In honor of all the dads, daddies, fathers, pops, papas and padres out there!

“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.” ~ Bill Cosby

“Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch.” ~ Jon Stewart

“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.” ~ John Wilmot

“Today is not the real Father’s Day. It is the man made version. The real Father’s Day are the other 364 other days of the year that I get to see my boys grow into men and my girls grow into ladies and feel I had a slight part of the people that they turned out to be.” ~ John A. Passaro

“Saturday mornings, I’ve learned, are a great opportunity for kids to sneak into your bed, fall back asleep, and kick you in the face.” ~ Dan Pearce

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

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

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” ~ Umberto Eco

“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 he had learned in seven years.” ~ Mark Twain

“Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That’s hard enough.” ~ Robert Downey Jr.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo:  kwanie / Flickr