Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was born to Haitian parents, and the idea of giving back is really just a part of our culture. So, I don't think there was ever a moment that I questioned my call to philanthropy, but I can say that the more I've grown, the bigger that call has become.
I think my parents are the first influence on me music-wise. My dad was into Motown and soul, and my mom was into British '80s pop, like The Trashcan Sinatras. I grew up on that. It was great. They were the first people to really bring music into my life.
We need sex education in schools, but we need it at home first. We need parents to learn the names of the teachers who are teaching their children. We need families to question day-care centers, to question other children and their own as to what goes on.
I believe education should be a right for every child, but tragically in many parts of world it is a privilege for certain children whose parents have money. There are 72 million children in the world who don't go to school and many of them are in Africa.
Growing up, my parents made a lot of sacrifices for my brother and I to go to private school and to attend some of the football camps. They got through some hard times, but it was for me, and that's what I've learned from them. I'm very grateful for that.
I grew up one of six children with working-class parents in the Deep South. My mother was a college librarian, and my father worked in a shipyard. I never saw them balance a checkbook, but they kept a roof over our heads and got all six of us into college.
Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.
We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We've got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.
So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from.
I was quietly rebellious. My parents thought I was very good but secretly I did things like saying I was staying in one place and going somewhere else instead. My older sister was openly rebellious and would tell my parents where to go, but I never did that.
Everyone gets surprised because neither one of my parents play golf. Like I said in my speech, my aunt and uncle really love golf, and we visited them, and she gave me two clubs. Like people think when they don't know who my dad is, they think he's my coach.
And there's a lot of that stuff with people bringing their kids, kids bringing their parents, people bringing their grandparents - I mean, it's gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our audience.
I remember where I was when I wrote that story, 'Mermaid in a Jar.' I was at a boyfriend's, and he was the only boy I ever dated who was rich, and his parents had a ski chalet, and I just didn't know how to break up with him, so I decided I would be celibate.
God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.
Patriotism is not an abstract concept. It begins from one's own home. It buds out from the love for one's parents, spouses and children, the love for one's own home, village and workplace, and further develops into the love for one's country and fellow people.
Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.
My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub.
Yes, I grew up with guns. For my 16th birthday, in fact, I received a .357 instead of a car. But there was nothing playful about them; they were tools. My parents went through a back-to-the-land phase. Most of our vegetables and fruits came from our own garden.
If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life.
Growing up, my parents were healthy eaters and starting to run and compete when I was 13, I knew the need to focus on what you need to eat. I remember going to grocery store myself and picking up fresh fruit and knowing early on the right foods to fuel my body.
When I started wearing makeup, my parents..... were like, 'You're absolutely not wearing it out of the house.' At first, I thought they were not happy with me wearing it, but later on, I realized it was out of fear of me getting bullied and ridiculed in school.
When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not the only one to ask for that - not love, but absolute fidelity.
If it's old school friends that my parents know, then I can stay out till late. But if they don't know them, they want me home by 9 P.M. If I have work, then I don't have a deadline. I don't argue with them. That's how I have been raised, and I'm happy with it.
My parents, Arthur and Olwen, were honest, working-class people who raised my brother Arthur, sister June, and me with the values of that era - patriotism, stoicism, honesty, concern for your neighbours, and judging a man by what he did rather than what he had.
The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
When I was a kid, you would tune in to 'The Tonight Show' before you went to sleep. Johnny Carson. A big treat. I know it's a privilege of mine to be able to be in people's homes. So I hope I make everyone proud, including my parents, and do a good job in this.
I told Miss Kay we need to make sure our children don't turn out like I turned out, so they were raised up around biblical instruction. That mixed with discipline - the discipline code, I call it. They just had a lifestyle of seeing their parents do good things.
My parents are left-wing, and I would describe myself as that. But also, you know what? I wouldn't describe myself as that. Because I don't have to. Because I'm not a political party. Most people are a little bit of each, and we change our mind on various issues.
I'd say music runs in my blood. My parents are exceptionally talented singers, so even before I was born, it was a known fact to them that I'd become a singer. Thanks to my genes, I started off at the age of three and since then, music has meant everything to me.
I see my upbringing as a great success story. By disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. And by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many choices in my life as an adult. Because of what they did then, I get to do the work I love now.
I think about my parents all the time, especially on Sunday when I'm at Mass. My mother always said, 'We do not pray to win elections. We pray for people's health, we pray that God's will be done, we pray that we do our best. But we do not pray to win elections.'
I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.
All working parents should have paid family leave. That's one of many reasons I'm working to elect Hillary Clinton. She has a plan to guarantee workers - men and women - up to 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
The way my parents brought me up to see the world is still absolutely key to what I am about. The beliefs I was raised with - to respect animals and to be aware of nature, to understand that we share this planet with other creatures - have had a huge impact on me.
I had a brother six years older than me, so I wasn't just listening to teenybopper stuff. My brother had the cooler music, but my parents had the Burt Bacharach, Tom Jones, the Association, the Fifth Dimension; these groups were un-cool, but I secretly loved them.
It took us a long time to find out that we had been lied to by our parents' generation. The moralities that were followed during our parents' generation were basically arbitrary. This caused a rift between the two generations, which was brought on by the beatniks.
When I was around eleven or twelve, my board got hung up on the top of a bowl, and I got a concussion, and I knocked my teeth out. That was the first time that I got seriously injured, and I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and my parents briefly doubted.
Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case.
You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you're an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party... My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
My true memory has been tainted by old home videos of my sister and I, ages 3 and 5 respectively, singing karaoke to Britney Spears' 'Lucky' in our living room, and tape recordings of my parents trying to elicit songs out of our throats at a similar or younger age.
A person like myself, born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education, to go and earn a commission in the United States Army, to serve for 22 years, to lead men and women in combat.
My parent's house, to be honest, is like a snail's disco. It's a fine house but my parents are very eccentric. Also that house might be built on an Ancient Egyptian burial ground or something, because the plague of insects that hit that house as we were growing up.
I'm lucky that I've never been bullied personally. There are always going to be kids who are mean and say stuff, but the people that matter to you - the people you love, like your parents, your siblings, and your friends - those are the people you should listen to.
Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which God has manifested to us?
Michael and I had great role models. Though his father has passed away, his parents had an amazingly strong marriage, as do mine. Both weathered really tough times. For us it has been normal to stay together through difficulties. We grew up witnessing that firsthand.
As someone who escaped religious persecution in Lebanon and whose parents were kidnapped in Beirut, I fully support the protection of all individuals from institutional discrimination. That said, I am weary of the ethos of victimhood that has parasitized our culture.
My parents raised me to treat people the way you would want to be treated and to be polite. Sometimes, when I get nervous or insecure, I might overcompensate and might not be totally true to what I am feeling inside. But I get nervous and maybe too smiley and polite.
I had a mental breakdown while doing my Ph.D. at Cambridge, soon after I cut off contact with my parents, and I started seeing the university counsellor, one of the best decisions I ever made. There's something very nourishing in setting aside an hour a week to talk.
I've done so many jobs. As an actor, you have to. I didn't have my parents footing the bill when I moved to New York. I moved here with, like, 300 bucks. I was a bike messenger. I was a waiter. I was a bartender. I worked in a consignment shop for high-end designers.
I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents.