Quotes about birth
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“Some things are best left a blur. Births and Visa Bills.”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

Source: Shopaholic & Baby

“A person can't help their birth.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Source: Vanity Fair

Help, Personality

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)

Age, Childhood

“Nothing is slower than the true birth of a man.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Rien n'est plus lent que la véritable naissance d'un homme.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 258

“Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Life, Heart

“A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most People live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.”

Dean Koontz book The Husband

Source: The Husband

Life, Death, People

“Accursed from their birth they be
Who seek to find monogamy,
Pursuing it from bed to bed—
I think they would be better dead.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Sunset Gun: Poems

Thinking, Dead

“Nothing can prevent your picture from coming into concrete form except the same power which gave it birth – yourself.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

“How well I know with what burning intensity you live. You have experienced many lives already, including several you have shared with me- full rich lives from birth to death, and you just have to have these rest periods in between.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Death

“For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Life, Death, Women, Men

“The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

Parting, Perfection

“The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.”

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

Dreams

“There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.”

Jim Crace book Being Dead

Source: Being Dead

Death

“Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friend calls it.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

“Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that is left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die. April 9, 1916 Sorbonne”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Pain, Beauty, Heart

“In great hearts the cruelty of life gives birth to good.”

Vasily Grossman book Life and Fate

Source: Life and Fate

Life, Heart

“You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Source: I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Death, Wisdom

“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

Death, Marriage

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

Life, Effort, Personality

“Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die…”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Fate

“I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Sister, Siblings

“To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)

Hope, Hope

“I knew right then and there nothing was ever going to change. It wouldn't matter if I was tall or short or fat or thin or absent every day. I was a loser from birth.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Change

“Feel no guilt. Getting married and giving birth does not mean that you have sold your life away to perfectly healthy people who can get their own damn socks.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Life, People, Feeling

“Give me love, give me peace on earth,
Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth,
Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load,
Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) (1973)
Lyrics

Love, Life, Peace, Hope

“It has always been this way. Death is followed by birth. To reach paradise, man must pass through inferno. - Bertrand Zobrist”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Death, Way

“I've played the powerless in too many dark scenes. I was blessed with a birth and a death and I guess I just want some say in between”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Talk To Me Now
Song lyrics
Variant: I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in-between.

Death

“Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God, Nature, Parent

“Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity...”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Quoted in Amnesty International's essay "From Prisoner to President – A Tribute"

Life, Hope, Sense

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Death

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Dreams, Hope, Feeling, Spring

“You'd think the Angel would have been foresighted enough to give us a birth-control rune, but no dice.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Angels, Thinking

“Technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Death

“Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Life, Pain, Effort

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

Life, Fate

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Cars, For Parents

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”

John Updike Brazil

Source: Brazil

Love, Death, Fate, Fear

“Birth, n. The first and direst of all disasters.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“The birth of the mind is the death of the senses”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Death, Sense

“Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.

Death, People, Nature

“After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Death

“The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Love, Spring

“I have to.
I've been fighting it all night. I'm going to lose. My battle is as futile as a woman feeling the first pangs of labor and deciding it's an inconvenient time to give birth. Nature wins out. It always does.”

Kelley Armstrong book Bitten

Source: Bitten

Feeling, Nature, Time, Fight

“Are you her boyfriend?”
…
No, I’m her fiancé.” Nate said.
We’ve been promised to each other since birth,” Summer added.
Our wedding isn’t until March.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

Wedding, Summer

“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Depuis le jour de ma naissance, ma mort s'est mise en marche. Elle marche à ma rencontre, sans se presser.
"Postambule" in La Fin du Potomac (1939); later published in Collected Works Vol. 2 (1947)

Death

“If men gave birth, they'd be less inconsiderate.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Men

“Yeah, well, I’ll be glad to birth it if it means I can name him something normal. (Zarek)
Yeah, yeah. This from a man who whines like a two-year-old when he stubs his toe. I’d like to see you survive ten hours of childbirth. (Astrid)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

“Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Time

“What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

“Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Life

“She had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life

“I am more than just a Serious basketball fan. I am a life-long Addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Life

“The news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged, a tragic car accident on a late night highway - most milestones of the human journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of a ringing.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life, Cars, Baby, Night

“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-haired child.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Life, Soul, Star, Sleep

“We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Books, Idea

“Child of lightning, beware the earth,
The giants' revenge the seven shall birth,
The forge and the dove shall break the cage,
And death unleash through Hera's rage.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Death, Revenge, Rage

“After 100 years, films should be getting really complicated. The novel has been reborn about 400 times, but it's like cinema is stuck in the birth canal.”

