While there is lots of conflicting information about the methods we should use in raising our sons, the ultimate goal is the same: to raise them to be good people.

We look up to heroes, men of honor, great husbands, and fathers, and we want our sons to be like them one day. This doesn’t need to be as wide-reaching as saving the world, but rather as in saving the day for the people around them every time they get a chance.

It would be great for parents if love, integrity, and a good set of principles would somehow be part of our sons’ DNA. But it is more about social learning, and so a parent’s voice and behavior are crucial for their son’s development.

In a world that promotes gender equality, we should teach our sons more about empathy and nurturing, and less about male entitlement. There are still many cultures that believe such qualities weaken men, when they actually just make humans human. The heroes we mentioned earlier possess them — we want our sons to become men, not tyrants.

Raising a son means hard work, but the outcome is always rewarding.

Here are 25 quotes about sons that you’ll love:

You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes. 

Wally Schirra

The years will rush by, and one day you will be watching your son as a man, and feeling incredibly proud that he is caring, safe, making a contribution, and hopefully going far beyond you in the scope of his life.

Steve Biddulph

There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.

Washington Irving

If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it. 

Sigmund Freud

Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free. 

C. J. Milbrandt

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Friedrich von Schiller

Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged. 

Louisa May Alcott

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.

My wild, wild son, run free. Ooh, you’ll know it when you’re where you’re supposed to be.

Armin van Buuren & Sam Martin

Listen, my son, to your father’s instructions and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 

Proverbs 1:8 (NIV)

Yet now in my arms I was holding a helpless baby boy who would grow into a man… I cannot imagine that soft little face one day having whiskers. 

Rhonda Stoppe

He doesn’t know you’re watching him, but in this special, reflective moment, you realize he’s growing up. I mean, really growing up. 

Robert Lewis

Though our new son is barely a part of our present, we look at his squirming, warm bundle of future potential and say to ourselves, ‘Hello, little man.’ Little do we know the adventure we are beginning!

Dr. Gregory L. Jantz

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

James A. Baldwin

Until you have a son of you own, you will never know what that means. You will never know the joy beyond joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. 

Kent Nerburn

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process. 

John F. Kennedy

One of the greatest gifts you can give your teenage boy is the gift of letting him know you get it. You’ve been there. 

Sebastian R. Jones

Of course, you are going to be reading books to your son at night. The books that he loves will be an education for you. 

Michael Thompson

There is no greater privilege in living than bringing a tiny new human being into the world and then trying to raise him or her properly during the next eighteen years. 

James C. Dobson

When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son. 

The Talmud

I want my son to become aware that he is in charge of the choices he makes, and it’s good to make thoughtful, good choices. 

Karen Salmansohn

If you would have your son to walk honorably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them – not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone. 

Anne Bronte

I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home. 

Sheryl Sandberg

As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me. 

Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Sons Quotes - Sarah Shahi

The most important mark I will leave on this world is my son.

Sarah Shahi