These parent quotes are all positive inspirational words of wisdom and love on the joys of being a parent, along with some advise for parents. There is also a page of Parent Sayings from unknown sources.

Parent quotes are listed alphabetically on authors surname

A Parent Quotes

Babies come forth to remind adults what they have forgotten.
Abraham-Hicks

Parents often think that they are here to guide the little ones. When, in reality, the little ones come forth with clarity to guide you.
Abraham-Hicks

The best a parent can be.. A demonstrator: a consistent, constant demonstrator of being in your own Vortex.
Abraham-Hicks

What your children will benefit most from you is if they can begin to see the same freedom seeking being in you that they feel in themselves.
Abraham-Hicks

When you are loving your children and expecting good things for them, you are tapped into the Energy of your Source and you’re flooding that all over them.
Abraham-Hicks

When I became a parent, I felt like I was truly living.
I had a purpose, where before I didn’t.
Adele 1988

Raising children should mean helping them to become what they already are in God’s eyes.
Eberhard Arnold 1883 – 1935

B Parent Quotes

Children are not our property and they are not ours to control, any more than we were our parents property or theirs to control.
Richard Bach 1936

Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you or they may do it.
Russell Baker

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

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton 1886 – 1967

There is no friendship, no love, like that of a parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher 1813 – 1887

We never know the love of our parents for us, till we have become parents.
Henry Ward Beecher 1813 – 1887

The gain is not having the children, it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.
Polly Berrien Berends

We can see that the baby is as much an instrument of nourishment to us as we are for him.
Polly Berrien Berends

Honour thy father and thy mother.
Bible

Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.
W. E. B. Du Bois 1868 – 1963

Children make your life important.
Erma Bombeck 1927 – 1996

Anything we tell our kids about life is a placemarker until they figure it out for themselves.
Robert Brault

Do not ask that you kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.
Robert Brault

If you haven’t time to respond to a tug at your pant leg, your schedule is too crowded.
Robert Brault

In the happiest of our childhood memories, our parents were happy too.
Robert Brault

The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher.
Robert Brault

Why explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.
Robert Brault

You need to be the person you want you child to become. That takes awareness and focus.
Betsy Brown Braun

Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.
Thomas Bray 1658 – 1730

Parenting as the practice of freedom allows us to rewrite our story and create the space for the children in our lives to write their own story.
Teresa Graham Brett

Always kiss your children goodnight… even if they’re asleep.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. 1940

Children are made readers in the laps of their parents.
Emilie Buchward 1935

As long as they are still alive, it’s never too late to reach out and get to know your parents as people.
Lorna Byrne 1953

The bonding with a new baby can help people to release love unconsciously.
Lorna Byrne 1953

The helplessness, vulnerability and perfection of a new baby frequently helps parents and grandparents to learn to love themselves and others.
Lorna Byrne 1953

The sadness and pain surrounding the death of a parent, brother or sister can bring with it an unexpected gift, and help families to become closer. It can help bring shared memories to light, and be a reminder of love that was shared in the past.
Lorna Byrne 1953

You chose your parents before you were conceived. You chose them knowing their strengths and their weaknesses. As a baby you loved them unconditionally.
Lorna Byrne 1953

C Parent Quotes

Don’t just teach your children to read.
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.
George Carlin 1937 – 2008

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.
Thomas Carlyle 1795 – 1881

Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washer-woman, cook, teacher, angel and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar and friend. No servants to come between them. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
Andrew Carnegie 1835 – 1919

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children.. One of those is roots, the other, wings.
Hodding Carter 1907 – 1972

An aware parent loves all children he or she meets and interact with – for you are a caretaker for those moments in time.
Doc Childre

A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their powers to bestow.
Mary Cholmondeley 1859 – 1925

What I wanted most for my daughter was that she be able to soar confidently in her own sky, whatever that may be.
Helen Claes

When your child is talking, turn the world off.
Crystal DeLarm Clymer

There are three ways to get something done… Do it yourself. Employ someone to do it for you. Or, forbid your children from doing it.
Monta Crane