Harmony Korine (1973) American film director and screenwriter

Time

“All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Pain, Beauty, Heart

“Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Life, Death

“I don’t know nothing about birthing puppies, Miss Scarlett, but I can cleave the head off a Daimon without breaking a sweat. (Valerius)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Death, Forgetting

“Fight only in direst need
Not for lust or petty greed
Honor those that do give birth
Respect them well for their full worth”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragon Harper

Source: Dragon Harper

Fight

“Nothing is really lost or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing…
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers
left from early fires,
… shall duly flame again”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Age, World

“Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The Golden Ratio (2002) by Mario Livio

Women, Men, Nature, Knowledge

“A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told.
~ Simon”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Secret, Wedding

“Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”

Mary Roach (1959) American science writer

Life, Death, Forgetting

“Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Death, Beauty

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Effort, Freedom

“Ah is the shortest of human cries, Oh the longest. Man is born in an Ah and dies in an Oh, for birth is immediate and death is like an airplane taking off.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Death

“Hinduism is like a great reservoir of water from which many streams take their rise and to which they again repair after passing through many strange and fair lands. It is a great, creative matrix giving birth to many beautiful and living forms. Itself a historical, it has given birth to many sects and branches with interesting, chequered histories. Paying sole allegiance to the Guide within seated in the cave of the heart, it has put forward from time to time many teachers and sages of incomparable power and vision, incarnating the very Gods above and within.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

God, Beauty, History, Teachers

“The decline of Indian Buddhism was centrally due to the fact that it never offered the Indian laity a complete religion. Early Buddhism knew no ceremonies for birth and death, marriage, illness, and other critical turns of private life… Only for the community of monks did Buddhism provide a complete and well-defined way of life. …But Brahmins were needed for all the ordinary crises in life, ready with their rites and sacred formulas to ward off danger or minimize the damage. This elemental fact assured the survival of Brahminism in India.”

William H. McNeill book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

Life, Death, Marriage, Religion

“Mother and father abandoned me at birth and the author of my life also did not write any worth or merit on the page of destiny.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

His confessional statements on his own experiences made in Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 49

Life

“The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.”

Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) Italian criminologist

Pt. II, ch. 2.
The Man of Genius (1891)

Appearance

“Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station. And what you’re doing now isn’t traveling, it’s just changing countries, which is completely different”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Death, People, Travel

“Vital is the relation between earthly sorrow and eternal satisfaction. The travail to which God's saints are subjected results in the birth of nobler natures and more sanctified spirits. Pain always promotes progress, and suffering invariably ensures success.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.

God, Pain, Nature, Suffering

“One might almost say that the plant is the framework, the foundation of the animal, and that to form the animal it sufficed to cover this foundation with a system of organs fitted to establish relations consists forms with the world outside. It follows of the succession substance of the animal form two quite distinct classes. One class in a continual into its own assimilation molecules that the functions and of excretion; through these functions the animal incessantly transsurrounding bodies, later to reject these molecules when they have become heterogeneous to it. Through this first class of functions the animal exists only within itself; through the other class it exists outside; it is an inhabitant of the world, and not, like the plant, of the place which saw its birth. The animal feels and perceives its surroundings, reflects its sensations, moves of its own will under their influence, and, as a rule, can communicate by its voice its desires and its fears, its pleasures or its pains. I call organic life the sum of the functions of the former class, for all organised creatures, plants or animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the ' animal' life named because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom.”

