father, Like A Mother

If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.

- Bill Cosby

topic: Fathers Day, Dad, Comfort, Great Father, Dad Love

Fathering makes a man, whatever his standing in the eyes of the world, feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Strength, Strong, Children, Fathering

The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent.

- Frank Pittman

source: "Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity". Book by Frank Pittman, www.today.com. 1993.

topic: Children, Father, Parenting, Being A Father, Perfect Parents

Becoming Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider enables a man to fully feel and express his humanity and his masculinity. Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Father, Men, Humanity, Fathering

Fathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.

- Steven Spielberg

topic: Jobs, Kids, Needs, Fathering

Walk a little slower, Dad Cos I am only small. I'm following in your footsteps, And I don't want to fall. Someday when I'm all grown up. You're what I want to be; Then I will have a little child, Who'll want to follow me. And I would want to lead just right, And know that I was true; So, walk a little slower, Dad, For I must follow you. A very very very Happy Birthday Dad

- John Walter Bratton

topic: Children, Dad, Fall, Footsteps, Fathering

Being a father can unreason your worldview, or at least make it very flexible, and that can create all sorts of fun and insights. Its sad that childrens open-eyed wonder and sense of play begin to fade as they approach adolescence. One grand function of fathering is to keep the fading to a minimum.

- Clyde Edgerton

topic: Fun, Father, Play, Being A Father, Fathering

To exclude from positions of trust and command all those below the age of 44 would have kept Jefferson from writing the Declaration of Independence, Washington from commanding the Continental Army, Madison from fathering the Constitution, Hamilton from serving as secretary of the treasury, Clay from being elected speaker of the House and Christopher Columbus from discovering America.

- John F. Kennedy

topic: Writing, Army, America, Declaration Of Independence, Fathering

During the feminist seventies men were caught between a rock and a hard-on; in the fathering eighties they are caught between good hugs and bad hugs.

- Florence King

source: Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.51, Macmillan

topic: Men, Rocks, Feminist, Fathering, Seventies

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

- Quentin Crisp

topic: Mother, Fathers Day, Dad, Great Father, Father Mother

Being a father is sometimes my hardest but always my most rewarding job. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

- Barack Obama

topic: Jobs, Dad, Father, Fathering, Parents Love

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

- Clarence Budington Kelland

topic: Fathers Day, Dad, Loss, Sons Love, Father Died

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

- Theodore Hesburgh

topic: Inspirational, Funny, Life, Happy Family, Marriage Advice

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

- Gertrude Stein

source: Gertrude Stein (2013). “Everybody's Autobiography”, p.146, Vintage

topic: Boyfriend, Depressing, Father, Fathering, Trotsky

I didn't want to teach my kid how to read, so I used to read to him at night and close the book at the most interesting part.  He said, “What happened then, daddy?”  I said, “If you learn to read, you can find out.  I'm too tired to read.  I'll read to you tomorrow.”  So, he had a need to want to learn how to read.  Don't teach children how to read.  Don't teach them mathematics.  Give them a reason to want it.  In school, they're working ass-backwards.

- Jacque Fresco

topic: Children, Book, Tired, Joy Of Learning, Being A Father

If fathers who fear fathering and run away from it could only see how little fathering is enough. Mostly, the father just needs to be there.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Running, Father, Needs, Fathering

There are no absolutes in raising children. In any stressful situation, fathering is always a roll of the dice. The game may be messy, but I have never found one with more joys and rewards.

- Bill Cosby

topic: Children, Games, Joy, Fathering, Stressful Situations

People ask me, what special is in my mentorship which has made Malala so bold and so courageous and so vocal and poised? I tell them, don't ask me what I did. Ask me what I did not do. I did not clip her wings, and that's all.

- Ziauddin Yousafzai

topic: Wings, People, Special, Being A Father, Daughter To Father

A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds.

- Jean Liedloff

topic: Baby, Sound, Serious, Mothering, Fathering

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.

