150+ Deep Quotes About Broken Family

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Your family is your world. That is where you feel the belongingness and be your true self without filters. We bring you broken family quotes that highlight the value of family in our life. A broken family can create challenges not only for its members but also for the wider community. The hurt, sorrow, pain, and suffering can keep brewing if problems between the family members are not resolved. If left unaddressed, it can further lead to conflict, disunity, alienation, and estrangement. Check out this collection of melancholic quotes about a broken family that will leave a lasting impression. Read on and try to fix the problems because family is the priority in life.

150+ Sad Deep Quotes About Broken Family

To heal from the pain of a broken family, you should understand the reasons behind the conflicts. These reasons may include miscommunication, emotional neglect, and external pressures, which you must acknowledge and accept in your path to recovery. These sad, deep quotes for broken families are a way to heal broken hearts. If you come from a broken family and find yourself grief-stricken and hurting, may these words provide solace. Read these quotes and have the patience to overcome the hard times.

1. “There is no such thing as a “broken family.” Family is family, and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers, and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you.”― JoyBell C.

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12. “No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That’s already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.”― Dick Gregory
13. “Sometimes the best families are the ones God builds using unexpected pieces of our hearts.”― Melanie Shankle
14. “Wisdom starts when you know yourself. You will realise that everything aligns itself perfectly when you live your truth, break limiting habits and challenge yourself daily.”― Itayi Garande
15. “Too many children have suffered. Too many families have been broken. Too many girls have grown up alone. Or not at all. I won’t let them ruin anyone else.”― A. Wiggins
16. “If we’re sitting at dinner and there’s no conversation going on because everybody’s got their head someplace else in their iPhone, that’s a family problem that needs to be solved.” ― Ross W. Greene
17. “Oftentimes we try to change the world around us, our family members and our friends, while remaining the same. That is impossible. Sometimes we feel like we are making progress, expanding our horizons and our awareness, but with no real change in our lives.” ― Itayi Garande
18. “The family has become too scared of its children; the children too insecure in their remoteness from their parents; and the church too much of a social welfare organization for the good of the family, the church, or society.” ― Whitney Griswold
19. “Parentageis a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.” ― George Bernard Shaw
20. “Sometimes problems don’t require a solution to solve them; instead they require maturity to outgrow them.” ― Steve Maraboli
21. “Families are like fudge – mostly sweet with a few nuts.” ―Les Dawson
22. “Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it’s the place where we find the deepest heartache.” ― Iyanla Vanzant
23. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” ― George Burns
24. “It’s frightening seeing in ourselves the same ingredients as dysfunctional members of our families. Fortunately, as it is with baking, the proportions, mix, and temperature of the exact same ingredients can yield anything from burnt cookies to elegant soufflés.” ―Alan Robert Neal
25. The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people – no mere father and mother – as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.” ― Pearl S. Buck
26. “The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.” ― Dalai Lama
27. “Everyone needs a house to live in, but a supportive family is what builds a home.” — Anthony Liccione
28. “Being part of a family means smiling for photos.”— Harry Morgan
29. “No family is sane, is it?” ― Rebecca Hall
30. “Adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them – just beneath the wound – lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true. Since their early experiences were so dark and painful, they have spent much of their lives in search of the gentleness, love, and peace they have only imagined in the privacy of their own hearts.” ― Wayne Muller
31. “Living your dreams, changing your behaviors, and overcoming negative habits is challenging. However, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ― Itayi Garande
32. “What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.” ― Diane Samuels
33. “Sign of an abusive system: getting angry at other’s real needs.” ― Jeff VanVonderen
34. “Before I was born, my father disowned me. You know those ones who get the females pregnant, and then say the baby is not theirs? He rejected me, told my mother that I am not his child, so I never had a relationship with my father.”― Drexel Deal
35. “It always amazes me how swiftly problems can be solved once you start cutting things off people.”— Joe Abercrombie
36. “It’s not flesh and blood, but heart, which makes us fathers and sons.” — Friedrich von Schiller
37. “Any problem, big or small, within a family always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.” — Emma Thompson
38. “No matter what you’ve suffered, the abuse was not your fault. Not as an innocent child, teenager, nor adult.” — Dana Arcuri
39. “A child should never feel as if they need to earn a mother’s love.”— Sherrie Campbell
40. “A toxic mother talks but never listens, and she gives advice but never takes any.” — Sherrie Campbell
41. “Narcissist parents don’t care about their children’s feelings at all. Only their feelings matter.” — Kim Saeed
42. “A busy mother makes slothful daughters.” ―Portuguese Proverb
43. “People talk about dysfunctional families; I’ve never seen any other kind.” ―Sue Grafton
44. “Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.” ― David W. Earle

