I didn't think marriage worked. I thought everybody who was married was secretly miserable - that it was something they just put up with for their children.

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair then the marriage then children and finally the fourth stage without which you cannot know a woman the divorce.

In interviews I gave early on in my career I was quoted as saying it was possible to have it all: a dynamic job marriage and children. In some respects I was a social adolescent.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality birth within marriage parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

I didn't want to be one of those women who wake up at 63 years old and realize they've missed the window of opportunity for marriage and children.

Feminism is dated? Yes for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage prostitution forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

I'm most proud of the longevity of my marriage my kids and my grandchildren. If you don't have that you really don't have very much.

Children are supposed to help hold a marriage together. They do this in a number of ways. For instance they demand so much attention that a husband and wife concentrating on their children fail to notice each other's faults.

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage children and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

Why in almost all societies have married women specialized in bearing and rearing children and in certain agricultural activities whereas married men have done most of the fighting and market work?

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.

I love my children beyond all reason. They're my joy even when they're wild with kid energy.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old the incurable the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

The distinction between children and adults while probably useful for some purposes is at bottom a specious one I feel. There are only individual egos crazy for love.

Everything that I love is behind those gates. We have elephants and giraffes and crocodiles and every kind of tigers and lions. And - and we have bus loads of kids who don't get to see those things. They come up sick children and enjoy it.

There are fathers who do not love their children there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

We're not raising children with the love that we need to.

Because parents have power over children. They feel they have to do what their parents say. But the love of money is the root of all evil. And this is a sweet child. And to see him turn like this this isn't him. This is not him.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.

Children make your life important.

Children are the anchors of a mother's life.