"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process."

"A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes."

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” 

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

My mother was a teacher.

What's weird is having your mother fly in on an aeroplane with your face on the side of it.

I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

I am still confused because I still don't know who my father is. And so who is my mother? The feeling is still there.

Mama is the greatest teacher, teacher of love, fearlessness and compassion.

Mother's electric blanket broke, & I have 'mended' it, so she may be practising suttee involuntarily before long.

They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates.

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”

“Of course, to be a mother and a housewife is a vocation of a very high kind. But I simply felt that it was not the whole of my vocation. I knew that I also wanted a career. A phrase that Irene Ward, MP for Tynemouth, and I often used was that ‘while the home must always be the centre of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions’.”

My mother gave me a real kick toward cooking, which was that if I wanted to eat, I'd better know how to do it myself.

Seeing the whales off James Price Point, mothers, babies, bull whales, seeing the count, going up into the thousands of these whales, the assurance that they will be ok with a mega port, mega ships and a huge factory ashore, is now clearly proven wrong.

"I want babies. Lots of babies. Of course!"

“My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.”

My mother taught me how to read before I got to school and so when I got there I really just wanted to do two things. I wanted to read books because I loved reading books and I wanted to go outside and chase butterflies. You know, do the things that five-year-olds like to do. I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.

Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.” 

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they'll know it's possible.” 

“My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you.” 

“Sometimes when I'm in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, 'Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.”