Arne Duncan Quotes

The interesting thing about an absent father is, for a child, you don't know he's absent. You just think he's... tardy.

My childhood was defined by my father's absence. His presence looms so large. Up until the age of 18, he was a superstar for me.

In the modern world, it may be that a living father can only be half a father to a boy - the dead father is the other vital half: the half that grows the boy up once and for all.

There's a lot of single black women who did the best that they could and that's a beautiful thing, but they don't know how necessary a father is in a kid's life and how much guys miss that deep down inside.

I'm just as insufferable and useless as every other dad is. The dynamic never changes, no matter what you do for a living.

I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless. But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.

If I could change anything, I would definitely have had a father around. My father. I would definitely say it affected me deeply as a young man, coming up. Who doesn't want a father? Those are the beginnings, and those are what can dictate the roads you choose in life, and choosing them well.

You think of what might have been different if dad had been around, or how I might have turned out as a person. You just don't know. I might not even be playing cricket.

I have no worthwhile memories of my father, therefore no idea of what a father's role should be.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

In every movie and every TV show, the dads are morons. And dads tend to react by doing what dads do best: They check out. They say, 'Ask your mother.'

People say you don't need a father to be successful. I take offense to that.

I never had a father figure so I never missed it.

My father was out of my life when I was pretty young - when I was 7 years old, he was gone. I didn't see him for the rest of my childhood.

All my books explore fatherhood. I look at what it means to have a big father figure at the centre: sometimes they're a good father, sometimes bad.

Interactions between fathers and children are the starting point of education.

James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.

I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.

Of course there's some things that I would have liked to have... none of my friends growing up had their father in the house. None of 'em. We had uncles and stuff like that, but nobody had a father in the house, none of my friends.

One way of reading my life is that I have been in constant search for a father.

Almost 24 million children - one in three - are likely growing up without their father involved in their lives.

Unfortunately, I never knew my father and when I did, it was very briefly.

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, … family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.

All Pro Dad is an organization that started down in Tampa in 1997. And it was just a group of us who felt like we weren't doing as good a job as our fathers did in connecting with kids and being there and being involved in their lives, working and coaching and spending all the time we had to. We just felt badly.

I didn't have a father figure in the house.