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) French anatomist and physiologist

Original: (fr) On dirait que le végétal est l'ébauche, le canevas de l'animal, et que, pour former ce dernier, il n'a fallu que revêtir ce canevas d'un appareil d'organes extérieurs, propres à établir des relations. Il résulte de là que les fonctions de l'animal forment deux classes très-distinctes. Les unes se composent d'une succession habituelle d'assimilation et d'excrétion ; par elles il transforme sans cesse en sa propre substance les molécules des corps voisins, et rejette ensuite ces molécules, lorsqu'elles lui sont devenues hétérogènes. Il ne vit qu'en lui, par cette classe de fonctions ; par l'autre il existe hors de lui : il est l'habitant du monde, et non, comme le végétal, du lieu qui le vit naître. Il sent et aperçoit ce qui l'entoure, réfléchit ses sensations, se meut volontairement d'après leur influenc, et le plus souvent peut communiquer par la voix, ses désirs et ses craintes, ses plaisirs ou ses peines. J'appelle vie organique l'ensemble des fonctions de la première classe, parce que tous les êtres organisés, végétaux ou animaux, en jouissent à un degré plus ou moins marqué, et que la texture organique est la seule condition nécessaire à son exercice. Les fonctions réunies de la seconde classe forment la vie animale, ainsi nommée, parce qu'elle est l'attribut exclusif du règne animal. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) Translation: [Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, 1916, London, 28,

https://archive.org/details/formfunctioncont00russ/page/n5/mode/2up]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Xavier Bichat / Quotes

Life, Pain, Pleasure, World

“Every year, of course, our opponents who are well-oiled, and very popular, and who have access to a lot of prestigious support, every year, they say this is over, and the pro-lifers are the extremists. It’s becoming more and more clear that the real extremists are the pro-abortionists. They are the ones that will not allow any dialogue at all. They are the ones who will not allow absolutely any consideration of any restriction on the abortion license, even something as hideous and nauseating as partial-birth abortion. Absolutely not. We do not talk about it. We will not consider it. This is the kind of dug-in, close-minded extremist party, namely the pro-abortionists.”

Timothy M. Dolan (1950) American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

Cardinal Dolan on the ‘Culture of Death’: ‘Isolated, Chic Left’ in Denial About Growing Pro-Life Support in America http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/26/cardinal-dolan-culture-death-isolated-chic-left-denial-growing-pro-life-support-america/ (January 26 2017)

Support

“[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Books, Tree, Reading

“Here's the clear "science:"When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader.This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It's not a stalk of broccoli, it's not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human.If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about "CHOICE," isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that's absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven't studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened.This is an important issue. It's why we can't trust Obama with America's future because he's not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren't. And it's why that for many of us, McCain's selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn't pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn't pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us—our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won't. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can't go there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

A Message from the Governor
HuckPAC
2008-08-23
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1848&CommentPage=5
2011-03-01

Life, People, Education, Religion

“In the twenty-four years since its birth in 1921, the Communist Party of China has gone through three great struggles--the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the War of Resistance Against Japan which is still going on. From its very beginning our Party has based itself on the theory of Marxism-Leninism, for Marxism-Leninism is the crystallization of the most correct and most revolutionary scientific thought of the world proletariat. When the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism began to be integrated with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, the Chinese revolution took on an entirely new complexion and the entire historical stage of New Democracy emerged. Armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, the Communist Party of China has brought a new style of work to the Chinese people, a style of work which essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practicing self-criticism.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

War, People, Truth, World

“Is it wise to say to men of rank and property, who, from old lineage or present possessions have a deep interest in the common weal, that they live indeed in a country where, by the blessings of a free constitution, it is possible for any man, themselves only excepted, by the honest exertions of talents and industry, in the avocations of political life, to make him-self honoured and respected by his countrymen, and to render good service, to the slate; that they alone can never be permitted to enter this career? That they may indeed usefully employ themselves, in the humbler avocations of private life, but that public service they never can perform, public honour they never shall attain? What we have lost by the continuance of this system, it is not for man to know. What we may have lost can more easily be imagined. If it had unfortunately happened that by the circumstances of birth and education, a Nelson, a Wellington, a Burke, a Fox, or a Pitt, had belonged to this class of the community, of what honours and what glory might not the page of British history have been deprived? To what perils and calamities might not this country have been exposed? The question is not whether we would have so large a part of the population Catholic or not. There they are, and we must deal with them as we can. It is in vain to think that by any human pressure, we can stop the spring which gushes from the earth. But it is for us to consider whether we will force it to spend its strength in secret and hidden courses, undermining our fences, and corrupting our soil, or whether we shall, at once, turn the current into the open and spacious channel of honourable and constitutional ambition, converting it into the means of national prosperity and public wealth.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1813/mar/01/mr-grattans-motion-for-a-committee-on in the House of Commons in favour of Catholic Emancipation (1 March 1813). <br class="br">1810s

