Quotes about mother (2665 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

God , Truth

“Some mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Cut It Out (2004)
Source: Wall and Piece

Children

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Inspirational , Motivational , Deep , Happy

“How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

Interview by Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone (18 April 2017) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/harry-styles-opens-up-about-famous-flings-honest-new-lp-w476928
Context: Who's to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular, right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That's not up to you to say. Music is something that's always changing. There's no goal posts. Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they're not serious? How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans – they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.

World , Girl , Future

“Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn's my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

Song Body Electric

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

Love , Life , World , Religion

“But I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence. Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can. Your mother can't reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn't show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man. When I was young I was quiet, withdrawn. I read a lot, wrote poetry, kept a diary. I watched TV all day. I stayed in front of the television. It was when I was in front of the TV by myself, being alone in the house by myself, having to cook dinner by myself, eat by myself. Just being by myself and looking at TV, at families and all these people out there in this pretend world. I knew I could be part of it if I pretended too, So early on I just watched and emulated … and I just thirsted for that. I thought if I could be and act like those characters, act like those people, I could have some of their joy. If I could act like I had a big family I wouldn't feel as lonely.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

People , World , Family , Way

“I don't sing my mother tongue
No, this is not a love song”

Till Lindemann (1963) German industrial metal musician

"Amerika"
Reise, Reise (2004)

Love , Singing

“The child is a combination of the father and the mother. Therefore, he is the role model of his parents.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Parent

“I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.”

Aleister Crowley book Moonchild

Source: Moonchild

Way

“It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Mother's Day , For Parents , For Mother , Imagination

“The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Mother's Day , For Mother , Love , Children

“Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Universe

“If today is Children's Day, yesterday I said that child… the children's day is mother's day, father's day and teachers' day, but is also the day of the animals. Whenever you look at a child, there is always a hidden figure, which is a dog behind, which is something very important.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

Speech in Porto Alegre http://www2.planalto.gov.br/acompanhe-o-planalto/discursos/discursos-da-presidenta/discurso-da-presidenta-da-republica-dilma-rousseff-na-cerimonia-de-anuncio-de-investimentos-do-pac-mobilidade-urbana-e-entrega-de-57-maquinas-motoniveladoras ( YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IvZToSwgE), October 12.
2013

Children , Dogs , Teachers , Animals

“I am the son of an illiterate father and mother.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) Brazilian politician, 35th president of Brazil

Source: Speech, August 2005, published at villagemagazine.ie

“I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say "yes women can".”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

For women , Girl , Hope , Women

“The mother of all the skills is to learn the art of paying attention—Remembering every step you make or anything that’s around you.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning , Art

“The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Love , Children

“Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.”

Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) Russian-Soviet writer and poet

Children , Cry

“Be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions; and although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed so to do only to inform your conscience and inform your children and families, not to make Scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Last speech to parliament, December 24, 1545.
English Church History from the Death of King Henry VII to the Death of Archbishop Parker, Rev. Alfred Plummer, 1905, Edinburg, T. & T. Clark, p. 85. http://books.google.com/books?id=ofMOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA85&dq=%22+you+be+permitted+to+read+holy+scriptures%22

God , Children , Family , Understanding

“I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1st. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no noblers in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.”

Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) Russian mystic

Grigory Rasputin in a letter to the Tsarina Alexandra, 7 Dec 1916

Life , Death , Hate , Children

“A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Context: Nana (to Mariam) : A man's heart isn't like a woman's womb, Mariam! It won't bleed, it won't make room for you. A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. I'm all you have in this world, Mariam and when I'm gone, you'll have nothing. You are nothing!

Heart

“The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law.”

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

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Men , God , Law , Suffering

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People , Education , School , Intelligence

“Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Daughters

“My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.”

