Family

The family is both the fundamental unit of societyas well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be. MARIANNE E. NEIFERT, Dr. Mom's Parenting Guide A family in harmony will prosper in everything. CHINESE PROVERB The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. RICHARD BACH, Illusions All happy families resembleeach other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its ownway. LEO TOLSTOY, Anna Karenina Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world. SUSAN LIEBERMAN, New Traditions The strength of a family , like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other. MARIO PUZO, The Family Family ... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children. AUGUST STRINDBERG, The Son of a Servant Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with whichwe are most familiar. As weproceed through our lives,our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support withinthe family -- a haven in a heartless world, so to speak -- the family can also be a place of violenceand abuse. MARILYN POOLE, Family : Changing Families, Changing Times The family uses people, notfor what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for— its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, Cassandra Family values are a little like family vacations -— subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember. LESLIE DREYFOUS, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1992 Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’theal because there’s not enough material. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD,"Notebook O," The Crack-Up A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold. CHINESE PROVERB If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unlesseveryone paddles. LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN, Family and Politics What until now has been considered a "normal" family , made up of a father,a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to asignificant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and social level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family areinsitutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family , our very civilizationis in crisis. ANDREAS J. KOSTENBERGER, God, Marriage, and Family In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopesfor the future you have as individuals and as a unit. MARGE KENNEDY, The Single Parent Family Love makes a family . GIGI KAESER, Love Makes a Family A woman can take care of the family . It takes a man toprovide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that... It does take a father, though. TOM DELAY, interview, Feb. 2004 Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue. MOBY, I Like to Score Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t. BILL CLINTON, speech at Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1992 If your family tree does notfork, you might be a redneck. JEFF FOXWORTHY, stand-up routine No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back. MARGARET MEAD, Kate Rowinski's The Quotable Mom Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone. -RNK