Quotes about birth
page 12

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Love, Life, Men, Education

“The Church, poor old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that: the noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self,—really to human nobleness in many most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is there some human nobleness in you, or is there not?"”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

The poor neat-herd's son, if he were a Noble of Nature, might rise to Priesthood, to High-priesthood, to the top of this world,—and best of all, he had still high Heaven lying high enough above him, to keep his head steady, on whatever height or in whatever depth his way might lie!
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Money, Education, Soul, Question

“Because so many of our writers were born in ugly environments, in monstrous poverty and humilitation, they continue to assert that this is the natural environment, reality, and that beauty is artifice. Why should the natural state be ugliness? Natural to whom? We may be born in ugliness, but the natural consequences should be a thirst for its opposite. To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school. A hunger for the unknown, and an aspiration towards beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.
We are born with the power to alter what we are given at birth.
When the Japanese paint flowers or the sea on a kimono they mean to establish a link with nature. But they select only what is beautiful in nature to maintain their love of life.
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything. That is the deepest meaning of rebellion, not the wearing of different clothes, haircuts, or the adopting of other cultures.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Love, Life, Hunger, World

“When the spirit touches
man's heart and brow
with thoughts that are lofty, bold, serene,
so that with clear eyes he will face the world
as a free man may;
when the spirit gives birth to action
by which alone we stand or fall;
when from the sane and resolute action
rises the workd that gives a a man's life
content and meaning — then would that many,
lonely and actively working,
know of the spirit that grasps and befriends him...”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Life, World, Heart

“Everybody may have peace if they are willing to pay any price for it. Part of this any price is slavery, dishonor of your women, destruction of your homes, denial of your God. I have seen all of these abominations in other parts of the world paid as the price of not resisting invasion, and I have no thought that the inhabitants of this state of my birth have any desire for peace at that price, or that they lack the fortitude that is necessary to discourage aggression by the barbarians who are now about to be driven back to their kennels, or by any other savages who may arise at some later date against our civilized Christian world.”

William D. Leahy (1875–1959) United States admiral, ambassador to France, Chief of Staff

Commencement speech at Cornell College in Iowa on 5 June 1944, as quoted by Henry H. Adams in Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (1985), p. 246
1940s

Women, God, World, Peace

“But then, when and why is this emotional upheaval produced, which opens a person to his own essence ? Nobody knows. The emotional opening of the person to his own essence can only be born of the will of life itself, as a rebirth that lets him suddenly experience his eternal birth. The Spirit blows where it wills.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, p. 291
Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Original: (fr) Mais quand donc ce bouleversement émotionnel qui ouvre le vivant à sa propre essence se produit-il et pourquoi ? Nul ne le sait. L’ouverture émotionnelle du vivant à sa propre essence ne peut naître que du vouloir de la vie elle-même, comme cette re-naissance qui lui donne d’éprouver soudain sa naissance éternelle. L’Esprit souffle où il veut.

Life, Personality

“I hear for ever the noise of my birth.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Original: (fr) J'entends à jamais le bruit de ma naissance.

Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, p. 283

“In women, if there is a greater arrest of individual growth than in men, the difference begins in the fœtal life; their comparative weight and size at birth are the same as at maturity; and, if the former finish their growth earlier, it must be because relatively they grow more rapidly.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 609
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Life, Women, Men

“And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Dreams, Solitude, Tree, Time

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“The twentieth century gave us four-hour bottle feedings of infants, induced labor of childbirth and Caesarian-section deliveries for the convenience of hospitals and doctors, birth and death segregated into isolated, sterile environments empty of human consolation.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves, p. 269

Death

“There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths. America’s numbers are similarly unimpressive when it comes to medical doctors. The United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, placing it behind Trinidad & Tobago (2.7), and Russia (4.0 doctors per 1,000, for a country that is described as being “in transition”). Life expectancies at birth are lower in the US than they are in Chile or China. The US has a higher maternal mortality rate than Iran or Saudi Arabia.”

Mona Chalabi (1987) British data journalist

Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is, 6 April 2020

Life, Death, People, Health

“All that I can boast of in my birth, is, that I was born in Old England.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Source: 1790s, Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796), P. 1

“It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. ... What are these principles?—That governments were made for the people, and not the people for governments.—That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice.—That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth.--That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law.—That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative.—That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand.—That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.—That the press ought to be free. ... Ten thousand times as much has been written on the subject in England as in all the rest of the world put together. Our books are full of these principles. ... There is not a single political principle which you denominate French, which has not been sanctioned by the struggles of ten generations of Englishmen, the names of many of whom you repeat with veneration, because, apparently, you forget the grounds of their fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, and a whole host of patriots of England, Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or banished, during the administration of Pitt, you can give the name of Jacobins, and accuse them of French principles. Yet, not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘To the Merchants of England’, Political Register (29 April 1815), pp. 518–19
1810s

Men, People, Books, World

“We are a short poem
in a endless emptiness page,
words are lighthouses
that ignites and struggle
to deliver light to the dark edges of the infinite,
and mystic sounds struggle to give voice
to the unlived beings,
to bore a young soul to the gate of birth.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Soul, Light

“The poor, short lone fact dies at the birth. Memory catches it up into her heaven, and bathes it in immortal waters.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Water, Memory

“When we're born, our experience is half the time spent undoing these ideas that were placed onto our body since birth and then building a personal identity on top of that.”

