Francis Maude Quotes

Chinese people age overnight.

I have four grown children and two tiny grandchildren.

The erosion of extended family concept and losing out on values are the two things that are primarily responsible for the growing mismatch in the parent-child relationship.

I'm raising my daughter with her grandparents in the picture, and that feels good.

I never think I'm old enough to play someone's dad, even though I have a daughter of my own and a grandson.

The millennials are incredibly good about getting information out in a clear way, but more importantly, they are incredibly good about understanding how to protect one another, how to protect their parents and how to protect their grandparents.

I work in an industry where most people are way below 50.

In our culture, when the parents are having a tough time, the grandparents take care of the kids.

Young people...have more compassion and tenderness toward the elderly than most middle-aged adults. Nothing--not avarice, not pride, not scrupulousness, not impulsiveness--so disillusions a youth about her parents as the seemingly inhumane way they treat her grandparents.

A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future.

The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves. ... Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.

A family is a family not because of gender but because of values, like commitment, trust and love.

The only difference between a winner and a loser is a winner plays until he wins

Damien is Damien. When I don't put him in the squad my mother, who's 84, asks 'why isn't Damien playing?' She kills me about it and that's true

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.

When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.

I've never been a drinker, I've never gotten into drugs ... You know, I think I have such a close family ... I think you know my sisters do enough drinking to kind of fill up the whole family.

I always came away thinking "I'd like to see her more," you know? And then when [Parental Guidance] was ready to be cast, we thought - Bette [Midler]. So we called her.

It's quintessentially American to transform your family.

I believe it's a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families: It's not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.

Winning is all in the attitude!

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.