Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage.
I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her. Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: “It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.
Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn't understand his use of profanity. He didn't use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire.
Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.
As a comedian, I can walk out in front of 5000 people and not worry about a thing. Not a thing, believe me. But to stand up a face a camera and crew of maybe 15 guys and get up tight about it - to me that's weird.
The game of chess. Supposedly men made it up, and it's about war and men and the ravages and the bravery and the genius of commanding and moving pieces and ... No. It's marriage. The Queen moves anywhere she wants.
If I read the small print, and I see that what I love to taste has pantonaponamene or fake smeinlioaimine, then I have to hide in my room when I eat it. I'm still gonna eat it, it's just gonna be 'Don't come in here!'
There are certain times of the day when you need a balance - that is, your protein and your carbs. I'm a Barry Sears man. I believe that anything green is a carb, and I need 2:1. Two of the carbs to one of the protein.
I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, mid-life for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter-miler, whose son now says, "Dad, I just can't run the quarter with you anymore, unless I bring something to read."
Among the guitarists, Wes Montgomery is fantastic. He's always good to let you know what the art form is all about. It's the same still life that everybody is painting, but in comes Wes Montgomery, and it's right there!
The problems with kids having short attention spans is driven by entertainment, reset buttons on games, games having to do with getting somewhere and heads blowing up. Everything is 'cut to the chase, cut to the chase.'
If you listen carefully to what a child is saying to you, you'll see that he has a point to make. So I listen. And I answer them just as seriously as possible. And if I don't know the answer, I'll tell them I don't know.
I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.
I watch an awful lot of television, and I get a little tired of what I see... We have about six television sets in our house, and it's less expensive for me to do a television series than it is for me to throw them all out.
I can't even talk the way these people talk. 'Why you ain't?' 'Where you is?' Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
Education happens to be something that all people, all cultures, need to embrace. Math, science, the words of the world. To be able to speak and be able to have clarity and to be able to think. Those are the greatest of gifts.
we cannot afford to settle for being just average; we must learn as much as we can to be the best that we can. The key word is education - education with maximum effort. Without it, we cannot be in charge of ourselves or anyone else.
I'm one of those who cut off seeing people after a certain time, when the weight is gone and they sound like the dementia is very advanced - I don't want to see that. I don't even go in to look at the body. That's not my last memory.
Now, this is the fun part about getting stoned. They get stoned, then they become paranoid. Now, when they started out, they said, "Let's get high and have fun." So they're high; now they're paranoid. "Am I falling out of this chair?"
When my son was murdered people asked me how I felt about God and what had happened to my son. I said "no, you can't go there. You have to understand that there is a devil and he works 24/7. Whoever murdered our son was with the devil."
On many young actors that don't give their parents proper credit: I'm still waiting for some actor to win, say, an Oscar... and deliver the following acceptance speech: I would like to thank my parents, first of all, for letting me live.
My father established our relationship when I was seven years old. He looked at me and said, “You know, I brought you in this world, and I can take you out. And it don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you.
A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.
When my son was murdered, people asked me how I felt about God and what had happened to my son. I said, 'No, you can't go there. You have to understand that there is a devil, and he works 24/7. Whoever murdered our son was with the devil.'
What kept me out of trouble is going right to the edge and then... thinking that my mother would be embarrassed, and that I didn't want to embarrass her, and that my father would be embarrassed, and I just didn't want to do that to my family.
Some authority on parenting once said, "Hold them very close and then let them go." This is the hardest truth for a father to learn: that his children are continuously growing up and moving away from him (until, of course, they move back in).
My latest blood test said my cholesterol was very high and my doctor recommended some medicine for it. I said "no" to his recommendation and he said "what are you going to do?" I said I ate my way into this and I'm going to eat my way out of it.
I was 23 years old, a freshman at university, and there I was, on the first day, sitting in a remedial English class. I was so ashamed I almost got up and left, but somehow I knew inside that if I ran away from this, I would hate myself forever.
We are all anxious to be accepted. But if you have a strong mother and father who tell you that you don't have to dress a crazy way, or hang out with people who are looking for trouble in order to be loved and accepted, then half the battle is over.
My dad came over to the house... went into his pocket and pulled out a handful of money, and began to pass it out to the children... This was the same man who, when I was his child, I would ask him for 50 cents, this man would tell me his life's story.
In September of 1960, I was blessed - and I'm not saying blessed in the everyday religious way - when Temple University accepted me after scoring 500 on the SAT. I was 23 years old, and they put me in remedial. I was the happiest remedial person on earth.
I don't have a problem believing in God and Jesus. But in Genesis one has to wonder about these sentences that just go on and end without finishing. The thought is unfinished. Where did Adam go? What is he doing? Hello? There has to be some pages missing.
If you have no faith, you've lost your battle. You can't let things just happen. If you know right from wrong, and you know proof that certain things are true and people are telling you information to guide you and it's good solid information, than you should have it.
There should be more on television that uplifts people and shows them how to better prepare themselves for earning a living. There still aren't enough people that say "this should not be." We just let it go. We need to raise a loud voice about our fellow human beings.
When we look at the settling of America we see a Bible in hand and God. Every Thanksgiving has God and the peacefulness of gratitude. It was important when the Twin Towers were hit and the sorrow with them that the first thing Congress did was sing "God Bless America."
While fathers are pleasant figureheads, there is a special bond between children and their mothers. 'Do you help your mother clean up the house?' I asked one girl of seven. 'No,' she sweetly replied, 'I help make the mess.' It's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it.
As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.'
A white person listens to my act and he laughs and he thinks, 'Yeah, that's the way I see it too.' Okay. He's white. I'm Negro. And we both see things the same way. That must mean that we are alike..... So I figure I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy.
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children," and you say "Why?" and they say, "Because a child is so truthful, that's what I love about 'em - they tell the truth." That's a lie, I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge.
When the child is twelve, your wife buys her a splendidly silly article of clothing called a training bra. To train what? I never had a training jock. And believe me, when I played football, I could have used a training jock more than any twelve-year-old needs a training bra.
When I decided that I wanted to go to college, I wanted to be a school teacher for 7th and 8th grade boys because I felt that was an important time for them. I had gone astray at that point in my life and really wanted to help keep them from making the same mistake I had made.
Public education is a good foundation on which to build a better life for each of us. And if we want to prove to these children who never made the mess in the first place that education is worth the trouble, our schools have to inspire them so they can do what they ought to do.
Suddenly, this romantic agony was enriched by a less romantic one: I had to go to the bathroom. Needless to say, I couldn't let her know about this urge, for great lovers never did such things. The answer to "Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" was not "In the men's room, Julie.
...it was the arts, those noble expressions of the human spirit that are communicated through literature, dance, song, film, drama, painting and sculpture, among the many other such creative means, that helped articulate the sufferings of [these] people that were heard around the globe.
The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, I love children because they're so honest. There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent's signature like a child.
The mother may be doing ninety percent of the disciplining, but the father still must have a full-time acceptance of all the children. He never must say, "Get these kids out of here; I'm trying to watch TV." If he ever does start saying this, he is liable to see one of his kids on the six o'clock news.
The beautiful thing about older people is their ability to cut the fat off of conversation. When they talk, they don't go on forever and ever. They say what they have to say, and that's it. That was my grand dad. Some of the things he said stunned me, but his words were logical. I'll never forget them.
I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior.
My grandpa didn't believe in hugging and kissing, or saying I love you. His love had to do with the way he treated you. When he said, We're going here, we're going there, he was telling me about life. That was his love for me. My love for him was listening to what he said, keeping out of trouble, doing right, being fair.