Morgan Parker (writer) American poet

On the Black experience in “'Magical Negro' Carries The Weight Of History” https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693587521/magical-negro-carries-the-weight-of-history in NPR (2019 Feb 11)

Idea, Time, Personality

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith, Fools, Art, Star

“And so this great Teacher has traced out for us the Qualifications demanded for passing through the first portal of Initiation, for that Birth of the Christ in the human Spirit, which is the passing of that doorway. I have run over, roughly and inadequately I know, the wonderful teaching which comes from Him to illuminate us, but none the less you can see it is an exacting demand, none the less you will see how you must shake yourself free from many prejudices, customs, thoughtless ways of life, if you would find the Master and be reckoned by Him among His disciples. p. 82”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Life, Way, Teachers, Christ

“The Path of Purification is the Probationary Path, on which certain qualifications must be developed; the Path of Illumination is the Path of Holiness, subdivided into four stages, each of which is entered by a special Initiation, symbolized among Christians as the Birth, Baptism, Transfiguration, and Passion of Christ; the Path of Union is the attainment of Masterhood, Liberation, Final Salvation.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Passion, Christ

“But let us now dismiss these poetical fictions; because with what is divine they have mingled much of human alloy; and let us now consider what the deity has declared concerning himself and the other gods.
The region surrounding the Earth has its existence in virtue of birth.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

From whom then does it receive its eternity and imperishability, if not from him who holds all things together within defined limits, for it is impossible that the nature of bodies (material) should be without a limit, inasmuch as they cannot dispense with a Final Cause, nor exist through themselves.
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

God

“What good, what use, what aim?
What compensation for the throes of birth
And death in all its frame?
What conscious life hath ever paid its cost?
From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

From a letter dated 19 October 1879, quoted by Bertram Dobell in The Laureate of Pessimism: A Sketch of the Life, and Character of James Thomson ("BV"); Author of the City of Dreadful Night (1910), p. 38

Life, Death

“I can no more imagine my demise than remember my birth.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Death and the Eternal Forever (2014)

Imagination

“[E]lections to the supreme power having upon some occasions produced the most destructive contentions, many states would take refuge from a return of the same calamities, in a rule of succession; and no rule presents itself so obvious, certain, and intelligible, as consanguinity of birth.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. II, Book VI, Ch. I.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

Intelligence, Success

“There is a process known as parthenogenesis, literally virgin birth, by which a uniparental embryo can be created out of a normal egg. It’s been done with animals. The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 552-553)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Women, Men, Chance, Animals

“There's one that I remember so dearly, it's called the Three Character Classics. The first phrase goes... 'People at birth are inherently good.'”

Chloé Zhao (1982) Chinese film director, screenwriter, and film producer

Those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today.
2021 Academy Award acceptance speech

People

“What happens today, Is a better change tomorrow.

Life is a circle which starts from a point 0 degree (the day your given birth to) and revolves in it's axis (around); people determine where they will end up. The question is do people lifes end up good?”

Bhad Shazzy

Life, People, Question, Change

“Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor; and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men, God, Children, World

“Hail the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

"Hymn for Christmas-Day"
Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)

Life, Peace, Light, Sun

“The experience of a sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind (2008)

Sadness, Heart

“I kind of knew coming back after giving birth was gonna be a process and that I was going to have to be patient with myself and my body. [But] I definitely put pressure on myself.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"Alex Morgan Reveals How She Bounced Back After Childbirth & How Daughter ‘Magnified’ Her Equal Pay Fight" https://hollywoodlife.com/2020/11/17/alex-morgan-post-baby-body-training-soccer-equal-pay-interview/ (November 17, 2020)

“Cut away all of those feelings that showcase your weakness and develop the strong character that you have always been dreaming since birth.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dreams, Feeling, Strong

“It's not surprising that we are all craving for the diplomas, degrees and masters. I strongly believe that journey began with your birth certificate. Which is safely kept inside the house, where it belongs!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Housing

“Even your birth was just a probability of an ovum meeting up with the spermatozoon and becoming fertilised inside the uterus.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“From birth to death, love is the motto of every living being.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Death

“Sunrise and sunset are all the same from an observer's point of view. As life is the same at birth and at death. The true Self continues.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Death

“This time can be seen as a time when we are experiencing the birth pains of new civilization... It's not me. It's the power of the inner truth of the story. It's an honor... a privilege.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA, (July 2010)

Pain, Truth, Time

“He said the giant was a deity that offered salvation from a meaningless cycle of birth and rebirth, and perhaps the cracked stonework still possessed a lingering divinity.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 329
Cloud Atlas (2004), An Orison of Sonmi~451 (Part 2)

“Because if you were born there to a foreigner, this country will only be the place of your birth, without being your homeland.”

Emer de Vattel book The Law of Nations

The Law of Nations (1758)
Original: (fr) car si vous y etes ne d'un etranger, ce pays sera seulement le lieu de votre naissance, sans etre votre patrie

Country