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45. “The human race is one big dysfunctional family.” ― Robert Barron
46. “A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” ― Mary Karr
47. “Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.” ― Shannon L. Alder
48. “We all come from dysfunctional families and these days I guess that’s pretty normal.” ―Carnie Wilson
49. “Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren’t solved, they’re dealt with.” ― Roger Ebert
50. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo Tolstoy
51. “Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.” ― Mignon McLaughlin
52. “The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.” ―Bertrand Russell
53. “How many solutions are found to family problems if we take time to reflect? If we think of a husband or wife and we dream about their good qualities that they have? Don’t ever lose the illusion of when you were boyfriend and girlfriend!” ― Pope Francis
54. “Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help” ― Unknown
55. “Parents kill more dreams than anybody.” ― Spike Lee
56. “Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.” ― George Eliot
57. “Sometimes it makes me sad that I didn’t get to have one family for my entire life.” ― Isabel Gillies
58. “As your kids grow they may forget what you said, but won’t forget how you made them feel.” ― Kevin Heath
59. “The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.” ― Charles Kuralt
60. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.” ― Margaret Mead
61. “In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” ― Eva Burrows

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77. “My family doesn’t do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise.” ― Hope Solo
78. “When I was a kid, there was unhappiness in my family – was dealt with partly by escaping to television. And from a very early age, for whatever reason, I became scornful and resistant to and angry about that. And some other time in my life, I realized that there’s a lot I loved in television.” ― Robert Pinsky
79. “Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family.” ― Jerry B. Jenkins
80. “Families don’t have to match. You don’t have to look like someone else to love them.” ― Leigh Anne Tuohy
81. “I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.” ― Toni Morrison
82. “In the narcissistic parent’s eyes, they do no wrong, nor do they feel they should be held accountable for the bad and wrong things they have done.” — Katherine Childress
83. “Narcissistic parents will try to hurt you any way they can emotionally. Be aware that if they can’t get to you directly, they will try to hurt you through your children.” — Tina Fuller
84. “Who said that parents’ beliefs should be adopted by their children?”— Lukasz Laniecki
85. “The hardest part of a broken family is not the pain of separation but the longing for what could have been.”
86. “Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children’s most primitive fears.”— Henry Cloud
87. “People tend to raise the child inside them rather than the child in front of them.” — Joe Newman
88. “To all you parents out there, don’t make your little girls, or little boys, so thirsty for love that they will want to drink water that will poison them.” — Lisa Bedrick.
89. “It is the selfish parents who are to blame. Pay attention; be involved in your children’s lives. They are your legacy, your only hope.” — Aaron B. Powell
90. “Getting angry when something about their behavior is challenged in the nicest way is a typical reaction of a narcissistic parent.”— Diana Macey
91. “Family is where you’re meant to be most free, don’t let blood chain you down.”— Michelle Meleen
92. “You can miss a person every day and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”— Tara Westover
93. “Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.” — Richard Bach
94. “Fake relatives will give you a fake smile to hide the evil intentions they have against you.” — Samuel Zulu
95. “You can love them, forgive them, and want good things for them…but still, move on without them.” — Mandy Hale
96. “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.” — George Washington Carver
97. “Hatred imprisons the haters; love opens doors.” —Debasish Mridha
98. “When you inherit a broken family, you can’t throw it away and get a new one. What you can do is find people and situations that provide for you what your family cannot.” ― Iyanla Vanzant
99. “When you’re in a broken family and your role model is a violent male, boys grow up believing that’s the way they’re supposed to act. And girls think that’s an accepted way men will treat them.” ―Jim Costa
100. “This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.” ― Lilo & Stitch
101. “Pick a dysfunction, and it’s a family problem.” ― Robert Downey, Jr.
102. “I turn to a life of crime cause I came from a broken family.” ― Tupac Shakur
103. “I think a lot of time, I’m just writing my worst fears, of the idea of losing my mom or my best friend or doing something so terrible to somebody that’s kind of deemed unforgivable, or having a really broken family.” ―Phoebe Waller-Bridge
104. “I was always the new kid in school, I’m the kid from a broken family, I’m the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I’m the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.” ― Dave Mustaine
105. “I loved him, but I didn’t know how to fix all of the things that were broken in our family.” ― Brodi Ashton
106. “There is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future – that community asks for and gets chaos.” ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan
107. “Beyond politics, the West is suffering from what can be called a crisis of brokenness – broken institutions, broken families and broken souls.” ― Gary Bauer

