Mother Quotes | Beyond Motive

top of page

Mother Quotes

"I have quite a lot of fans in Holland because that is where my mother is from, in fact I have a fan club there, and the fans don't always get the chance to see us drive the cars because getting to races across Europe isn't always possible for them."

Nelson Piquet, Brazilian Celebrity

Mother, Chance, Europe, Fact

9

"I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor."

Max von Sydow, Swedish Actor

Mother, English, Language

8

"My mother was the prettiest woman in the town. He was a bit older than her. They made me. And he split."

Pierce Brosnan, Irish Actor

5

"My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs."

Joan Armatrading, St. Kittsian Musician

Mother, Songs, Writing

4

"I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang."

Ruben Blades, Panamanian Musician

Mother, Opera, Singing

4

"My mother is a singer, still performs today; she's a jazz singer."

Jan Hammer, Czech Musician

Mother, Jazz, Today

3

"My mother was very agnostic. She would never set foot in the synagogue, she couldn't be doing with it."

Janet Suzman, South African Actress

2

"My mother would put me on a wooden box at the stove and tell me to call her if certain things would happen. Like if the steam turns blue, that is danger!"

Paul Prudhomme, American Celebrity

1

"Even a secret agent can't lie to a Jewish mother."

Peter Malkin, Israeli Public Servant

1

"What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin."

Henry Ward Beecher, American Clergyman

1

"Maybe it's because my mother divorced and my grandmother divorced, so maybe I'm frightened deep down. But then I also feel there is no real need. Why do I need to get married? To reassure me? No I don't need reassurance."

Juliette Binoche, French Actress

Mother, Deep, Reassurance

1

"My honeymoon night was spent on the floor in the bathroom with my mother."

Ronnie Spector, American Musician

1

"I wanted to play a mother again. I thought it would be interesting to play the mother of an older child. And it was also the kind of part I've been looking for my whole career, actually, in film. You know, just to play a femme fatale who's very smart, and wicked."

Sigourney Weaver, American Actress

Mother, Thought, Career, Film

"My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity."

Stephen Sondheim, American Composer

Mother, Ambition, Celebrity, Clothes

"I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother."

John Lone, American Actor

Mother, Father, People, Friend

"I kind of like the position of being the fair-haired savior of my mother."

Patty Duke, American Actress

"I'm a mother with two small children, so I don't take as much crap as I used to."

Pamela Anderson, American Actress

Mother, Children

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father."

Roger von Oech, American Author

Mother, Father, Invention, May

"My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania."

Herbie Mann, American Musician

Mother, Father, Russia

"I visited my father for the full ten years that he was in prison, so we already had a deep and loving relationship, and remembered our mother at those times."

Sam Sheppard, American Scientist

Mother, Father, Deep, Prison

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."

Shirley Temple, American Actress

Mother, Santa claus

"I've written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played."

Mick Taylor, English Musician

Mother, First, Songs

"Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since."

Abigail Adams, American First Lady

Mother, Thought, Knowledge, Daughters

"Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard."

Al Lewis, American Actor

Mother, Sense, Struggle

"The English was really my mother, it was never me. Being the daughter of my father, I always felt very French."

Charlotte Gainsbourg, French Actress

Mother, Father, Daughter, Being

"My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call."

Cathy Guisewite, American Cartoonist

Mother, Feelings, Eating, Kitchen

"For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift."

Wernher von Braun, German Scientist

Mother, Thought, Boys, First

"You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy."

Shemar Moore, American Actor

Mother, Man, Play, Race

"I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife."

Patti Smith, American Musician

Mother, Financial, Childhood

"My mother gave me singing lessons; that was totally painful, because I couldn't do what she wanted to hear. She used to say: there's more there, there's more voice but I just didn't want to give it to her."

Linda Lavin, American Actress

Mother, Singing, Voice, Want

"I was angry about the fact that my father would beat my mother on a daily basis, that my mother would take it in turn and beat on me. I was an abused child. I was mad about all those things, very bitter and very angry."

Rick James, American Musician

Mother, Father, Fact

"I have an unending desire to be better and make myself a better person, better mother."

Tanya Tucker, American Musician

"I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying."

Mikhail Baryshnikov, American Dancer

Mother, People, Party, Russia

"If I were like your mother, I would be a woman."

Ryan Stiles, American Actor

"Well, financially it's a little bit better. But it's better than than when I was a teacher. But I kind of - it's allowed me to buy a house. And I've been able to help my mother with some stuff and my brother. So, that's nice."

Clay Aiken, American Musician

Mother, Brother, Help

"My mother and I could always look out the same window without ever seeing the same thing."

Gloria Swanson, American Actress

"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

Thurgood Marshall, American Judge

Mother, Goal, Baby, Challenge

"Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!"

George M. Cohan, American Actor

Mother, Father, Sister, Ladies

"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa - not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

Anita Dunn, American Public Servant

Mother, People, Challenge, Choices

"My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee."

Phyllis Diller, American Comedian

"My mother taught me to treat a lady respectfully."

Chris Brown, American Musician

"When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner."

Halle Berry, American Actress

"I never turned down a mother role."

Dorothy Malone, American Actress

"As a mother, you feel much more vulnerable. And when you're vulnerable, you're a much better actress."

Kate Beckinsale, English Actress

"So, babies are taken from their mothers because they get temporarily insane and it's not the mother's fault. This is the thing: they shouldn't feel ashamed. They didn't cause this. It is not something they did to themselves."

Marie Osmond, American Musician

Mother, Babies, Cause, Fault

"I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me."

Carol Burnett, American Actress

Mother, Girls, Growing up

"My father was a classical musician and my mother was a writer."

John Sebastian, American Musician

Mother, Father, Writer

"My mother had a beautiful, soothing voice that made me melt."

Gloria Estefan, American Musician

"When my mother died, I had to go on air that night and do jokes."

Graham Kennedy, Australian Entertainer

Mother, Jokes, Night

"I told my mother at about the seventh year of therapy that I had been abused sexually by my father, and she hung up the phone on me."

Anne Heche, American Actress

Mother, Father, Therapy

bottom of page