Waris Dirie book Desert Flower

Source: Desert Flower

Flowers , Nature

“When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

As quoted in Life with Picasso, by François Gilot, 1964, p. 60
1940s

“Mary is the great mother. She is the mother. That's what Mary is. Whether she existed or not, is not the point. She exists at least as a hyper-reality. She exists as the mother. What's the sacrifice of the mother? That's easy: if you're a mother who's worth her salt, you offer your son to be destroyed by the world. That's what you do. And that's what's going to happen. He's going to be born, he's going to suffer, he's going to have his trouble in life, he's going to have his illnesses, he's going to face his failures and catastrophes, and he's going to die. That's what's going to happen, and if you're awake you know that, and then you say, 'well, perhaps he will live in a way that will justify that.' And then you try to have that happen. And that's what makes you worthy of a statue like [The Pieta]. 'Is it right to bring a baby into this terrible world?' Well, every woman asks herself that question. Some say no, and they have their reasons. Mary answers 'yes' voluntarily. Mary is the archetype of the woman who answers yes to life voluntarily. Not because she is blind. She knows what's going to happen. So, she's the archetypal representation of the woman who says yes to life knowing full well what life is. She's not naive. She's not someone who got pregnant in the backseat of a 1957 Chevy during one night of half-drunk idiocy. Not that. She does so consciously. Consciously, knowing what's to come. And then she allows it to happen, which is a testament to mothers.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts

Life , World , Way , Failure

“Mother, I have bargained and bought Govinda!
Let some say:Cheap! Let some say:Costly!
I have weighed in the balance.
Let some say:He is in the house, some say! In the woods!
Sporting in the company of Radha!
When Meera’s Lord Giridhar Krishna comes, love.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

V.K.Subramanian in "Mystic Songs of Meera", p. 23

Love , Sport , Housing

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

National Prayer Breakfast speech, Washington, D.C. (3 February 1994) http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0039.html.
1990s

Love , Women , War , People

“Had God Himself intended women to be inferior, He would have ordained it so that mothers would have given birth to daughters at the end of the fifth month of pregnancy. The supply of mother’s milk would naturally have been half of that in case of a son. But that is not the case. How can it be? Is not God just and most merciful?”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

On God Gives, Man Robs , 1927. http://archive.thedailystar.net/magazine/2005/07/05/reflections.htm

Women , God , Birth , Nature

“The love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbor away. … If America had been twice the size it is, there still would not have been enough.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches, p. 75
Sourced quotes

Love , People , Disease , Religion

“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

Death , Women , Men , Children

“Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn't be defeated by life without them.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

(2009) Independent News article 2009 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/hayao-miyazaki-modern-movies-are-too-weird-for-me-1678129.html
On Ponyo

Life , People , Dependency

“The Police got great credit and praise in the papers for arresting the mother of 12 children one an infant on her breast and those two quiet hard working innocent men who would not know the difference a revolver and a saucepan handle and kept them six months awaiting trial and then convicted them on the evidence of the meanest article that ever the sun shone on it.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Men , Children , Sun

“The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi Daylight (1990)

“I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)
Context: That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Children

“I am no mother, and I won't be one.”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

“They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5712889.Sitting_Bull
Attributed quotes

Spring

“Victory to you Mother Karnataka,
The daughter of Mother India!
Hail the land of beautiful rivers and forests!
Hail the abode of saints and seers!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate (1930)

Beauty , Victory , Daughters

“Fear will hold you back from achieving happiness in life. Expectation is the mother of fear.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fear , Happiness , Life

“And to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in
a merry hour.
BEATRICE
No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there
was a star danced, and under that was I born.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Star , Question , Dance

“my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Smile , Fish , Time , Happiness

“I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

For Father , Love , God , Thinking

“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Boy , Time

“My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Mother's Day , For Mother , Life

“Every woman becomes their mother. That's their tragedy. And no man becomes his. That's his tragedy.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I.
Variant: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Funny

“Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.”

Homér Iliad

XVIII. 130–131 (tr. Robert Fagles). Cf. Iliad, XVII. 446–447.
Samuel Butler's translation:
: Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.
Robert Fitzgerald's translation:
: Of mortal creatures, all that breathe and move,
earth bears none frailer than mankind.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Variant: Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.
Source: The Iliad

“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Death , Beauty , Flowers

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Children

“The thing about smart mother fuckers is that sometimes, they sound like crazy mother fuckers to stupid mother fuckers…”

Robert Kirkman (1978) American comic book writer

Source: The Walking Dead, Vol. 09: Here We Remain

Stupidity

“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Personality

“A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Fools , Boy

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are therir own”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Children

“Music is my mother and my father; it is my work and my rest… my blood… my compass… my love…”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Love , Music

“Don't you ever get tired of asking questions?'
'Never. They're mother's milk to me.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

Question

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life , Children , People , Lie

“I first saw the light on the 5th of August, 1860, I was born in Lee Street, Wharf Street, Leicester. The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant's feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity.”

Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) English man with severe deformities

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

People , Light , Time , Animals

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Life , Pain , World , Penalty

“Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Crito
Plato, Crito

Men , God , Understanding , Country

“Mother Mary, like us, was born in sin of sinful parents, but the Holy Spirit covered her, sanctified and purified her so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood. The Holy Spirit permitted the Virgin Mary to remain a true, natural human being of flesh and blood, just as we. However, he warded off sin from her flesh and blood so that she became the mother of a pure child, not poisoned by sin as we are. For in that moment when she conceived, she was a holy mother filled with the Holy Spirit and her fruit is a holy pure fruit, at once God and truly man, in one person”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker; republished as Sermons of Martin Luther (1996), p. 291

God , Nature , Parent , Personality

“There is no man, let him be aware of it or not, who is not a combatant in this hot contest; no one who does not take an active part in the responsibility of the defeat or victory. The prisoner in his chains and the king on his throne, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the captive and the free, the old man and the child, the civilized and the savage, share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced, is either inspired by God or by the world, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the one or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; here the system of substitutes or volunteers finds no place. In it is unknown the exception of sex or age; here no attention is paid to him who says, I am the son of a poor widow; nor to the mother of the paralytic, nor to the wife of the cripple. In this warfare all men born of woman are soldiers.
And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party. Don’t tire yourself in seeking a place of security against the chances of war, for you tire yourself in vain; that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no combat. But do not imagine, however, that the gates of eternity shall be opened for you, unless you first show the wounds you bear; those gates are only opened for those who gloriously fought here the battles of the Lord, and were, like the Lord, crucified.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

Men , God , War , Age

“Die for the Virgin, for your mother the Empress, for the royal family. The Church will pray to God for the dead. The survivor has honor and glory.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

"The Art of Victory: The Life and Achievements of Field Marshal Suvorov" - Page 217 by Philip Longworth - 1966.

God , Family , Dead

“The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors … bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time … I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world … Of course the babies are very badly protected … These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant.”

Emmeline Pankhurst book My Own Story

My Own Story (1914), pp. 25–28.

Women , World , Education , Girl

“Regardless of whom you pray to, during war our experiences as a community and as mothers are the same.”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Gruber Foundation, Women's Rights Prize (2009)

War , Communication

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

Life , Music , Search , Passion

“What a childhood I had. My mother never breast-fed me. She said she liked me as a friend.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 19

Childhood

“Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Pop Chronicles, Show 7 - The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19754/m1/, interview recorded 1956 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

People , Music

“On account of this personal union and communion of the natures, Mary, the most blessed virgin, did not conceive a mere, ordinary human being, but a human being who is truly the Son of the most high God, as the angel testifies. He demonstrated his divine majesty even in his mother's womb in that he was born of a virgin without violating her virginity. Therefore she is truly the mother of God and yet remained a virgin.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther as quoted in Tappert, Theodore G. (1959). The Book of Concord: the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, p. 595

God , Angels , Nature , Personality

“My mom and I lived at Hollywood and Western, a drug-dealer and prostitute corner. It was pretty terrifying. I got beat up a lot. I saw people have sex in the alleys. I remember I was five years old, and this guy with a trench coat, needles and crack cornered me. Early on, seeing the devastation on my block, seeing heroin addicts, made me think twice about ever getting involved in drugs. It's evil. Once you take that step and experiment, drugs can take over your life. You are not yourself anymore. That's something I never wanted. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. It was kind of just me and my parents. But because of them, the neighborhood did not have a bad effect on me. My dad introduced me to artists, and every few months we'd go to some hippie doo-dah parade as Mudmen in our underwear, carrying sticks and covered in mud. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life , People , School , Sex

“She is rightly called not only the mother of the man, but also the Mother of God … It is certain that Mary is the Mother of the real and true God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 11, Vol. 24, 107

God

“Furthermore, how will you endure [the Romanists'] terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Luther's Works, 47:45; cf. also Anderson, Stafford & Burgess (1992), p. 29

God , Confidence , Fashion , Christ

“At the dinner table when I was very little, I would hear people bickering – the father saying something, the mother choosing to defend herself. To escape the bickering, I started modelling the soft bread with my fingers. With the dough of the French bread – sometimes it was still warm – I would make little figures. And I would line them up on the table and this was really my first sculpture.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions, 2010

