Motherhood quotes

Motherhood

377 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

377 quotes
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich Poet, Essayist, Feminist

"We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin."

Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman Anarchist, Political Activist, Writer

"I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."

Joan Ryan
Joan Ryan Author

"Motherhood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It's about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you're lucky, he just might be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be."

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Motherhood quotes (page 1 of 19)

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June Jordan Poet, Activist
Motherhood

"Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways."

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Mother Teresa Missionary, Nun
Motherhood

"There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible."

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Dora Russell Artist
Motherhood

"Feminists have emphasized for a long time the importance of each woman's individual entity and the necessity of economic independence. Perhaps it was necessary. But now I think we need some emphasis on the instinctive side of life, sex and motherhood.... Life isn't all earning your living. Unfortunately we fall in love and Feminism must take that into consideration."

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Mahatma Gandhi Political Leader
Motherhood

"Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts."

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D. H. Lawrence Novelist, Poet
Motherhood

"The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind."

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Emma Thompson Actress, Screenwriter, Author
Motherhood

"I do think that despite my best efforts to resist it, I am now a grown-up. It's due to lots of very difficult decisions that you make over a long period of time - about motherhood, wifehood, and work, and all the things that one has to make decisions about."

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Dora Russell Artist
Motherhood

"We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them. Nor should we represent motherhood as something so common and easy that everyone can go through it without harm or suffering and rear her children competently and well."

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