D Parent Quotes

Our society claims to have the answers to our parenting problems ensconced in the prevalent disciplines and ideologies of psychology, sociology, religion, and medicine. All of these fall short to the extent they overlook the presence of the Spirit of God uniquely expressed in each of us.
We must start walking out a knowing that we are candles lit from the Spirit for the purpose of illuminating a path.. Walking before our children. And, yes, they will, eventually, follow.
Esther Davis-Thompson

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.
Wayne Dyer 1940 – 2015

E Parent Quotes

Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children, that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.
Marion Wright Edelman 1939

Children will not remember you for the material things you provided, but for the feeling that you cherished them.
Richard Evans 1906 – 1971

F Parent Quotes

Holding these babies in my arms makes me realize the miracle my husband and I began.
Betty Ford 1918 – 2011

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.
Anne Frank 1929 – 1945

Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
Robert Fulghum 1937

The character and history of each child, may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.
Margaret Fuller 1810 – 1850

G Parent Quotes

Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948

There is no school equal to a decent home, and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
Haim Ginott 1922 – 1973

When you become a parent, you begin to become sympathetic to your own parents. We begin to understand how much we owe to them, how much we’re shaped by their vision of the world.
Philip Glass 1937

The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.
Ellen Goodman 1941

How many hopes and fears, how many ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together, in the threads that connect the parent with the child?
Samuel Goodrich 1793 – 1860

The Joys Of Parenthood
The greatest gift in life, you’ve received today
the birth of your precious little one, safely here to stay
entrusted to your gentle, loving care
God knows that you are a wonderfully, devoted pair

Your lives will never again be the same
now that you are parents, you have a new aim
to love and protect her, to nurture and to care
the joys of parenthood are beyond compare

The happiness, joy and love you now feel
will stay with you forever, this love is so real
there is nothing in life that can compare to this
the birth of your cherished baby, brings you pure bliss
Trina Graves 1961

H Parent Quotes

You choose your parents, not primarily for what they are or were, but for the challenges YOU need to help you forward in your evolution.
HA-Tony Neate

My parents were teachers and they went out of their way to see to it that I had books. We grew up in a home that was full of books. And so I learned to read, I loved to read.
Alex Haley 1921 – 1992

As mamas, papas, grandparents, teachers and caregivers we have a responsibility to protect these little Earth warriors. It’s our job to protect and nurture their love, their innocence, their spirits, their imagination, their gifts, their health, and wellbeing, their spirituality, their confidence, their character, their freedom of thought, their instincts, their wildness, and their magic! There is nothing we can do in this lifetime that will compare to the importance of this work. These little ones are our future. Guard them well!
Brooke Hampton

Speak to them [children] as if you were on stage in front of thousands of people. Respond to them with the respect they deserve. They are our future. Guard your tongue. Be brave enough to try harder. Let’s create a childhood that our children won’t have to recover from.
Brooke Hampton

Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on Earth, for what they believe is what they will become.
Brooke Hampton

Parents need to be more accepting of who their kids are and less concerned about what society thinks they need to be.
Neil Patrick Harris 1973

The best thing you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
Sydney J. Harris 1903 – 1986

The best thing to spend on your children is time.
Louise Hart

No creature under Heaven is more imitative than a little child, and its conduct in after years will depend largely upon the example set by its parents during its early life. It is no use to tell the child “not to mind.” It has no mind wherewith to discriminate, but follows its natural tendency, as water flows down a hill, when it imitates. Therefore it behoves every parent to remember from morning till night that watchful eyes are upon him all the time, waiting but for him to act in order to follow his example.
Max Heindel 1865 – 1919

The attitude that you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from, more than what you tell them. They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.
Jim Henson 1936 – 1990

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Theodore Hesburgh 1917

I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride to make it easier, let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.
Whitney Houston 1963 – 2012/George Benson
written by Michael Masser & Linda Creed

Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915

Your children teach you so much. It’s a real mirror of yourself.
Kate Hudson 1979

