Ronald Reagan

“ National Family Week affords all Americans the opportunity to frankly face and assess the quality of family life in our Nation and to reflect on what each of us can do as a father, daughter, mother, son, or grandparent-as a member of a family-to strengthen this divine institution. ”

“ Family life and the life of freedom are interdependent. In the arena of the family, children learn the most important lessons they will ever receive about their inherent dignity as individuals. They learn as well about the social and religious traditions that unite generation to generation, and they begin to acquire the values for which their ancestors sacrificed so much for freedom. ”

“ Totalitarian societies see in the family a natural enemy, a bulwark of basic loyalties and inherited ideals that places allegiance in relationships that precede the claims of the state. Corrosive influences such as illegal drugs and pornography seek to substitute for the permanent bonds of family life a transient and ultimately false sense of happiness and fulfillment. Against these forces the family can often seem helpless and ineffective, but experience shows that it is in being tested that the strength of the family finally reveals itself. ”