Quotes about birth
page 4

Gregor Strasser photo
William Empson photo

“Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Arachne" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 34.
The Complete Poems

Neil Peart photo
Sarah Bakewell photo
Iamblichus photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

Laraine Day photo

“A lot of sources said I was born in 1917. That is incorrect. I was born in 1920. 1917 was the year the studios listed as my birth year to make me appear younger.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The New York Times, "A Conversaton with Laraine Day, Hollywood's Girl Next Door", June 9, 1984.

Bernie Sanders photo
Becky Stark photo

“The whole world was gathered
At the shore of the earth
Holding hands and celebrating
The little girl’s birth.”

Becky Stark (1976) American singer

Hymn composed by Stark, quoted in "North American Songbird" by Zoë Wolff, in The New York Times (3 June 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/fashion/03nite.html?_r=1&ref=fashion

David Attenborough photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Edwin Arnold photo
Plutarch photo

“To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

54 Iphicrates
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

Ron Paul photo
Paul Cézanne photo
Francis Parkman photo

“The Revolution began at the top,—in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,—and propagated itself downwards.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Source: Montcalm and Wolfe http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14517/14517-8.txt (1884), Ch. 1

Sri Aurobindo photo
Joel Bakan photo

“A century and a half after its birth, the modern business corporation, an artificial person made in the image of a human psychopath, now is seeking to remake real people in its image.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 5, Corporations Unlimited, p. 135

Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Christina Rossetti photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Immortal Technique photo

“Revolution is the birth to equality and the antithesis to oppression.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

One (Remix)
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Ray Bradbury photo

“He arose, pacing the floor
Strewn with books, his mind big with the poem
Soon to be born, his nerves tense to endure
The long torture of delayed birth.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"A Person From Porlock"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

Susan Saint James photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
Floris Cohen photo
Jim Garrison photo
Helen Hayes photo
Merrick Garland photo

“This is the greatest honor of my life, other than Lynn agreeing to marry me 28 years ago. It's also the greatest gift I have ever received except, and there's another caveat, the birth of our daughters.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Remarks by the President Announcing Judge Merrick Garland as his Nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick, Garland, w:Merrick Garland, The White House, March 16, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_the_President_Announcing_Judge_Merrick_Garland_as_his_Nominee_to_the_Supreme_Court#Remarks_by_Judge_Garland]; quote then excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/key-quotes-obamas-nomination-merrick-garland-37695552, ABC News, Quotes on Obama's Nomination of Merrick Garland, Associated Press, March 16, 2016]
Remarks by Judge Garland upon nomination to Supreme Court of the United States (2016)

John Dewey photo
Benjamin Watson photo
Matthew Stover photo
Johannes Kepler photo
John Adams photo

“My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by the human mind.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Reply to an invitation to 50th Independence Day celebrations from a committee of the citizens of Quincy, Massachusetts (7 June 1826); quoted in "Eulogy, Pronounced at Bridgewater, Massachusetts" http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02570179&id=17ge0_OSAfIC&pg=RA1-PA160&lpg=RA1-PA160&dq=%22solemn+services+of+that+day+on+which+will+be+completed+%22&num=100 (2 August 1826) by John A. Shaw, in A Selection of Eulogies, Pronounced in the Several States, in Honor of Those Illustrious Patriots and Statesmen, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (1826) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18196/18196.txt
1820s

John F. Kennedy photo

“Only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its severest tests upon the attainment of its maturity.”

Profiles in Courage (1956), p. 17 http://books.google.com/books?id=JVEHpHb-VKQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Pro%EF%AC%81les+in+Courage&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aZntUeC6CpOMyAG2_ICgAw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=individualism%20&f=false
Pre-1960, Profiles in Courage (1956)

Taliesin photo

“I was in the canon
When Absalom was slain.
I was in Llys Don
Before the birth of Gwydion.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

The Tale of Taleisin

Washington Allston photo
John Ruysbroeck photo
Melinda M. Snodgrass photo
David Feherty photo

“I am sorry Nick Faldo couldn't be here this week. He is attending the birth of his next wife.”

David Feherty (1958) professional golfer, broadcaster, writer

Feherty on Faldo's absence. ( LA Times http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/26/sports/la-sp-david-feherty-golf-20120227, Feb 26, 2012 )

George William Russell photo

“Now the quietude of earth
Nestles deep my heart within;
Friendships new and strange have birth
Since I left the city's din.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Camille Paglia photo

“Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 38

Luise Rainer photo
Kabir photo
James Frazer photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime”

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

Speech at Limerick, Ireland (29 June 1963)
1963

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Henry George photo

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

Margaret Sanger photo
James A. Garfield photo
Annie Besant photo

“Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices.”

