Tao Te Ching
Kahlil Gibran
Family
In both personal and survival of the species terms, family has a deep origin in biology. Rousseau called it “the most ancient of all societies and the only natural one.” Although a pervasive arrangement throughout the world, at least since the time of the earliest historians like Herodotus, it’s clear how diverse and colorful the details of family life display. And far beyond the purpose of procreation alone, family structures form a foundation for economic, social, and political success. In both the East and the West, they model, represent, and develop governmental structures. Marx described how the human family form depends on the economic situation and it’s obvious how much it has changed in the transition from agricultural to industrial society. The status of women in the family mirrors the status of men in the state. When women lack equality in the family, men normally lack equality in the state and this balancing dynamic underlies all of history’s story.
Quotes (81)
“The family is society in embryo; it is the native soil… so that within a small circle a basis of moral practice is created, and this is later widened to include human relationships in general.”
“there is nothing greater and better than this—when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind”
“And may the gods accomplish your desire: a home, a husband, and harmonious converse with him – the best thing in the world being a strong house held in serenity where man and wife agree. Woe to their enemies, joy to their friends!”
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
“Of all things that have life and sense, we women are the most hapless creatures; first must we buy a husband at great price, and then o'er ourselves a tyrant set, which is an evil worse than the first.”
“What else but tears is now my hapless lot, whose country, children, husband, all are lost”
“The difference between men and women is mainly that men beget and women bear children. The pursuits of men are the same as the pursuits of women, the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both so there should be no difference in the kind of education they receive and little difference in the roles of both in the state's administration... a woman's talent is not at all inferior to a man's.”
“Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.”
“It is characteristic of the human alone to have a sense of good and evil, just and unjust. And the association of living beings who have this sense makes the family and then the state.”
“There are three things which are unfilial and the greatest of them is to have no posterity.”
“You must always remember that all men are your brothers, down to the vilest and most debased; they are your family and your friends, your fellow-citizens as well. You must be kind therefore, endlessly kind”
“I have examined the deeds and events of the past and investigated the principles behind their success and failure, their rise and decay. I wished to examine into all that concerns heaven and man, to penetrate the changes of the past and present, completing all as the work of one family.”
“When fighting and quarreling cease in the family, military deployments cease in the states, and punitive expeditions cease throughout the realm"”
“Sons and nephews without fathers and uncles
May be strong, but it is said that they are like a tigress wandjyering an empty plain.”
“When a child is born, families want it to be intelligent. But through intelligence, I have only wrecked my whole life. So I can only hope the baby will prove ignorant and stupid; crown a tranquil life by becoming a Cabinet Minister.” 
“Friends, each one the other must obey [for] love will not be constrained by mastery; both men and women by nature love their liberty and not to be constrained and so both become servant and lord.”
“Those who have wife and children have given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”
“Avoid the faults of your nation… There is not a nation among even the most civilized that has not some fault peculiar to itself…It is a triumph to correct in oneself such failings… There are also family failings as well as faults of position, of office, or of age.”
“Nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen Sensations as to find myself deserted in my old Age by my only Son, and not only deserted, but to find him taking up Arms against me, in a Cause wherein my good Fame, Fortune, and Life were all at stake.”
“Every family became a little society, the more united because liberty and reciprocal attachment were the only bonds of its union... The habit of living together soon gave rise to the finest feelings known to humanity: conjugal love and paternal affection.”
“When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any.”
“The absurd duty—too often inculcated—of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.”
“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”
“Natural affection is a prejudice: for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them as better than others.”
“Wife and children I have not considered among a man's possessions: he is rather in their possession.”
“All human beings have the same interest in good government. Gender is as entirely irrelevant to political rights as differences in height or hair color.”
“selection may be applied to the family as well as to the individual... a well-flavored vegetable is cooked, and the individual is destroyed; but the horticulturist sows seeds of the same stock and confidently expects to get nearly the same variety.”
“I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
“Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending... Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic—the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.”
“There is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of the universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family”
“More unhappiness comes from this source [the family] than from any other—I mean from the attempt to prolong family connections unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.”
