27 Deep Father’s Day Quotes To Help You Gather Your Thoughts For Dad

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Excerpt: Every father-child relationship is different. These Father’s Day Quotes are deep and will help you gather your thoughts for your unique dad.

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Introduction: No Two Father-Child Relationships Are Alike

Father’s day is an opportunity for you to reflect on and uniquely express your feelings towards your unique dad. Every father-child relationship is different and no two relationships are the same. Some father-child relationships are beautifully loving and their father acts as a model of strength, support, love, and wisdom. Some relationships are complicated and while their father has been present in their life, the model that they provided was ambiguous, strong at times, weak at others, and confusing. Some relationships are only toxic and destructive. Some relationships are without the involvement of the birth father at all and rather, depend upon the model provided to them by father-figures such as grandpas, uncles, cousins, teachers, or even friends, boyfriends, or later husband(s).

Regardless of the type of father-child relationships that have made up your life, Father’s Day is the day to reflect and express none-the-less. Father’s Day is the day to have those conversations with dad that you’re usually too busy to have or otherwise feel might be too random or awkward to have on a typical day. Of course, reflecting on a relationship as prominent and long-standing as the one you have with your dad can be tough and finding the right words can be even harder. That’s where we come in.

Below, you will find our list of 27 deep Father’s Day quotes that will help you gather your thoughts about your dad and will help you find the right words. Ultimately, the goal of these quotes isn’t simply to serve as something to just copy and paste (although that would be totally cool if that’s what you wanted to do)—the goal would be for you to take these words and to make them uniquely your own. To remix them into something that better reflects the thoughts and feelings that you have towards your dad (or father figure). The idea is to take this opportunity to organize your thoughts and communicate them in a way that allows you to deepen the relationship you have with him (whatever that might mean for you).

Words, when carefully chosen and backed by human emotion can be incredibly powerful and can undoubtedly shape your experience this Father’s Day—much more so than a coffee mug or tie might (and there’s nothing wrong with either of those gifts). I hope these Father’s Day quotes find you well and help you sort through your feelings accordingly. Let us know which quotes resonated with you the most or if you have any type of Father’s Day quote requests in the comment section below. Thank you, as always, for reading. And thank you to all of the fathers out there. This post is for you.

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The List: 27 Deep Father’s Day Quotes To Help You Gather Your Thoughts For Dad

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10 Father’s Day Quotes For The Father In Your Life:

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

Johann Friedrich von Schiller

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“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

Barack Obama, Former President of the United States

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“Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad, and that’s why I call you dad, because you are so special to me. You taught me the game and you taught me how to play it right.”

Wade Boggs

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“A dad is someone who wants to catch you before you fall but instead picks you up, brushes you off, and lets you try again. A dad is someone who wants to keep you from making mistakes but instead lets you find your own way, even though his heart breaks in silence when you get hurt. A dad is someone who holds you when you cry, scolds you when you break the rules, shines with pride when you succeed, and has faith in you even when you fail.”

Unknown

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“A father is the one friend upon whom we can always rely. In the hour of need, when all else fails, we remember him upon whose knees we sat when children, and who soothed our sorrows; and even though he may be unable to assist us, his mere presence serves to comfort and strengthen us.”

Émile Gaboriau

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“There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.”

George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

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“A father is neither an anchor to hold us back nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.”

Unknown

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“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

Mark Twain

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“And the right of your father is that you should know that he is your root and you are his branch. And without him, you would not be. Whenever you see anything in yourself which pleases you, you should know that your father is the root of its blessing upon you.”

Imam Sajjad, “The Rights of the Father” from The Treatise on Rights

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“Boys don’t hunger for fathers who will model traditional mores of masculinity.  They hunger for fathers who will rescue them from it.  They need fathers who have themselves emerged from the gauntlet of their own socialization with some degree of emotional intactness.  Sons don’t want their father’s ‘balls’; they want their hearts.  And, for many, the heart of a father is a difficult item to come by.”

Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It

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8 Father’s Day Quotes on Being A Father:

“The nature of fatherhood is that you’re doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified when you do it.”

John Green, Author

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“As fathers, we need to be involved in our children’s lives not just when it’s convenient or easy, and not just when they’re doing well — but when it’s difficult and thankless, and they’re struggling. That is when they need us most. In the end, that’s what being a parent is all about — those precious moments with our children that fill us with pride and excitement for their future, the chances we have to set an example or offer a piece of advice, the opportunities to just be there and show them that we love them.”

Barack Obama, Former President of the United States

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“Fatherhood is the best thing I ever did. It changes your perspective. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is really the most extraordinary thing I have taken on.”

Brad Pitt

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“My kids are my greatest piece of art. If I can pump them full of amazing stuff and surround them with beautiful art and music, then I’m going to live out my life watching them. They’re already way smarter and just way better than me. God, I love it. It’s beautiful. I want it to be the greatest thing I ever do: make good humans.”

Jason Momoa

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“Your crazy dad has many responsibilities and wears many hats in this big ol’ world, but being your dad will always be the one I’m most proud to wear.”

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

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“By profession I am a soldier and take great pride in that fact, but I am also prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.”

General Douglas MacArthur

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

Charles Wadworth

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“When you know your direction and are living it fully, your core is alive and strong.  Your children will naturally feel this.  They will respond to your clarity and presence differently than they will respond to your ambiguity – an ambiguity that results from having detoured from your deepest purpose because you think it’s ‘right’ or ‘fair’ that you spend time with them.  A short period of time with a father who is absolutely present, full in love, undivided inside, and sure of his mission in life, will affect your children much more positively than if they spend lots of time with a father who is ambiguous in his intent and has lost touch with his deepest purpose, no matter how much he loves his children.”