People

“A woman who says 'because I am working I will not be a mother' is actually denying her feminity.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Turkey's Erdogan says childless women are 'incomplete'" http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/turkey-erdogan-childless-women-incomplete-160606042442710.html, Al Jazeera (June 6, 2016)

“The "great things" are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child. She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: "They are great things," impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Commentary on the Magnificat (Das Magnificat), A.D. 1521
<cite>Luther's Works</cite>, American Edition, vol. 21, p. 326, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Concordia Publishing House, 1956. ISBN 057006421X

Men , God , Star , Understanding

“[S]he became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child…. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God…. None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Luther's Works, 21:326, cf. 21:346

Men , God , Star , Flowers

“I'll give you an example — in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. …85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Entrevista com o médico americano P. Adams" in Roda Viva - Entrevista (13 November 2007)

Money , Pain , Time

“That one mother [of victim] that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should get 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 valiums and go lie down.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Source: CBS 2 News interview (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YqB_4N6erE

Lie , Thinking , Time

“The terrible situation of the country makes my mind restless and I cannot keep silent. Meaningless ritual keep the Hindus divided in hundred sects. Sop we are suffering from series of defeats. We are tired and worn-out by the fortunes by the internal external enemies. The Muslims are united in religion and rituals. The Bengali Muslims the South Indian Muslims and even the Muslims outside India-all are united. They always stand untied in face of danger. The broken and divided Hindus will not be able to combat them. Days are coming when the Hindus will be again humiliated by the Muslims. "You are a mother of children, one day you will die, passing the future of Hindus society on the weak shoulders of your children, but think about their future."”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

From the letter to Hemantabala Sarkar, written on 16the October, 1933, quoted in Bengali weekly `Swastika', 21-6-1999 http://hindusamhati.blogspot.com/2013/05/thoughts-of-rabindranath-tagore-on.html

Children , Religion , Thinking , Suffering

“Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem
A thousand times his Mother bore,
Is he not born again in thee
Then art thou lost for evermore.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

Art , Time , Christ

“Aren’t these liberals, those reprobate defenders of individualism, ashamed to see the tears of the mothers and wives, or don’t these cold-blooded accountants even notice? Have they already grown so inhuman that they are no longer capable of feeling? It is understandable why bolshevism simply removed such creatures. They were worthless to humanity, nothing but an encumbrance to their Volk. Even the bees get rid of the drones when they can no longer be of service to the hive. The Bolshevik procedures are thus quite natural.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), pp.16-17

Feeling , Understanding , Nature , Tear

“If any changes were to be made in society it had to be by the mothers.”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Gruber Foundation, Women's Rights Prize (2009)

Change

“The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 727
Context: The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future.

Beauty , History

“The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 1, as interpreted by Ursula K. LeGuin (1998)
Context: The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

Way

“Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.”

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

I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Truth , Love , Making love

“I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. So my sister, who was four years younger than me, managed to lose her virginity before I did. It reminded me of how pathetic I was, that at the age of twenty-two, I was still a virgin.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Sister , Housing , Age

“I tried out that Buckethead guy. I met with him and asked him to work with me but only if he got rid of the fucking bucket. So I came back a bit later and he's wearing this green fucking Martian's-hat thing. I said, 'Look, just be yourself!' He told me his name was Brian, so I said that's what I'd call him. He says, 'No one calls me Brian except my mother.' So I said, 'Pretend I'm your mum then!' I haven't even got out of the room and I'm already playing fucking mind games with the guy. What happens if one day he's gone and there's a note saying, 'I've been beamed up?”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

[Laughs] Don't get me wrong, he's a great player. He plays like a motherfucker!
Revolver interview; as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne "Says Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist Buckethead Auditioned For His Solo Band" http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ozzy-osbourne-says-ex-guns-n-roses-guitarist-buckethead-auditioned-for-his-solo-band/, Blabbermouth.net, January 5, 2005

Game , Guy

“Patience is the vehicle to determination, the mother of endurance..”

Manuel Archives

Patience

“The heart is the throne of God and the heart is the mother of all the desires!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God , Heart

“Oh, Zoeybird, did I call your mother's husband a damn turd monkey outloud?'
'Yes, Grandma, you did.'
She looked at me, her dark eyes sparkling. 'Good.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Grandma

“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul to the corpse of a French man he has just killed, Ch. 9
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Context: I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

Death , Fear , Forgiveness