Esther Rolle Quotes

Black and awkward is the worst, because black people are stereotyped as being anything but awkward in mainstream media... Black people are always portrayed to be cool or overly dramatic, anything but awkward.

When 'The Cosby Show' came out, and everyone was up in arms about 'The Cosby Show' and that it was reflecting a world that didn't exist - but I knew black doctors. And I knew black lawyers. And I knew families that, you know, had a mother and a father and kids that were well-behaved.

We went through a period of time when if you were of Asian descent, you would play a terrorist or you would play, you know, like, the 7-Eleven guy or you would play that. And then really watch television now.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.

We've all grown up with 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Eight Is Enough.' White families have always represented the universal family.

When I was growing up, I only saw really brown people on 'The Cosby Show,' and they were rich, and their parents were doctors. It wasn't like my home.

It's immoral to parent irresponsibly... And it doesn't help matters any when prime time tv, like "Murphy Brown", a character who is supposed to represent a successful career woman of today, mocks the importance of the father by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice." Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program there is... Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national newspapers routinely jeer at [such values] I think most of us in this room know that some things are good, and other things are wrong.

When I confess a couple who have kids, a married couple, I ask, 'how many children do you have?' Some get worried and think the priest will ask why I don't have more. I would make a second question, 'Do you play with your children?' The majority say, 'but father, I have no time. I work all day.'

You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war.

You're children. Don't you want a home, a family?" "With, like, vitamin-fortified cereal and educational television?

There are more whipped guys on television than there were on the Amistad.

Of all my father's teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.

You can say I'm a hater. But I would argue I'm a lover. I'm a lover of traditional families and of the right of children to have a mother and father... I would argue that the future of America hangs in the balance, because the future of the family hangs in the balance. Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?

I was, in reality, bred by my parents as my father's concubine... What we take for granted as the stability of family life may well depend on the sexual slavery of our children. What's more, this is a cynical arrangement our institutions have colluded to conceal.

The Lord has directed, Bring up your children in light and truth. To me, there is no more important human effort. Being a father or a mother is not only a great challenge; it is a divine calling. It is an effort requiring consecration. President David O. McKay (1873-1970) stated that being parents is the greatest trust that has been given to human beings.

I quite often feel that my greatest task as a father is to raise children who love what is good, true, and beautiful, and who are therefore aliens in this popular culture.

More broadly across time and cultures, it seems, one perennial piece of advice to father has been the importance of acting tenderly toward their children. The New Father, it turns out, is an old story.

I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that my children should be bred up in it too.

Another son came along 18 months later, although we waited four years to have the third, because Mitt was still in school and we had no income except the stock we were chipping away at. We were living on the edge, not entertaining. No, I did not work. Mitt thought it was important for me to stay home with the children, and I was delighted.

Our merciful Father has no pleasure in the sufferings of His children; He chastens them in love; He never inflicts a stroke He could safely spare; He inflicts it to purify as well as to punish, to caution as well as to cure, to improve as well as to chastise.

I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.

Children are very quick observers; very quick in seeing through some kinds of hypocrisy, very quick in finding out what you really think and feel, very quick in adopting all your ways and opinions. You will often discover that, as the father is, so is the son.

Mama seemed to do only what my father wanted, and yet we lived the way my mother wanted us to live.

Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs.