Tag: quotes

20 Life-Changing Quotes on Parenting

I didn’t know my capacity to love until I had my children. I didn’t know how fiercely I would fight to protect them. I didn’t know how motivated I would be to leave the world a better place. Parenting has inspired great thinkers, artists and activists past and present. Here are 20 quotes on parenting by some of the greats to give you inspiration and solidarity as you navigate rearing the loves of your lives.

I didn’t know my capacity to love until I had my children.  I didn’t know how fiercely I would fight to protect them. I didn’t know how motivated I would be to leave the world a better place.  Parenting has inspired great thinkers, artists and activists, past and present.  Here are 20 quotes on parenting by some of the greats to give you inspiration and solidarity as you navigate rearing the loves of your lives.

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1. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

2. “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you and though they are with you they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” – Kahlil Gibran

3. “My most important title is still mom-in-chief.  My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.” – Michelle Obama

4. “Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are.” – Cheryl Lacey Donovan

5. “Your children need your presence more than your presents.” – Jesse Jackson

6. “The reality is that most of us communicate the same way that we grew up. That communication style becomes our normal way of dealing with issues, our blueprint for communication. It’s what we know and pass on to our own children. We either become our childhood or we make a conscious choice to change it.” – Kristen Crockett

7. “In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.” – N.K. Jemisin

8. “You don’t have favourites among your children, but you do have allies. ” – Zadie Smith

9. “When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth” – Chinua Achebe

10. “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” – Maya Angelou

11. “Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates

12. “Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.” – Nicola Yoon

13. “The best thing she was, was her children.” – Toni Morrison

14. “Beautiful is the man who leaves a legacy that of shared love and life. It is he who transfers meaning, assigns significance and conveys in his loving touch the fine art and gentle shaping of a life. This man shall be called, Father.” – Stella Payton

15. “Behind every great man is a man greater, his father.” – Habeeb Akande

16. “The kids who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving of ways.” – Unknown

17. “Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” – W.E.B. DuBois

18. “Family doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be flawless. It doesn’t have to be what you had in mind. You can’t control it. But it is a gymnasium for love to work out in.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

19. “I tried to be the greatest boxer in the world and a good parent, too. I had instant feedback on my success as a boxer. Often, parents don’t really know if what they are doing is right or wrong until their child is grown and it is too late to change any of the decisions. Whatever my failings as a parent, I am very proud of all my children. It wasn’t easy for them to make their own way with such a controversial and public father.” – Muhammad Ali

20. “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” – James Baldwin

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About The Author

Faye McCray is anMcCray_AuthorPhoto (1) attorney by day and writer all the time. Her work has been featured on My Brown Baby, AfroPunk, AfroNews, For Harriet, Madame Noire, Black Girl Nerds, Black and Married with Kids, and other popular publications.  Faye also has a number of short stories and a full length novel available for purchase on Amazon.  Most importantly, Faye is a proud wife and mother to three beautiful and talented young boys who she is fiercely passionate about raising. You can find Faye on Twitter @fayewrites and on the web at fayemccray.com.

20 Quotes to Inspire Young Women

Sometimes you need to call on the words of our great ancestors and elders for motivation and inspiration. Here are 20 quotes by amazing women to inspire you and the young girls in your life.

Sometimes you need to call on the words of our great ancestors and elders for motivation and inspiration. Here are 20 quotes by amazing women to inspire you and the young girls in your life.

1.  “I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.” – bell hooks

2.  “In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature’s way of forcing change — breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place.” — Susan L. Taylor

3.  “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” – Audre Lorde

4.  “A lot of people refuse to do things because they don’t want to go naked, don’t want to go without guarantee. But that’s what’s got to happen. You go naked until you die.” – Nikki Giovanni

5. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker

6. “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” – Oprah Winfrey

7. “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” – Wilma Rudolph

8. “Deal with yourself as an individual worthy of respect, and make everyone else deal with you the same way.” – Nikki Giovanni

9. “Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.” – Audre Lorde

10. “Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you…yet, someone survived…You can do anything you choose to do.” – Maya Angelou

11. “The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.” – Lorraine Hansberry

12. “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” – Lena Horne

13. “We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” – Angela Davis

14. “Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou

15. “Don’t feel entitled to anything you didn’t sweat and struggle for.”  – Marian Wright Edelman

16. “There’s always something to suggest that you’ll never be who you wanted to be. Your choice is to take it or keep on moving.” – Phylicia Rashad

17. “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.” – Shirley Chisholm

18. “Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go—purge yourself . . . If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.” – Tina Turner

19. “I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.” – Nikki Giovanni

20. “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. . . . Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” – Zora Neale Hurston

 

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About The Author

Faye McCray is anMcCray_AuthorPhoto (1) attorney by day and writer all the time. Her work has been featured on My Brown Baby, AfroPunk, AfroNews, For Harriet, Madame Noire, Black Girl Nerds, Black and Married with Kids, and other popular publications.  Faye also has a number of short stories and a full length novel available for purchase on Amazon.  Most importantly, Faye is a proud wife and mother to three beautiful and talented young boys who she is fiercely passionate about raising.