Erma Bombeck Quotes

I've often said that the most important thing you can give your children is wings. Because, you're not gonna always be able to bring food to the nest. You're... sometimes... they're gonna have to be able to fly by themselves.

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

When you don't have anybody to take care of you, then you could go both ways: You could do whatever you want, or you could take charge and be your own parent.

The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.

It's a mistake not to give people a chance to learn to depend on themselves while they are young.

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

children once settled and confident can mostly be left, it seems, to manage their difficulties without us. Only what we must do, always and unalterably, is hold their hand firmly in general goodwill, then they themselves seem to deal with their own particular troubles far better than we can.

You have to make your own family, your own life.

If one hasn't a horse, one is one's own horse.

A parent does not do everything for their kid. A parent that does everything for their kid produces a kid with no self-confidence.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian.

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

Freedom comes from strength and self-reliance.

The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.

Let your children go if you want to keep them.

Every people should be originators of their own destiny.

My father felt that children should make their own way.

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'

Sure, I could have lots of people who do the cooking, the driving, all that jazz - but I would be unhappy. I wouldn't want my children raised that way.

I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.

Free men are the strongest men.

Tell the people not to depend on me anymore.

Unless men are taught to rely upon themselves they can never be truly worthy of the name of freemen.

Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, "Go to sleep by yourselves." And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.