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

Source: Theosophical Review, Volume 17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nv8LAAAAIAAJ, p. 139
Source: https://www.theosophy.world/resource/ebooks/karma-annie-besant Karma

Margaret Sanger photo
Margaret Sanger photo

“Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks— those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

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

"Apostle of Birth Control Sees Cause Gaining Here", The New York Times, , p. XII http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C01E1DF1F30E333A2575BC0A9629C946295D6CF.

Kunti photo
Percival Lowell photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
John Bright photo
John Barrowman photo
Edward Young photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Jared Polis photo

“Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado has announced the birth of a new son, making him the only openly gay member of Congress to be a parent.”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

[Gay congressman announces birth of new son, Associated Press, December 1, 2011, Houston Chronicle]
About

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Yoshida Kenkō photo
Sean Hannity photo

“Donald Trump brought up the issue of the birth certificate and it's getting huge buzz around the country. Even Chris Matthews has called for, you know, the birth certificate to be released. Why can't they just release the birth certificate, you know, and just move on?”

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

Hannity
Fox News
Television
2011-03-25
Hannity Says It's "Not True" That Obama Has Shown His Birth Certificate
Media Matters for America
2011-03-25
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201103250042
2011-03-30

Aldo Capitini photo

“And you mother still close to me,
you know that it is not enough to live an ordered and honest life.
You have been faithful for years to bring order into our house.
As soon as the dawn appeared in the night sky,
you rose towards the tasks awaiting you –
in the silence of a mental prayer.
Perhaps it is not enough even the overwhelming love,
to which you gave the sober expression of concrete acts.
The sacred wool, the steaming milk and the bed
composed with inimitable care by your hands.
Going back in time you recounted to your children their births,
and the birthdays have slowly vanished.
The beginning is now found from a thousand beginnings,
with the ancient, with the unknown, with Christ.
A present act includes them all,
opening after the events have passed.
And there is a severe duty for struggle,
something in our own life could be wrenched away by it.
The guards will soon appear,
and they will take me to my cell with the high window.
You will still be with me,
as mother and inexhaustible human presence.
Giving freely of your love, you still knew that your son is freedom.
You were a nearness, that always found something to do.
I have watched you unflinching under hardness and spite,
always moving, and acting,
holding back your inner rebellion you had pity on rage.
Now we are together to work and open all around.
In the loving gift to the world which ever crucifies us
is our fulfilment.
Seeing its limitations, still to treasure everything
is the gesture of infinite miracle,
and you were right: order comes from this principle,
the earthly goods, as our brothers the prophets tell us,
will be given unto us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

“The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Come Back, Dizzy" (p.187)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Gancho Tsenov photo
Joan Rivers photo

“My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid followed me everywhere. It was like having a dog on a leash.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in Funny Ladies (2001), by B. Adler, p. 213

Howard Bloom photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Marianne Moore photo
Shane Claiborne photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“We aim to make Tainan a Muslim-friendly city with services from birth to death.”

Li Meng-yen (2018) cited in " Islam Campus Summit held at National Cheng Kung University http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201806070021.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 7 June 2018

Mo Yan photo
Akira Ifukube photo

“He (Babaji) is not preaching any new religion. He has come to preach the religion, which occurred at the time of Creation, and that is the Sanatan Dharma - the Eternal Religion. He has come to preach the Sanatan Dharma only. We can determine the date from which every religion started. For example, the Muslim religion was started by Mohammed 1400 years ago and this is recorded in their scriptures. Christianity started with birth of Christ, 2000 years ago. Before Christ and Mohammed existed, the world and its people were living. The Sanatan Dharma has been followed for thousands and millions of years and no one is able to trace the date it began. You may try to understand this spontaneous religion this way: the dharma (law or nature) of fire is to burn; the dharma of water is to be wet; the air has to blow. Can one tell on what day the fire started to burn, the water to be wet, and the air to blow? No one can say. Sanatan Dharma is like a great ocean. From that ocean, each country has dug canals according to their needs and purposes. But canals cannot give total satisfaction as the ocean gives complete bliss. The Lord is showing a vision of the Sanatan Dharma, which is like the great ocean, and this is the greatest form of knowledge. Until now, people only had knowledge of their canals. Now the Lord is showing us that we aren't just bubbles in a canal, but rather bubbles in the great ocean. As long as we have individuality, we are seen as bubbles; when we disappear, we are one with the ocean. (Vishnu Dutt Shastriji about Haidakhan Babaji and Sanatan Dharma)”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

25 March 1983
The Teachings of Babaji

Karel Appel photo

“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

George W. Bush photo
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo

“Birth bestows less of honour than it demands; and to boast of ancestry is but to praise the merit of others.”

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Son, 1726, p. 139

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
James M. McPherson photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo