The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
It's interesting when you're old enough to take a new, objective approach looking at your parents, frame them in a way where you are actually taking yourself out of the equation and just look at the things that are true about their life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that with maturity, one can view their parents with a sense of objectivity, recognizing their realities independent of personal bias.
Robert Downey, Jr.'s quote reflects the idea that as people grow older, they gain a different perspective on their parents' lives. This maturity allows for an objective assessment of their parents beyond the emotional ties, letting individuals acknowledge the truths about their parents' experiences, struggles, and achievements as separate from their own feelings and childhood views. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and empathy in familial relationships.
Themes
ParentsPerspectiveObjectivityUnderstandingFamilyLife Experiences
In practice
Example use cases
In a family therapy session to encourage understanding among generations.
More from Robert Downey, Jr.
All quotes →I have a really interesting political point of view, and its not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you cant go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You cant. I wouldnt wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
Growing up is something that you do your whole life. I want to always feel that I can be a kid if I want. Growing up has some negative connotations. Like, you're not supposed to roll around on the ground anymore. You're not supposed to make fun of yourself. You're not supposed to ride a bicycle. But I'm a Toys-R-Us kid.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself as a professional person and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
All I want, and I think all any parent with a semblance of a moral psychology wants, is for my kid to have his own experience, uninhibited.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
I grew up with a lot of people whose whole prime mover was dad rage. I never really had it - it always seemed so empty. It always seemed to be masking something else, which was really their own lack of initiative.
Robert Downey, Jr.Read
Similar quotes
I just sit there and make up songs and sing to [my son] in gibberish. I'm very good at gibberish now.
Elton JohnRead
Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone.
Colson WhiteheadRead
Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind.
Khalil GibranRead
We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.
Anthony BourdainRead
We're good at taking care of little kids, and spend a lot of energy teaching them things like how to read. But when kids get as tall as their parents and can look them in the eyes, we tend to drop the ball - at a time they most need a loving consistent community of adults, be it parents, aunts, uncles, or others.
Laurie Halse AndersonRead
I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.
Mark TwainRead