Thoughts on home, family

• All that I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.

—Abraham Lincoln

• As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scenes, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.

—John Adams

• The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family ... public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

—Thomas Jefferson

• Children are our most valuable natural resource.

—Herbert Hoover

• Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.

—Andrew Jackson

• I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

—Harry S Truman

• The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms.

—Ronald Reagan

• For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

—Theodore Roosevelt

• All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.

—Gerald R. Ford

• Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and family of your own.

—Rutherford B. Hayes

• There is no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

• There are no adequate substitute for father, mother, and children bound together in a loving commitment to nurture and protect. No government, no matter how well-intentioned, can take the place of the family in the scheme of things.

—Gerald R. Ford