Teaching sometimes seems like not one profession, but every profession. We ask them to be doctor and diplomat, calf-herder, map-maker, wizard and watchman, electricians of the mind. – Nancy Gibbs
At times, it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV. – Nancy Gibbs
I come from a family of teachers, and I believe ideas matter; the good ones deserve reverence, and the bad ones, defiance. – Nancy Gibbs
When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak. – Nancy Gibbs
The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5. – Nancy Gibbs
Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father’s shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves. – Nancy Gibbs
The millennials were raised in a cocoon, their anxious parents afraid to let them go out in the park to play. So should we be surprised that they learned to leverage technology to build community, tweeting and texting and friending while their elders were still dialing long-distance? – Nancy Gibbs
High school is a haunted house in April, when seniors act up because the end is near. Even those who hate school sometimes cling to the devil they know. And for the kids who love it, the goodbyes are hard to think about. – Nancy Gibbs
It is actually the neuroscientists and evolutionists who do the best job of explaining the reasons behind the most unreasonable behavior. – Nancy Gibbs
In the case of the classic Western helicopter parent, it starts with Baby Einstein and reward charts for toilet training, and it never really ends, which is why colleges have to devote so many resources to teaching parents how to leave their kids alone. – Nancy Gibbs
Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you’d never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper – something about the moist air and bright light and fruit in season – and so memories stir and startle. – Nancy Gibbs
The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political – and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone’s deeply held beliefs. – Nancy Gibbs
You can’t predict when a crisis might hit your family, whether it’s with an elderly parent or with your children. – Nancy Gibbs
Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets. – Nancy Gibbs
Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson. – Nancy Gibbs
Anyone with the right mix of parental paranoia and entrepreneurial moxie can make a fortune by selling parents the equipment we think will keep us one step ahead of our kids. – Nancy Gibbs
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament. – Nancy Gibbs
Years later, nothing makes me more grateful as a parent than my daughters’ encounters with classroom wizards. – Nancy Gibbs
I live in a dumb house. Which is not to say that I don’t love its quirky charm, its drafty windows and leaky fireplaces and an electrical system that protests when too many people are trying to vacuum and microwave at the same time. But charm is not always user-friendly. – Nancy Gibbs
Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny. – Nancy Gibbs
A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon. – Nancy Gibbs
Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine. – Nancy Gibbs
It’s the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it’s in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends. – Nancy Gibbs
Maybe we adults idealize our own red-rover days, the hot afternoons spent playing games that required no coaches, eating foods that involved no nutrition, getting dirty in whole new ways and rarely glancing in the direction of a screen of any kind. – Nancy Gibbs
If you want to humble an empire, it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can’t be safe. – Nancy Gibbs