You don’t pay back your parents. You can’t. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It’s a sort of entailment. Or if you don’t have children of the body, it’s left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

"Mark, you don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one." "I'm not sure that seems fair." "The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted — but rather, vastly enriched."

Veneration of our parents is seen in this light, not as an obligation difficult to fulfill, but rather as an easy inclination of our affection. We gratefully remember what we owe them: our existence, thanks to the love they expressed to one another, the care with which they watched our growth; and the gentleness and skill with which they guided us toward independence, responsibility, and the ability to make wise choices.

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening — one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism. Yet the assignment of responsibility for children to their parents is largely a matter of expediency rather than principle. We believe, and with good reason, that parents have more interest in their children than anyone else and can be relied on to protect them and to assure their development into responsible adults. However, we do not believe in the right of the parents to do whatever they will with their children — to beat them, murder them, or sell them into slavery. Children are responsible individuals in embryo. They have ultimate rights of their own and are not simply the playthings of their parents.

Are we not all called on to yield our children back to the world, in the end?

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

I truly did feel that I owed it to my parents, my grandparents, to do whatever it was that I wanted, because if I wasn't happy, if I wasn't being true to myself, then I wasn't living fully. They had given up so much so that I could live at the level that so many people are just automatically born into.

In fact, what we are can only be attributed for a small part to our labour and personal individuality, because we owe it almost entirely to our forefathers, both of blood and mind.

Some of us don't want to admit to it, but we are a lot like our parents. The way that we are in our own personal relationships is very similar to how we grew up. And whether that's positive and negative, it's definitely something to be aware of.

The beggarly question of parentage — what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

A child owes respect to a parent, but there is no natural obligation to like a parent - unless the parent makes himself likable as a person.

We understand the importance of having the bondage between the parent and the child.

In a real sense, all of us are “the parents” of all young children - because we help shape the culture and determine its values.