“Bias has to be taught. If you hear your parents downgrading women or people of different backgrounds, why, you are going to do that.”

I really loved living in the White House, but I don’t miss it at all.

I’m a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.

I think the country has had enough Bushes.

I want to still be able to garden while I can bend over.

But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The home is the child’s first school, the parent is the child’s first teacher, and reading is the child’s first subject.

There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run.

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.

I really feel very strongly that the person who runs for office is the courageous one, and the one who everybody has to know.

Raising five boys is a handful, trust me.

Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They’re working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life’s blood . . . but everyone has something to give.

Believe in something larger than yourself … to get involved in some of the big ideas of our time.

The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions. You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you’re not going to change each other’s minds. It’s a waste of your time and my time.

Raising George Walker was not easy.

I don’t miss anything by being a bachelor. I don’t know any happily married couples, not even my parents.

My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.

We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.

My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don’t have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it’s possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

Rashness is the faithful, but unhappy parent of misfortune.

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.