"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings."
— Cheris Kramarae

"I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing."
— Mae West

"No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it."
— Elizabeth Peters

"In politics, If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."
— Margaret Thatcher

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce."
— Mark Twain

"A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men."
— Gloria Steinem

"If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it."
— Sojourner Truth

"The truth shall set you free. But first, it shall piss you off."
— Gloria Steinem

"Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life. "
— Sam Keen

"(pg.92, in a discussion linking "witchcraft" to radical religious movements led by women in the 1640's against slavery, oppression, etc)

"Female prophecy must be situated in the crisis of reproduction in the middle of the seventeenth century. This was the peak period for the criminalization of women in England and throughout Europe, as prosecutions for infanticide, abortion, and witchcraft reached their highest rate. It was also the period in which men began to wrest control of reproduction from women (male midwives appeared in 1625 and forceps soon thereafter); previously, "childbirth and the lying-in period were a kind of ritual collectively staged and controlled by women, from which men were usually excluded." Since the ruling class had begun to recognize its interest in increased fecundity, "attention was focussed on the 'population' as fundamental category for economic and political analysis." The simultaneous births of modern obstetrics and modern demography were responses to this crisis. Both, like the witchcraft prosecutions, sought to rationalize social reproduction in a capitalist context - that is, as the breeding of labor power. A recurring motif in the ruling-class imagination was intercourse between the English witch and the "black man" - a devil or imp. The terror was not limited to an imaginary chamber of horrors; it was an actuality of counterevolution.""
— Linebaugh & Rediker, The Many Headed Hydra

"It makes me really sad that women have been ejected from the seat of their power in this society in terms of what happens around childbirth. In other parts of the world, there are places where women can't drive a car, but they're still in charge of childbirth... The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women do. I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she's just sitting on a couch, but she's actually exhausting herself constructing a human being. The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how 'women's work' is seen."
— Ani DiFranco

"$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding."
— Frank Oski, MD, Professor and Director, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

"Obstetricians and hospitals have found that high-intervention birth, warranted or not, is very profitable. So there is a tremendous financial incentive to bypass the clinically optimal approach, and opt for convenience and profit. For example, many hospitals across the country have eliminated facility-based midwifery practices simply because the low-intervention approach, while clinically sound, does not bring in as many dollars."
— Tonya Jamois, president of ICAN

"Childbirth is normal until proven otherwise "
— Peggy Vincent (from "Baby Catcher, Chronicles of a Modern Midwife")

"Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason."
— Jostein Gaarder (Sophie's World)

"You are the closest I will ever come to magic."
— Suzanne Finnamore (The Zygote Chronicles)

"I emphasize this because some of my colleagues, for whose academic attainments I have great respect, argue" 'You assume too much; this is not proved; this is not strictly scientific. We disagree with your neurology and your psychiatry is misleading, therefore you must be wrong.' My reply has been, with all humility: 'Yes, of course,' and I have returned to the labor ward to be greeted by happy women with their newborn babies in their arms: 'How right you are, Doctor, it is so much easier that way.' That is what really matters to the clinician. He should use the method that gives the best and safest result from all points of view until something better is discovered."
— Grantly Dick-Read

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."
— Socrates

"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, the second half by our children."
— Clarence Darrow

"I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."

"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.

"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"

"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place.""
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)