Opening the book…
Opening the book…
Explore how different traditions approach the same question, from the oldest texts to the screen and the present day. Connections suggest similarities in meaning, not proven influence. Dates describe broad periods of a tradition, rather than the age of each passage.
“What is one thing about parenting (or being parented) that surprised you — and what did you learn from it?”
Care, independence, and what passes between generations.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, and the parables. Foundational to Western moral language.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
“If you wish to make your son rich, pursue one course --if you are only anxious to make him virtuous, you must take another; but do not imagine that you can bound from one road to the other without losing your way.”
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 5 (pre-Ch.6 section), 1792 ↗
“But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
The father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son does not wait for his son to arrive but runs to meet him the moment he sees him returning.
“In serving his parents, a son may remonstrate with them, but gently; when he sees that they do not incline to follow his advice, he shows an increased degree of reverence, but does not abandon his purpose; and should the…”
Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads — dialogues on duty, action, and self.
“What the wise choose The unwise people take; what best men do The multitude will follow.”
Krishna urges Arjuna to act rightly because leaders set the pattern others imitate.
“Therefore, one ought to follow the wise, the intelligent, the learned, the much enduring, the dutiful, the elect; one ought to follow a good and wise man, as the moon follows the path of the stars.”
Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi — terse, paradoxical aphorisms on living with the grain of things.
“It produces them and makes no claim to the possession of them; it carries them through their processes and does not vaunt its ability in doing so; it brings them to maturity and exercises no control over them;--this is called its mysterious operation.”
Laozi describes the Tao's way of nurturing all things without possessiveness, pride, or domination — offered as a model for human conduct.
“When his desires are set on benevolent government, and he secures it, who will accuse him of covetousness? Whether he has to do with many people or few, or with things great or small, he does not dare to indicate any dis…”
“If we could renounce our sageness and discard our wisdom, it would be better for the people a hundredfold. If we could renounce our benevolence and discard our righteousness, the people would again become filial and kindly. If we could renounce our artful contrivances and discard our (scheming for) gain, there would be…”
Laozi argues that imposed moral frameworks and clever schemes corrupt society more than they improve it.
“Your good, careful people of the villages are the thieves of virtue.”
Dhammapada and selected sutras — terse, principle-rich verses on suffering, attachment, and right action.
“If a man make himself as he teaches others to be, then, being himself well subdued, he may subdue (others); one's own self is indeed difficult to subdue.”
“All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.LVI, tr. Meric Casaubon (1634/1635) ↗
“"These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me," with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth?”
“But as to him who is covetous and bent on riches, And calleth the Good a lie, To him will we make easy the path to misery: And what shall his wealth avail him when he goeth down?”
Analects of Confucius — sayings on conduct, governance, and moral cultivation.
“The filial piety of now-a-days means the support of one's parents. But dogs and horses likewise are able to do something in the way of support;-- without reverence, what is there to distinguish the one support given from the other?”
Confucius argues that merely providing for parents is not enough; true filial piety requires reverence, not just material care.
“Thy Lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and, kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee: and say not to them, 'Fie!' neither reproach them; but speak to them both with…”
“In serving his parents, a son may remonstrate with them, but gently; when he sees that they do not incline to follow his advice, he shows an increased degree of reverence, but does not abandon his purpose; and should they punish him, he does not allow himself to murmur.”
“Thy Lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and, kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee: and say not to them, 'Fie!' neither reproach them; but speak to them both with…”
Greco-Roman school of practical philosophy on virtue, agency, and acceptance. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca.
“'As often as a father kisseth his child, he should say secretly with himself' (said Epictetus,) 'tomorrow perchance shall he die.' But these words be ominous. No words ominous (said he) that signify anything that is natural.”
Marcus quotes Epictetus on holding parental love alongside the awareness of a child's mortality—not as morbidity but as acceptance of nature.
“Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of necessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as much firmne…”
“Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. From the fame and memory of him that begot me I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any ev…”
Aurelius opens his Meditations by cataloguing virtues he learned from family members.
“I am of opinion, that order, moderation, and constancy excepted, all things are to be done by a man that is very imperfect and defective in general. Therefore it is, say the Sages, that to make a right judgment of a man,…”
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Chapter XXIX, tr. Charles Cotton, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1877 ↗
Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) — concise principles for living, distilled from the early rabbinic period.
“Whoever causes the multitudes to be righteous, sin will not occur on his account; And whoever causes the multitudes to sin, they do not give him the ability to repent.”
The mishna teaches that a leader bears collective moral responsibility for those they influence.
