I got blessed from my mom. She's the personality; she's the one who smiled, so I took on part of her, and who also wanted to help and save the world. Then I took on part of my dad, who is tough.

My dad was my hero. And I got my personality from my mother.

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

I think my mom just filled me with confidence. I just thought I was the best at everything. Like any mother really.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

Mothers who work full time - they're the real heroes.

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

"Mothers train your children to only Speak Truth"

"If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!"

"An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."

"There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it."

"I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order."

"Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago."

"It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding."

"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick."

"When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."

"Mothers of those days were women of great piety and noble character.They practiced virtue and set an example to the children! only from the wombs of such noble women were born sons of high character!"

"Have a sense of pride in your motherland. Just as your mother has given birth to you, so too the land has given birth to you."

"I always wanted to be a mother first."

"My mother was the kind of person who was very much part of her tribe and very much a satellite of her tribe. She was the girl who left her family at the age of 17 and went to Washington. My mother was orphaned at three and then was brought up by my aunt Goldie. So, yes she belonged, but there was a part of her that didn't."

"As the mother, so the progress of the nation. As the mother, so the sweetness of culture!"