Richard Nixon Quotes

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.

My parents have worked their asses off their whole entire lives, they still do, and I never felt like anything would be handed to me. I never felt sorry for myself. I felt like, "Wow, this is incredible. I'm able to do this for myself." I think once you have that sense of empowerment at a young age and you allow your children to have that empowerment, it will fuel them for a lifetime.

I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet - that's how I got here.

Grow up and let anyone try to contend with the adult you.

I saw how hard my parents worked, and I didn't want to be a freeloader.

Not having my father around has made me a better person.

You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept.

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

I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life's luggage.

People who sit back and wait for somebody to take care of them are the people that if shown a way, can be useful to our society.

Raising myself and caring for my brothers and sisters allowed me the benefit of a lot of information that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. I had to be frugal, thoughtful, resourceful. I didn't have anyone to tell me, 'You can't.'

Kenya, being a third world country, from a young age your eyes are open to the real world. I'd like to think growing up there taught me to stand on my own two feet, make my own decisions about what I wanted to be.

The way I look at it, I'd rather make my own mistakes than have people make them for me.

I think I'm mostly looking forward to the college life. I'm looking forward to more freedom. Here everything is really structured and scheduled, but in college you've got to be more responsible and you can get things done on your own time. I'm really looking forward to that.

You are the master of your own ship, pal. There are lots of people who fall into troubled waters and don't have the guts or the knowledge or the ability to make it to shore. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

I'll always continue to work. I've never much depended on anyone but myself, as far as that goes.

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

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.

I knew that if-God forbid-anything ever happened in my life, I needed to know how to take care of myself.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

The lesson that people can't give me what they don't have, and if there's anything I took from it, it was: okay, I don't really expect anyone to hand me anything. There's going to be me and the world.

The best you can do is set your kids on the right track; staying on it without falling is up to the kids.

You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed.

You've got to stand up and do your own battles. My daddy taught me that a long time ago, that you fight your own battles. The only way to shut everybody up is to win.