“If parents were merely to remember how they felt when they were young, and actually to behave towards their children as they would have had their own parents behave toward themselves... But this, which would appear to be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not one in a hundred thousand is able to put into practice.”
“Our most valuable and instructive materials in the history of man are all treasured up in India… In Hinduism we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family.”
“[The child's] great task is freeing himself from the parents... only after this detachment is accomplished can he cease to be a child and so become a member of the social community.”
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.”
“I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.”
“If men and women do not cling to their families nowadays as much as they did, it is because the state and the community supply now safety and help and facilities that were once only possible in the family group.”
“The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.”
“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues… are created, strengthened and maintained.”
“The greatest influence on the life of the child is the unlived life of the parents.”
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself... their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
“The basic reality in life is not politics, nor industry, but human relationships—the associations of a man with a woman... the family is greater than the State, devotion and despair sink deeper into the heart than economic strife, in the end our happiness lies not in possessions, place, or power, but in the gift and return of love.”
“Since morality is rooted biologically in the family—those principles of mutual aid which the family plants in the soil— I should base moral instruction upon a deliberate exaltation of family life... The gift of children should be our payment to the race for the heritage of civilization.”
“the essential government of mankind remains in that most deep-rooted of all historic institutions, the family.”
“If a woman is to recapture the lost companionship with man and child, she must once more forget herself, as she did in the old pioneer days, and follow them into the world.”
“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They are not like aches or wounds; they are more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there is not enough material.”
“Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.”
“A life allied with mine, for the rest of our lives... that is the miracle of marriage.”
“the closer the relationship, the more easily the dagger goes in, the more we feel it, and the harder it is to heal. Often, the greatest wounds come from our families... The anger and the pain from that relationship is often our greatest wound.”
“Man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.”
“The family’s function is to repress… to deny death by avoiding life… to promote respect, conformity, obedience; to con children out of play; to induce a fear of failure; to promote a respect for work; to promote a respect for ‘respectability.’”
“When family relations are no longer harmonious, we have filial children and devoted parents.”
“If a book is truly worth reading, it’s not a promiscuous, one-night stand. It becomes a life-long companion, the lifeblood of our insight, understanding, and wisdom. We re-read it from the different perspectives of youth, career-seeking, marriage and family, old age and the process of dying. We continually translate it into the ever-changing scope of our cultures, politics and psychology.”
“If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first… the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world.”
“I have no home.
The family created by my parents and friends was just a family according to their way of thinking... Still, strangely, this home of being homeless is my home wherever I go. Everything is my home, the great home of being homeless.”
“If you do not start at home, you have no hope of helping the world… the first step is learning to rule your household, your immediate world…. If you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you don't, then your contribution to this world will only be further chaos.”
“The family is changing, not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.”
“We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives… and need to constantly examine them… that’s the definition of any living vibrant society—constantly questioning those stories. The argument itself is freedom… that's how societies grow.”
“It's [a kitchen/dining table] where we teach our children the manners they need to get along in society. We teach them how to share. To take turns. To argue without fighting and insulting other people. They learn the art of adult conversation. The family meal is the nursery of democracy.”
“The one thing harder on children than divorce is parents to stay together even though locked in mortal combat.”
“A tourist makes a show of giving a ten-dollar tip to the doorman for pushing a revolving door, and the next minute he’s bargaining for a five-dollar T-shirt from a vendor who is trying to support her baby and family.”
“Such a cozy room, the windows are illuminated… Our house is a very, very, very fine house with two cats in the yard; Life used to be so hard; Now everything is easy 'cause of you.”
“Children are better off having a parent who works into the night in a job they love than a parent who works shorter hours but comes home unhappy.”
“I honestly believe it would do less long-term damage to a kid to put them up for adoption that to hand them a device every single time we don't want to deal with them... don't end up doing serious damage to them as adults.”
“Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family and the local intimate community. Most people worked in the family business – the family farm or the family workshop, for example – or they worked in their neighbors’ family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.”
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