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Writer's pictureJace Shoemaker-Galloway

Father's Day Quotes: Inspirational and humorous sayings about dads


Each year on the third Sunday in June, millions of people honor and celebrate those very special men in our lives. It’s Father’s Day, an annual holiday that recognizes and celebrates fathers and father figures.

If you are looking for just the right words to add to your Father’s Day card or gift, look no further. Whether you are looking for sentimental or serious, inspirational or humorous, the following Father’s Day quotes and sayings from the famous and the not-so-famous are sure to inspire and put a smile on dad’s face.

Special Quotes & Sentimental Sayings about Special Dads

  • “Never raise your hand to kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.” - Celebrity Red Buttons

  • “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person – he believed in me.” - Jim Valvano

  • “I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich.” - Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford for television series M*A*S*H

  • “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.” - Actor and comedian Bill Cosby

  • “It is much easier to become a father than to be one.” - Author Kent Nerburn

  • “Any man can be a Father, but it takes someone special to be a dad.” - Photographer Anne Geddes

  • “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” - Henry Ward Beecher

  • “For rarely are sons similar to their fathers; most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.” - Homer

  • “We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.” - Henry Ward Beecher

  • “My father told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed him until now.” - President John F. Kennedy

  • “My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.” - President Abraham Lincoln

  • “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” - Charles Wadsworth

  • “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” - William Shakespeare

  • “A man knows he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.” - Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  • “Becoming a father is easy enough but being one can be very rough.” - Painter and poet Wilhelm Busch

  • “Nobody ever asks a father how he manages to combine marriage and a career.” Sam Ewing

  • “Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.” - Author Anthony Brandt

  • “To be a successful father there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.” - Novelist and Nobel Prize winner Earnest Hemingway

  • “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you.” - Desmond Tutu

  • “My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it.” - Writer Clarence Budington Kelland

  • “Don’t make a baby if you can’t be a father.” - National Urban League slogan

  • “Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.” - Lydia M. Child

  • “I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” - Sigmund Freud

  • "You know, fathers just have a way of putting everything together." - Erika Cosby

  • “Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.” - Ruth E. Renkel

  • “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 the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain.

  • “Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was our father and mother rather than all major credit cards.” - Robert Orben

  • “The greatest gift I ever had Came from God; I call him Dad.” - Author unknown

  • “Good fathers make good sons.” - Author unknown

  • “A father carries pictures where his money used to be.” - Author unknown

  • “A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.” - Author unknown

  • “Honor thy father and thy mother.” - Matthew 19:19

  • “A father is a banker provided by nature.” - French Proverb

  • “A wise son maketh a glad father.” - Proverbs 10:1

  • "From great oaks, little acorns grow." - Latin Proverb

Happy Father's Day!

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