David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man

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9 Father’s Day Quotes For Unique Situations:

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For the father who asked the most interesting questions:

“When I was a child, my father used to encourage my brother and me to fail. At the dinner table, instead of asking about the best part of our day, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something to tell him, he would be disappointed. When we shared whatever failure we’d endured, he’d high-five us and say, ‘Way to go!’ The gift my father gave us by doing this was redefining what failure truly meant.”

Sara Blakely

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For the father who broke the traditional stereotype:

“The key component of a boy’s healthy relationship to his father is affection, not ‘masculinity.’  The boys who fare poorly in their psychological adjustment are not those without fathers, but those with abusive or neglectful fathers. Contrary to the traditional stereotype, a sweet man in an apron who helps out with the housework may be just the nurturant kind of father a boy most needs.”

Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It

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For the father who served as a voice of reassurance and kept their children awesome:

“Children are born awesome. Our job as the adults in their lives is to make sure they know this and to minimize the effect of anyone who might influence them to feel otherwise. When children feel stupid, slow, naughty, troublesome, untrustworthy, incapable or silenced in response to the comments of any adult in their lives, it’s time for us to be their voice.”

Hey Sigmund, Good Men Project

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For the father who taught their children to love challenges:

“Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence – like a gift – by praising their brains and talent.  It doesn’t work, and in fact has the opposite effect.  It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong.  If parents want to give their children a gift the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.  That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise.  They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”

Carol Dweck, Mindset

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For the father who made their children feel valuable:

“The feeling of being valuable – ‘I am a valuable person’ – is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.  It is a direct product of parental love.  Such a conviction must be gained in childhood; it is extremely difficult to acquire it during adulthood.  Conversely, when children have learned through the love of their parents to feel valuable, it is almost impossible for the vicissitudes of adulthood to destroy their spirit.”

Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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For the father who stayed flexible in his approach:

“My father’s notion of being a man was also flexible. As I grew from a child of the 70s to an adult of the 90s, it grew with me. I learned that sometimes a man should back down from a fight; that real men are also feminists; and that not being seen as a ‘sissy’ is meaningless, while not being homophobic is important.”

Matthew Ryder, Depression, violence, anxiety: the problem with the phrase ‘be a man’

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For the father who stuck around even after they moved out:

“We need to change the conversations we have about fathers. Yes, some fathers are absent, as are some mothers, and some might be the inept characters of marketing ads or cartoons, struggling to work the washing machine or to look after the baby alone. But the majority of fathers are not these people. We need to broaden our spectrum of who we think dad is to include all the fathers who stick around, investing in their children’s emotional, physical and intellectual development, regardless of whether they live with their children or not.”

Anna Machin, The Marvel of the Human Dad

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For the father who stepped up and did the job:

“We need to discuss the dads who coach football, read bedtime stories, locate rogue school socks, and scare away the night-time monsters. Who encourage their children’s mental resilience, and scaffold their entry into our increasingly complex social world. Who are defined not by their genetic relatedness to their children but because they step up and do the job – the stepdads, social dads, grandfathers, friends, uncles and boyfriends.  And by broadening this conversation and sharing our newfound knowledge, we empower fathers to be more involved with their children, something that benefits us all. The sons of today who see dad as an equal to mum in the domestic setting will follow this role model when they themselves become parents. This leads to a change in culture; a move towards equality in domestic work, a sharing of the burden of the parenting tax on career development, something that is overwhelmingly borne by mothers today, and a narrowing of the gender pay gap.”

Anna Machin, The Marvel of the Human Dad

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For the father who served as a breakwall:

“The unresolved pain of previous generations operates in families like an emotional debt.  We either face it or we leverage our children with it.  When a man stands up to depression, the site of his battle may be inside his own head, but the struggle he wages has repercussions far beyond him.  A man who transforms the internalized voice of contempt resists violence lying close to the heart of patriarchy itself.  Such a man serves as a breakwall.  The waves of pain that may have wreaked havoc across generations spill over him and lose their virulent force—sparing his children.  The ‘difficult repentance’ such a man undertakes protects those who follow him.  And his healing is a spiritual gift to those who came before.  The reclaimed lost boy such a man discovers—the unearthed emotional, creative part of him—may not be merely the child of his own youth, but the lost child of his father’s youth, or even of his father’s father.”

Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It

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For My Father On Father’s Day:

Dad, when I think about you I feel nothing but love soak into my heart. I know it sounds cliché to say, especially after all of the insight shared above, but I quite literally can’t imagine having a better dad than you. And I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to say that because I know that that’s not exactly the norm and not everybody can.

From toy trains, to football, to Tae Kwon-Do, you have always been my #1 fan. And from picking fights with Lianna, to getting caught breaking the rules, to offering insight to help me work out my big-boy problems, you’ve been there to help me stay on track since Day 1. Even when you and mom split it. Even as you battled mental health challenges. Even when memories of your childhood damn near pushed you over the edge. You always found a way through. You always found a way back to us. And you always fought for our lives with yours. And for that, I am forever grateful.

And with that legacy, I will be forever filled. That legacy—the incredible example you have set as a father and person—will forever live on through Lianna and I and will continue to touch all of the lives we reach on a daily basis. You served as a breakwall and have laid a foundation that will guide Lianna and I always. We are who we are because of you and mom. I can’t imagine my life without either of your influences. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And Happiest of Father’s Days. ~ Matt

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Father’s Day Picture Quotes to Share:

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