- Robert Frost

topic: Family, Mother, Dad, Happy Family, Deserve You

In a world often marked by selfishness, a large family is a school of solidarity and sharing; and this attitude is to the benefit of society as a whole.... I always thank the Lord in seeing mothers and fathers of large families, together with their children, committed to the life of the Church and of society.

- Pope Francis

topic: Mother, Attitude, Children, Large Family, Being Together

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

- Sigmund Freud

topic: Daughter, Fathers Day, Strong, Joys Of Childhood, Inspirational Father

A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

topic: Fathers Day, Dad, Men, Inspirational Father, Daughter To Father

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

- Mark Twain

topic: Love, Funny, Motivational, Live And Learn, Inspirational Family Love

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

- Anne Sexton

source: "A Small Journal" by Anne Sexton, 1974.

topic: Death, Daughter, Fathers Day, Loss Of A Parent, Father Died

This fathering is a man's second chance at living.

- Angelo Patri

topic: Men, Second Chance, Chance, Fathering

Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.

- Lydia M. Child

topic: Family, Fathers Day, Dad, Inspirational Father, Great Father

Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence

- William P. Young

topic: Father, Broken, Parent, Fathering

A working definition of fathering might be this: fathering is the act of guiding a child to behave in ways that lead to the childs becoming a secure child in full, thus increasing his or her chances of being happy and fruitful as a young adult.

- Clyde Edgerton

topic: Children, Adults, Definitions, Fathering

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

- George Herbert

topic: Relationship, Daughter, Fathers Day, Inspirational Father, Great Father

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

- Pope John XXIII

topic: Fathers Day, Children, Dad, Inspirational Father, Being A Father

In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has hadless authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Father, Home, Men, Fathering

Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?

- H. P. Blavatsky

source: H.P. Blavatsky (2014). “Isis Unveiled”, p.780, Lulu Press, Inc

topic: Fashion, Religious, Views, Fathering, Religious Sects

Experience of the phenomenal capacity of our birthing body can give us an enduring sense of our own power as women. Birth is the beginning of life; the beginning of mothering, and of fathering. We all deserve a good beginning.

- Sarah J. Buckley

topic: Giving, Body, Birth, Beginning Of Life, Fathering

It was my father who taught me to value myself. He told me that I was uncommonly beautiful and that I was the most precious thing in his life.

- Dawn French

topic: Beautiful, Daughter, Dad, Great Father, Dad Love

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

- William Shakespeare

topic: Family, Wise, Meaningful, Inspirational Father, Merchant Of Venice

When these parenting years have passed, something precious will have flickered and gone out of my life. Thus, I am resolved to enjoy every day that remains in this fathering era.

- James Dobson

topic: Father, Years, Gone, Fathering

With a title like this-There's a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick-is there really a whole lot left to say? With cunning and quintessential stealth, with artful restraint, with whats fathering and foxy and filled with intelligence and wit, Michael Teig goes about making what seems to be invisible and unspeakable, the most palpable and important matter in the world.

- Dara Wier

topic: Important, Matter, Sticks, Quintessential, Fathering

The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.

- Frank Pittman

topic: Children, Parent, Ends, Being A Parent, Parent Child

We are on the cusp of the emergence of a company of hidden men and women who with all faith and patience have been enduring great struggles and dealings, being processed by the Lord and filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. These are not those who seek a reputation for themselves, their passion is His glory and giving Him the church He has longed for. May God grant us all the heart of apostolic fathering and mothering that can release His power in the earth. Zion is once again in travail to bring forth her children.

- Mark Chironna

topic: Children, Struggle, Passion, Faith And Patience, Fathering

To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.

- Ernest Hemingway

topic: Funny, Fathers Day, Kids, Great Father, Dad Love

My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.

- Spike Milligan

topic: Funny, Fathers Day, Dad, Funny Dad, Being A Dad

Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.

- Joseph Joubert

topic: Fathers Day, Dad, Inspire, Dad Love, Love My Dad

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

- Bill Cosby

topic: Funny, Fathers Day, Dad, Father Died, Inspirational Father