Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

My children are now adults and just kind of guide them while they allow you to have input in their lives without controlling them the way you did when they were toddlers. These are good steps to use for fathers at each step of their children's lives.

Children don’t need beating. They need love and encouragement. They need fathers to whom they can look with respect rather than fear. Above all, they need example.

Don't be a pal to your son. Be his father. What child needs a 40-year-old for a friend?

Once upon a time you were a fish. How do you know? Because I was also a fish. You, too? Sure. A long time ago. Anyway, being a fish, you knew how to swim. You were a great swimmer. A champion swimmer, you were. You loved the water. Why? What do you mean, why? Why did I love the water? Because it was your life! And as we talked, I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you.

The best gift from a father to his child is Education and Upbringing.

The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.

The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?"

This is not to say that becoming a father automatically makes you a good father. Fatherhood, like marriage, is a constant struggle against your limitations and self-interests. But the urge to be a perfect father is there, because your child is a perfect gift.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.

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).

On a positive note, we must reaffirm the right of children to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.

. . . if we have children. When they are just born we do everything for them. We are omnipotent, they are completely dependent on us, but then when they grow up you must take back your influence on them, to give them freedom.

I always feel a responsibility to the kids, to be somebody they could look up to.

Fathers should speak with their children.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

Be the best father you can be to your children. Because nothing is more important.

When we look at our children, I think a lot of the troubles we're having as a society is because we don't have strong fathers in these families that can tell their kids that they can do more.

Fathers have a unique and irreplaceable role in the lives of children.

As the fathers live, so the children play.

Fathers are so necessary as examples and guides for our children in wisdom and virtue. Without father figures, young people often feel orphaned; left adrift at a critical moment in their growth and development.

My favorite leader is George Washington. Because he came from very modest circumstances. He wasn't the son of a plantation owner. He was the son of a farmer. He had no formal education, very frustrated. He started writing a diary when he was in his teens, and he wrote things like, "When I grow up, I want to be respected. When I grow up, I want to be successful. When I grow up, I want to know things." What I find fascinating about Washington is he wanted to make something of himself.

When you get before great people you don't talk a lot, you ask questions

The best way to raise positive children in a negative world is to have positive parents who love them unconditionally and serve as excellent role models.

Good parents have children who do terrible things and vice-versa.

If fathers aren't growing up, I would challenge them to want to be a father that is present in the home, so that their kids have that identity.