“Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.”

The need to find meaning is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings.

In almost any society I think, the quality of the nonconformists is likely to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists.

Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.

We must have a place where children can have a whole group of adults they can trust.

Contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly pay.

Throughout history, females have picked providers for males. Males pick anything.

Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.

What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work and willingly give time and attention to their children.

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.

I have seven children by six different mothers. Maybe success was too good to me.

My mother was watching on television and she doesn’t want me to hurt anyone.

If true and unconditional love exists in this world, then it has to be the love between a mother and a child.

If you can look in your mother’s eyes and she’s proud of you, then you’re a champion.

The uncharted territory of the western amazon is called the mother of god.

Mothers are truly great who can do anything for you. But no one can do what a mother can for her child. That’s what makes them special.

My mum came from nothing and didn’t have many opportunities in her youth, and she blames a lot of her social inadequacies on that.

My mother was the first singer I had contact with. She sang constantly to us around the house, in church.