Life, Men, Secret, Education

“True Christian love cherished in the heart and exemplified in the life, would teach us to put the best possible construction upon the course of our brethren. We should be as jealous of their reputation as of our own. If we are forever suspecting evil, this very fact will so shape their course of action as to produce the very evil which we have allowed ourselves to suspect. In this way, a great many difficulties are manufactured that otherwise would never have had birth, and brethren are often wronged by our being suspicious, free to judge their motives, and express our opinion to others in regard to their actions. That which one may be ready to construe into grave wrongs, may be no more than we ourselves are chargeable with every day.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The Review and Herald (15 April 1880); also in Mind, Character, and Personality (1977), Vol. 2, p. 789

Love, Life, Way, Motivation

“There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life, People, Truth, Family

“What do you think about this birth certificate issue? I mean, it has not been my main issue, but it kind of does get a little odd here after a while. Can't they just produce it and we move on?”

Sean Hannity (1961) American television host, conservative political commentator

Thinking

“To satisfy your curiosity, I can explain very plainly. But since Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, and God's primary object of this dispensation is Christians (it is His will that we lead Christians first because they are the ones who have been keeping the promise of the Second Coming), it is our mission to tell them first, whether they refuse or accept. If I explain everything plainly about the birth of Jesus, it may put a stumbling block in the way of many Christians accepting God's new dispensation. Therefore, I don't want to explain everything too plainly here.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks (1967) Part 7: Bible Interpretation http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/sm-mast/MSTRSP-7.htm (transcriptions of Q&A sessions in March-April 1965)

God, Way

“I start off every time I talk about the birthers, I start off by saying, and it's very interesting, I was a great student at the best college in the country. You know? I want to let people know. I'm a smart guy. Because what they do to the birthers, and I don't even like the term, the birthers. I think it's unfair to them. These are people that want to see a birth certificate. They want to know that the president was born here!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

About Barack Obama's birth certificate. * Fox & Friends
Television
Fox News
2011-03-28
About Barack Obama's birth certificate. * Fox Goes Birther: Trump Tells Unquestioning Co-hosts, "I'm Starting To Wonder...Whether Or Not <nowiki>[Obama]</nowiki> Was Born In This Country"
Media Matters for America
2011-03-28
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201103280006
2011-03-30
2010s, 2011

People, Guy, Thinking, Time

“More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue in birth control.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Editors of American Medicine in a review of Sanger's article "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" published in Birth Control Review, May 1919
Misattributed

Children

“The force of the idea was such that I drew the car to the side of the road and stopped and, for some reason, laughed. It was a loud laugh, unsteady, and sounded, even to my own ears, slightly maniacal. Thinking back now, I realise it was less a laugh than the birth-cry of my dark and twin brother Benjamin Black.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Cars, Idea, Thinking, Cry

“Tomorrow, millions of people will gather with loved ones across Canada and around the world to mark the Christmas holiday.
On this day, Christians reflect on their faith and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. This occasion inspires families and communities to come together, share what they have, and give back to those less fortunate.
May we take this time to reflect on our many blessings, and remind our loved ones how much they mean to us.
On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our entire Liberal Caucus, Sophie and I wish you all a most joyous holiday season. From my family to yours: merry Christmas.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Statement by Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau on Christmas http://www.liberal.ca/statement-by-liberal-party-of-canada-leader-justin-trudeau-on-christmas/ (24 December 2014) <br class="br">2014

Love, People, World, Family