J Parent Quotes

Your children need your presence more than your presents.
Jesse Jackson 1941

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.
Storm Jameson 1891 – 1986

All the dangers in our world are like a blessed wake up call. They tell us to live life NOW – not tomorrow, not when the children grow up, not when we retire.. But NOW.
Susan Jeffers 1938 – 2012

Dear God,
I trust that no matter what happens in my life, it is for my highest good. And no matter what happens in the lives of those I love, it is for their highest good. From all things that are put before us, we shall become stronger and more loving people. I am grateful for all the beauty and opportunity you put into my life. And in all that I do, I shall seek to be a channel for your love.
Susan Jeffers 1938 – 2012

Children are likely to live up to what you believe in them
Lady Bird Johnson 1912 – 2007

Sometimes, when I want to take on the world, I try to remember that it’s just as important to sit down and ask my son how he’s feeling or talk to him about life.
Angelina Jolie 1975

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

Be gentle with the young.
Juvenal 55 – 127

K Parent Quotes

No matter how knowledgeable you are, respect your parents for their experience and your children for their curiosity.
Amit Kalantri 1988

My parents thought it was nice to develop my imagination.
Nicole Kidman 1967

It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.
L. R. Knost

Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting.
L. R. Knost

Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.
Charles Everet Koop 1916

My parents encouraged me in everything I ever wanted to do.
Charles Kuralt 1934 – 1997

L Parent Quotes

The act of simply caring for one’s baby forges new neural pathways – undiscovered rooms in the parental brain.
Adrienne LaFrance

Give the ones you love..
Wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.
Dalai Lama 1935

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.
Ann Landers

Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.
Sam Levenson 1911 – 1980

In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1906 – 2001

The most important thing that we need to understand as parents is that everything you say, everything you do for the first seven years of that child’s life is being recorded and becoming their behaviour.
Bruce Lipton 1944

If I had my child to raise over again, I’d finger paint more, and point the finger less. I’d do less correcting, and more connecting. I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes. I would care to know less, and know to care more. I’d take more hikes and fly more kites. I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play. I’d run through more fields, and gaze at more stars. I’d do more hugging, and less tugging. I would be firm less often, and affirm much more. I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later. I’d teach less about the love of power, and more about the power of love. It matters not whether my child is big or small, from this day forth, I’ll cherish it all.
Diana Loomans

M Parent Quotes

Children seldom misquote you. They more often repeat word for word what you shouldn’t have said.
Mae Maloo

How do children learn to correct their mistakes? By watching how you correct yours. How do children learn to overcome failures? By watching how you overcome yours. How do children learn to treat themselves with forgiveness? By watching you forgive yourself.

Therefore, your mistakes and your failures are blessings; opportunities for the best in parenting. And those who point out your mistakes are not your enemies, but the most valuable of friends.
William Martin

You do not have to make your children into wonderful people. You only have to remind them that they are wonderful people. If you do this consistently from the day they are born, they will believe it easily.
William Martin

For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bathwater or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, “I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet.” But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of pay checks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.
Joyce Maynard 1953

It’s not only children who grow, parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun, all I can do is reach for it myself.
Joyce Maynard 1953

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.
Mignon McLaughlin 1913 – 1983

Grandparents are given a second chance to enjoy parenthood with fewer of its tribulations and anxieties.
Margaret Mead 1901 – 1978

Whether your child is three or thirteen, don’t rush in to rescue him until you know he’s done all he can to rescue himself.
Barbara F. Meltz

If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together there is something you must always remember.. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. Even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.
A. A. Milne 1882 – 1956