“For the common people are what we help them to become; their vices are our vices, gazed upon, envied, and imitated; and if they come back with all their weight upon us, it is but just.”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Note 153, 1902 ↗
“Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own, and the honor of your colleague as the reverence for your teacher, and the reverence for your teacher as the reverence of heaven.”
“Thy Lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and, kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee: and say not to them, 'Fie!' neither reproach them; but speak to them both with…”
Central scripture of Islam. Ethical teachings, parables, and prophetic narratives.
“Kill not your children for fear of want: for them and for you will we provide. Verily, the killing them is a great wickedness.”
A prohibition against infanticide, practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, framed as a reassurance that God provides for all.
“those who can see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it.”
“Thy Lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and, kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee: and say not to them, 'Fie!' neither reproach them; but speak to them both with respectful speech; And defer humbly to them out of tenderness; and say, 'Lord, have compassion on th…”
Montaigne and Bacon turning the essay into a way of thinking in public — sceptical, personal, unwilling to settle a question it has not tested.
“Certainly custom is most perfect, when it beginneth in young years: this we call education; which is, in effect, but an early custom.”
“When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow... Though, independe…”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part V, Chap. I, 1759 ↗
Hume, Smith, Kant and Wollstonecraft asking what we owe each other once reason, rather than revelation, is asked to supply the answer.
“The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects. Never suffer him to value himself upon trivial accomplishments. But do not always discourage his pretensions to those that are of real importance. He would not pretend to them if he did not earnestly desire to possess them. Encourage this desire; affo…”
Smith offers advice on how to channel a young person's vanity into genuine self-improvement rather than suppressing it.
“I very much doubt whether any knowledge can be attained without labour and sorrow; and those who wish to spare their children both, should not complain if they are neither wise nor virtuous. They only aimed at making them prudent; and prudence, early in life, is but the cautious craft of ignorant self-love.”
Wollstonecraft critiques over-protective parents who shelter children from difficulty.
“knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.”
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, Chapter X, 1855 ↗
Emerson, Thoreau and Douglass in New England and beyond — self-reliance, conscience against the state, and the moral weight of a life lived deliberately.
“Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.”
Dr. Samuel Johnson's words on honesty in children, as quoted by Boswell, cited by Emerson.
“Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and it would be well to remember this in our dealings with them.”
Douglass reflects on his childhood dread of being separated from his grandmother.
“Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,—a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, weari…”
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Of the Passing of the First-Born, 1903 ↗
Mill, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, each pressing on what an individual owes to the crowd, to suffering, and to their own honesty.
“To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.”
Mill argues that the parental duty to educate a child is not merely customary but a genuine moral obligation enforceable by the state.
“It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary.”
Nietzsche asserts that inherited character — the accumulated habits of one's lineage — shapes a person more durably than education can overcome.
“Your mere aspirant to a type of character, on the contrary, only shows, when your natural lover, fighter, or reformer, with whom the passion is a gift of nature, comes along, the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to inst…”
James, Du Bois, Vivekananda and Tagore — psychology, pragmatism and the first modern accounts of living inside more than one world at once.
“Make a mother of her, and what have you? Possessed by maternal excitement, she now confronts wakefulness, weariness, and toil without an instant of hesitation or a word of complaint. The inhibitive power of pain over her is extinguished wherever the baby's interests are at stake. The inconveniences which this creature…”
James illustrates how a powerful love can dissolve all ordinary inhibitions, using the example of a self-indulgent woman transformed by motherhood.
“Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,—a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into…”
Du Bois contemplates the future his newborn son faces, born into racial oppression before he can understand it.
The century in which the question was most often put to a wide audience by film. Each line belongs to a larger story, and is quoted with its character, film, and writing credits where available.
“Just because they don't love each other anymore doesn't mean that they don't love you.”
Answering a child's letter about divorce, a father describes families that do not look like the one she wanted.
Written by Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon.
“Remember who you are.”
A dead father's instruction to a son who has decided it is easier to be no one in particular.
Written by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton.
“This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made.”
A father spends the last of his invention convincing his son that a camp is a competition, so the boy will not understand where he is.
Written by Vincenzo Cerami and Roberto Benigni.
“You can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.”
A father's vow of total protection is answered with what such a promise would mean for the child who lived under it.
Written by Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds.
“It's like it's always right now, you know?”
Twelve years of a childhood end with Mason agreeing that you don't seize the moment so much as live permanently inside one.
Written by Richard Linklater.
“Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.”
Said on the way out of a child's life, about the point at which a parent stops being a person and starts being a recollection.
Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan.
The same question, answered by people who are still working it out.
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