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108. “If same-sex relationships are really sinful, then why do they so often produce good fruit-loving families, open homes, self-sacrifice, commitment, faithfulness, joy? And if conservative Christians are really right in their response to same-sex relationships, then why does that response often produce bad fruit-secrets, shame, depression, loneliness, broken families, and fear?” ― Rachel Held Evans
109. “No family is a perfect family. Every family experiences moments of outrage and anger. We have to understand each other, accept each other, and move on together.” ― Unknown
110. “The little killer who’s been living alone out here on the prairie is gone now, and all that’s left is the broken shell of a girl who has no place to call home and no people to call family.” ― A. Huss
111. “One of the problems of our youth is that the family unit is broken up. When we’d sit down to dinner together as a family, we’d learn about each other. We had something people don’t get today.” ―Paul Prudhomme
112. “The scars of a broken family run deeper than the bonds that once held us together.”
113. “Why? What had she ever done? What had any of them ever done? To give a child only to take him away. To make and then unmake, as if a family weren’t built of lives but of things that could be broken, returned, thrown out.” ― John Burnham Schwartz
114. “A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.” ― Kristin Hannah
115. “Getting a divorce is always horrible because you feel you’ve failed. Everyone hates to give up on a marriage. You think your family’s broken up.” ― Jerry Hall
116. “If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that’s broken apart, I think that’s probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.” ― Bridget Moynahan
117. “What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.” ―Steve Pemberton
118. “I wonder why I feel treated like an enemy in a place where I am supposed to be welcome.” ― Unknown
119. “I can’t say it’s not painful being estranged from most of my family. I wish it could be otherwise”― LaToya Jackson
120. “Controllers, abusers, and manipulative people don’t question themselves. They don’t ask themselves if the problem is them… they always say the problem is someone else.”— Darlene Ouimet
121. “You create more space in your life when you turn your excess baggage to garbage.” — Chinonye J. Chudolue
122. “The only thing more frustrating than slanderers is those foolish enough to listen to them.”— Chris Jami
123. “Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself.”— Hussein Nishah
124. “Someone who smiles too much with you can sometimes frown too much with you at your back.” — Michael Bassey Johnson
125. “Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away.”— Ismail Haniyeh
126. “A friend who stands with you in pressure is more valuable than a hundred ones who stand with you in pleasure.” — Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
127. “A person raised in a healthy family is equipped to live a confident and independent life; someone from an unhealthy family is filled with fear and self-doubt.”— Christina Enevoldsen
128. “Being brushed aside is the easiest way to discard a child.” — Sherrie Campbell
129. “Toxic mothers are image-oriented rather than love-oriented.” — Sherrie Campbell
130. “All that fake and jealous family members can give you are lies, drama, and jealousy.”— Samuel Zulu
131. “Blood doesn’t make you family. Some of the most demonic and demeaning people in your life share your DNA.”— Temi Ade
132. “If the family you choose before your birth no longer supports your path towards fulfilling your true destiny, it is never too late to find a new tribe.”—  Anthon St. Maarten
133. “When you notice someone does something toxic the first time, don’t wait for the second time before you address it.” — Shahida Arabi
134. “My father had to go to work, I used to think he was a jerk. I didn’t know his heart was broken, and not another word was spoken.” ― Madonna Ciccone
135. “Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.” ― Thomas Jefferson
136. “You can’t teach a son to be loyal if the father is not loyal. The same applies with the mother and her daughter.” ― Unknown
137. “Family tragedies had a way of smashing everything apart and then gluing it all back together. The problem was no one ever knew how long the glue would hold.” ― Sarah Ockler
138. “No connection can ever be broken if love holds tight at both ends.” ― Shannon L. Alder
139. “Even as a little seed, I could see his plan for me. Stranded on welfare, another broken family.” ― Tupac Shakur
140. “You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang with negative people” ― Joel Osteen
141. “A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong if there is any root to life -because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don’t live in the same place for very long.” ―Arthur Miller
142. “Even knowing that my presence brought a shadow over the lives of my loved ones, I can’t regret the experiences I’ve had with them. They gave me life, becoming an integral part of my soul. They healed me when I was broken and somehow they recovered those parts of me, I thought lost forever.” ― D. Stroube
143. “I learned a long time ago that most of my family and friends had plastic hearts. Plastic hearts are made so they cannot be broken. Cracked maybe, but never broken.” ― Lisa De Jong
144. “Fake people are like costume jewelry: They look great for a while, then all of a sudden, their true selves’ Shine’ thru.”— Nitya Prakash
145. “Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles, and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters.” — John Mark Green
146. “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” — George Bernard Shaw