Adults are the first and foremost teachers of love, peace, truth, tolerance, happiness and spirituality to their children. No school on Earth can ever replace them.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Dear children and youth, please remember always that: you are your parents’ main contribution to evolution and further human ascent; you are their immorality; you are their greatest work of art and joy; you will be their last thought and pride at their moment of death. You must think of the chain of life from which you come and will continue on this miraculous planet in the vast solar system. Your parents are sacred and so are you.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Don’t you think God would smile and feel good, if your spouse, your children, your parents, your teachers, your colleagues, your spiritual guides would smile and feel good, if you said to them these simple words: ‘I am happy. Thank you for giving me happiness.’
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Each mother and father should devote quite some time to the family’s history. An entire new science and art of family and individual history should be developed and taught: ancestry, genealogy, name etymology, oral history, written history, pictorial history, family heirlooms and souvenirs, scrapbooks, photo collections etc.. What deep joys can be derived from family history! It increases the love and role of the family, the fundamental, basic social unit.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

It is the natural and perennial role of parents to teach, to warn, to protect, to guide, to help, to prepare, to ‘raise’ their children. Children, for their part, have their own predispositions, nature, dreams and likings. The result will be blending of the two, of the past, the present and the future. And thus humanity proceeds on its evolutionary path, epitomized and molded in each of the Earth’s hundreds of millions of families. The family is the first and greatest school of love, peace and happiness on Earth. As for all other human groups, there should be no confrontation, no conflict, no breakage of the family, only give and take, understanding, love and cooperation. For these are the ways of ascent of humanity.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

Observe your children closely: they have often fundamental approaches and answers to the mysteries of life which we have lost as adults.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

The example of parents is the greatest teacher. Parents must stand out as models of happiness to their children.
Robert Muller 1923 – 2010

N Parent Quotes

A man or woman with many children has many homes.
Native American – Lakota

I’ve learned the value of absorbing the moment. I remember the first time Ripley (daughter) saw her shadow. My God, it was like shadows had just been invented. It was the most exquisite moment.
Thandie Newton 1972

O Parent Quotes

The way we talk to children, becomes their inner voice.
Peggy O’Mara

P Parent Quotes

Every child needs a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.
Rita Pierson ? – 2013

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 1953 – 2012

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
Plato 429BC – 347BC

We are like lighthouses to our children.. Beacons showing them the way. And when our light goes out, theirs will be at its brightest.. Ready to take over for us.
Linda Poindexter

Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes to drain it dry.
Alvin Price 1908 – 1951

To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.
J. B. Priestley 1894 – 1984

R Parent Quotes

I know how sobering and exhausting parenthood is. But the reality is that our children’s future depends on us as parents. Because we know that the first years truly last forever.
Rob Reiner 1947

When parents say ‘I’m sorry,’ they are saying so much more.
Kate Roberts

S Parent Quotes

Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.
Laura Schlessinger 1947

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
Charles Schultz 1922 – 2000

Among the decisions we make before returning is to choose our parents, whom we will have known in previous lives.
Betty Shine 1929 – 2002

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.
Sitting Bull 1831 – 1890

Empath children are highly influenced by the energy of the household, including the energy of you as a parent. This means that your child will be perceptive of your moods and will feel everything that you feel, regardless of whether you want them to or not.
Mateo Sol

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
Muriel Spark 1918 – 2006

What it’s like to be a parent.. It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.
Nicolas Sparks 1965

The child supplies the power, but the parents have to do the steering.
Benjamin Spock 1903 – 1998

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children, the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies, is best after all.
Benjamin Spock 1903 – 1998

Children learn to smile from their parents.
Shinichi Suzuki 1898 – 1998

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.
Charles R. Swindoll 1934

T Parent Quotes

When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.
Talmud

You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents wave back.
William D. Tammeus

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 blessing of all.
Brian Tracy 1944

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Harry Truman 1884 – 1972

V Parent Quotes

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.
Peter De Vries 1910

W Parent Quotes

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.
Catherine M. Wallace

Don’t hold your parents up to contempt, after all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.
Evelyn Waugh 1903 – 1966

Every parent is a teacher.. But not all parents teach.
Anthony Douglas Williams

Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good role models more than they need critics. It’s one of parents greatest responsibilities and opportunities.
John Wooden 1910 – 2010

Didn’t we, like our grandchildren, begin with a childhood we thought would never end? Now, all of a sudden, I’m older than my parents were when I thought they were old.
Lois Wyse 1926 – 2007

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