Top 40 Barbara Bush Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The home is the child’s first school, the parent is the child’s first teacher, and reading is the child’s first subject.”

— Barbara Bush

Featured in: Learning Quotes, Quotes About Children, Family Quotes, Reading Quotes, Quotes About Childhood

2. “The Titanic was built by professionals. The Ark was built by volunteers.”

— Barbara Bush

3. “Whether you are talking about education, career, or service, you are talking about life. And life must really have joy. It’s supposed to be fun.”

— Barbara Bush

Featured in: Fun Quotes

4. “Where will our country find leaders with integrity, courage, strength-all the family values-in ten, twenty, or thirty years? The answer is that you are teaching them, loving them, and raising them right now.”

— Barbara Bush

5. “If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.”

— Barbara Bush

6. “You get nothing done if you don’t listen to each other.”

— Barbara Bush

7. “But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”

— Barbara Bush

8. “Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people.”

— Barbara Bush

9. “At the end of your life, you will never regret winning one more verdict or earning one more paycheck. You WILL regret time not spent with a spouse, a friend or a loved one.”

— Barbara Bush

10. “My worst expectations never happened.”

— Barbara Bush

11. “Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.”

— Barbara Bush

12. “Future of his nation does not depend on what happens at the White House, but what happens at your house.”

— Barbara Bush

13. “At the end of your life you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.”

— Barbara Bush

14. “Why be afraid of what people will say? Those who care about you will say, Good luck! and those who care only about themselves will never say anything worth listening to anyway.”

— Barbara Bush

15. “I love talking to people, but what I really love is to feel you’re doing something instead of sitting home and twiddling your thumbs.”

— Barbara Bush

16. “If more people could read, write, and comprehend, we could be much closer to solving so many of the other problems our country faces today.”

— Barbara Bush

17. “You know sit with your arm around a little kid and read. It not only teaches them to read but it keeps the family strong.”

— Barbara Bush

Featured in: Strong Quotes

18. “I think a lot of our problems are because people don’t listen to our children. It is not always easy. They’re not always so brilliant that you want to spend hours with them. But it is very important to listen to them.”

— Barbara Bush

19. “Show me a wife who doesn’t offer advice and I’ll show you one who doesn’t care very much.”

— Barbara Bush

20. “I’m not saying to be happy you must be married. Nor am I saying that to be happy you need children. I’m saying that if you opt for children – be you man or woman – you have to take care of them.”

— Barbara Bush

21. “War is not nice.”

— Barbara Bush

22. “Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life’s blood. But everyone has something to give.”

— Barbara Bush

23. “Suddenly women’s lib had made me feel my life had been wasted.”

— Barbara Bush

24. “I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that, they just about throw up.”

— Barbara Bush

25. “You don’t just luck into things as much as you’d like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it’s friendships or opportunities.”

— Barbara Bush

26. “I think the country has had enough Bushes.”

— Barbara Bush

27. “Describing life out of the public eye to David Letterman, December 6th, 1996 It’s been different. I started driving again. I started cooking again. My driving’s better than my cooking. George has discovered Sam’s Club.”

— Barbara Bush

28. “I’m tired now of the elections.”

— Barbara Bush

29. “My son, George, has been a bad, bad boy! Right, George?”

— Barbara Bush

30. “As if we don’t have enough volence on television. After her husband accidentally hit two spectators with golf balls during a celebrity golf tournament.”

— Barbara Bush

31. “There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run.”

— Barbara Bush

32. “George is the best little dishwasher in Texas.”

— Barbara Bush

33. “I don’t like attacking.”

— Barbara Bush

34. “To this day George Sr. is the soft touch and I’m the enforcer. I’m the one who writes them a letter and says ‘Shape up!’ He writes, ‘You’re marvelous.’”

— Barbara Bush

35. “The First Lady is going to be criticized no matter what she does.”

— Barbara Bush

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

36. “You may think the president is all-powerful, but he is not. He needs a lot of guidance from the Lord.”

— Barbara Bush

37. “I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.”

— Barbara Bush

38. “Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people – your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way.”

— Barbara Bush

39. “I was riding with her on Marine One when she read that Donald Trump had divorced his first wife to marry a much younger woman. I learned she didn’t have much patience with men who sought trophy wives when she said: That man will never set foot again in the White House as long as I have anything to do with it.”

— Barbara Bush

40. “I think it’s great to have a new life every 10 years or so.”

— Barbara Bush