Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.
I feel like I love a little bit of everything. I grew up listening to the stuff my parents liked, from Earth, Wind & Fire, Luther Vandross, Billy Joel to Bruce Springsteen and The Mommas & The Poppas.
A lot of people influenced me as I was learning, but probably Bing Crosby was the most influential because I would hear his Christmas albums, which my parents played a lot.
My parents were into The Mills Brothers, Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughn, and all those people sung the most wonderful songs - and even when I got into rock 'n' roll, that stayed with me.
My parents grew that small business from one 18-year-old guarding a bingo to more than 125 employees in three states. And sure, there was help along the way. But my parents took the risk. They stood up. And you better believe they built it.
I had the worst birthday party ever when I was a child because my parents hired a pony to give rides. And these ponies are never in good health. But this one dropped dead. It just wasn't much fun after that. One kid would sit on him and the rest of us would drag him around.
Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too tired to take off their clothes after a day of childcare. The parent loves, but they do not expect the favour to be returned in any significant way.
We had some Stevie Wonder and Luther Vandross, but there’s a lot of hip-hop and other black music that I just never grew up on. My parents didn’t listen to anything other than black gospel.
I refrain from blaming anything on my parents.
When I was born, my parents were huge into skiing. I grew up on Mont Blanc, skiing on that hill. I was really a ski baby. Loved it; I still love it.
I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.
Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.
Each generation in this country gets the responsibility of being the ambassadors for this American democracy that our parents and grandparents fought, bled, and died for.
I grew up wanting to be a musician, but my parents were sure I would starve to death. So, they put me in physics and chemistry. That eventually blew up, and I got into radio.
I can do anything for the person I love. I love my parents, and if they ask me to blindly marry someone, I will do so.
I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or the exhibition of any forced talent, physical or mental, on the part of children, without protesting, at least in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty of their parents or guardians or whoever has care of them.
I grew up in San Diego with immigrant parents, before the food blogs, before this kind of celebrity chef culture we know now.
Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives.
My parents were political, so it's definitely in my bones. Wherever I am, I always seem to get involved with politics. I think, once it's in your bloodstream, it's always there. I love it.
For my parents, leaving the close social quarters of Abilene was like getting out of jail. They were not true West Texans; they had not come to love the unending monotony of mesquite barrens or the high, hot blue sky that made sunsets a matter of prayerful thankfulness.