147. “Family or not I will cut you off. That saying “but that’s family” means nothing if a family is toxic and means you are no good.” — Morgan Sharee
148. “Humans are more venomous than snakes.” — Atef Ashab Uddin Sahil
149. “I’ve got more respect for someone who comes out and says they don’t like me than for the ones who act like they do, but talk bad about me when I’m not around.”— Mitchell Perry
150. “If I doubt your intentions, I will never trust your actions.” — Carlos Wallace
151. “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” — Joseph Kesselring
152. “If your actions are dictated by who might be watching, they’ll never be genuine—and neither will you.”— Vincent H. O’Neil
153. “If you’re more concerned about our reputation than about me, then I’ll just withdraw and not have a family anymore.”– Gregory R. Reid
154. “In general, the more dysfunctional the family, the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system.”— Renee Fredrickson
155. “In my family, you can rot to hell on the inside as long as you’re flawless on the outside, which is really sick, but also hard to unlearn.” — Laura Wiess
156. “Instead of promoting healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often with the belief that they are acting in their child’s best interest.”— Susan Forward
157. “It’s hard to tell who has your back, from who has it long enough just to stab you in it.”— Nicole Richie
158. “Just because someone is your family doesn’t mean you have to keep them around if they are toxic or abusive. Don’t let people guilt you.” — Winnie Nantongo
159. “Sometimes it’s the ones closest to us who can destroy us the most. Sometimes it’s friends … family. It’s not always a romantic relationship that can leave us with a broken heart.” — Shanora Williams
160. “When I was sixteen, there was no one to count on but myself. Everyone in my family was taking care of themselves, surviving, but everyone forgot I was sixteen years old. I had never felt so lost and so alone in my life.” —Grace Lozada
161. “Deep inside us, we know what every family therapist knows: the problems between the parents become the problems within the children.” ―Roger Gould
162. “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.” ― Scott Fitzgerald
163. “It doesn’t matter what kind of problems a family is having; it should always stay in the family.” ―Scott Weiland
164. “Love them from a distance. Pray for them, wish them well, but don’t allow them to abuse you.”— Kimber Waul
165. “Fire false friends as early as possible. Do it before they dig out the dream seeds you’ve planted. The earlier, the better; the quicker, the safer.”— Israelmore Ayivor
166. “Most people want to see you do better, but not doing better than them.” — London Mond
167. “I hate fake people. You know what I’m talking about. Mannequins.”— Jarod Kintz
168. “People may not always tell you how they feel about you, but they will always show you. Pay attention.” — Keri Hilson
169. “Better an honest enemy than a false friend.” —German Proverb
170. “People wear masks of lies so that they look attractive, so be careful.”— Muhammad Saqib
171. “Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.” — George R.R. Martin
172. “Some humans spend their whole lives making something that isn’t real look like something that is.”— Anna Banks
173. “Blood relatives often have nothing to do with family, and similarly, family is about who you choose to make your life with.”— Oliver Hudson
174. “Sometimes it’s not the person who changes, it’s the mask that falls off.” — Unknown
175. “Sometimes the person you’d take a bullet for is the person behind the trigger.”— Taylor Swift
176. “Feigned interest is worse than brutal honesty.”— Stewart Stafford
177. “Stab the body, and it heals, but injure the heart, and the wound lasts a lifetime.” — Mineko Iwasaki
178. “Stop entertaining two-faced people. You know, the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits.” — Amaka Imani Nkosazana
179. “Trolls and haters are only distractions from your greater purpose. When you achieve your goals and success, not only will the trolls and haters be forgotten, but they will definitely be looked upon as the biggest fools.”— Kailin Gow

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Infographic: Dealing With A Broken Family

When you sense that your familial relationships are on the verge of breaking to the extent that you may not be able to fix them again, it could be bewildering, anxious, and disheartening. However, whether your family members have chosen to walk away voluntarily or due to unavoidable circumstances, you must find ways to cope with the situation. Here is an infographic to help you deal with a broken family.

Illustration: Momjunction Design Team

Illustration: Deep Quotes About Broken Family

Image: Stable Diffusion/MomJunction Design Team

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Vinita AgrawalPoet

Vinita Agrawal is an accomplished poet hailing from Indore, India. She has garnered significant recognition for her poetic endeavors, including winning the prestigious Proverse prize in Hong Kong in 2021 for her collection of poems titled "Twilight Language.

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Shikha ThakurMBA

Shikha is a writer-turned-editor at MomJunction, with over seven years of experience in the field of content. Having done a certification in Relationship Coaching, her core interest lies in writing articles that guide couples through their courtship to marriage and parenthood.

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Siddharth holds a certification in Relationship Coaching and a masters degree in communication and journalism from the University of Hyderabad. He has around seven years of experience in various fields of writing and editing.

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