When a man becomes a father, his world changes more than a man without offspring can quite understand. Having children colors every aspect of a person’s life, enriching it here, complicating it there, bringing joy and frustration, pride and fatigue, and often enough, plenty of abject confusion. While there are many guides, websites, and advice columns dedicated to the topic of parenting, it turns out nothing can really prepare you for fatherhood. That book they tell you about before you have kids? The one with all the answers that you get when you become a new dad? Doesn’t exist. What they did not tell you is that a lot of the time you have to figure it out on your own.
(except on Father’s Day).
Fully appreciating how it feels to have kids may be nigh on impossible for the childless, and that proverbial Dad Book might not exist, but by reading through some famous quotes on fatherhood, you can get a decent sense of the heady madness of the experience. With Father’s Day around the corner, we’ve curated a list of the best quotes about fatherhood. These are all by fathers and will help dads feel like maybe there’s no such thing as screwing it up as long as you try.
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Sigmund Freud
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
Mike Myers
“Anyone who tells you fatherhood is the greatest thing that can happen to you, they are understating it”
William Shakespeare
“It is a wise father that knows his own child.”
Mark Twain
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.”
Umberto Eco
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
Tom Wolfe
“[Man adopts] a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.”
John Green
“The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it.”
J. August Strindberg
“That is the thankless position of the father in the family — the provider for all, and the enemy of all.”
Ray Romano
“Having children is like living in a frat house. Nobody sleeps, everything’s broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up.”
David Beckham
“I was selfish before. Everyone is. But when you have kids, they become your main priority.”
Barack Obama
“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
Harry S. Truman
“I have found the very best way to advise your children is to find out what they want to do and advise them to do it.”
Frederick Douglas
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Charles Kettering
“Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.”
For more inspiration, here are the best quotes about manhood.
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