Midwife Quotes - Page 2

• Women's bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.

  Sarah J. Buckley

  Inspirational, Generations, Body

  26 Copy quote

• The listener is the midwife in the difficult birth of the word.

  Mesa Selimovic

  Birth, Difficult, Listeners

  Meša Selimović (1999). “The Fortress”, p.13, Northwestern University Press

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

  Karl Marx

  Force, Pregnant

  Karl Marx (2016). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Economist”, p.447, VM eBooks

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.

  Dan Simmons

  Reality, Mad, Poet

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.238, Spectra

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are the only species of mammal that doubts our ability to give birth. It's profitable to scare women about birth. But let's stop it. I tell women: Your body is not a lemon.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Inspirational, Women, Giving

  FaceBook post by Ina May Gaskin from Mar 22, 2015

  1486 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you are in hard labor, remember that the length of labor is usually proportional to the number of people around. Avoid the presence of anybody who might release adrenaline. The best situation I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody else around than an experienced, motherly and silent midwife who does not behave like a guide or an observer.

  Michel Odent

  Numbers, People, Silence

  468 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Art, Children

  17 Copy quote

• Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.

  Sylvia Plath

  Gold, Watches, Elements

  'Morning Song' (1965)

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prayer is the midwife of mercy, that helps to bring it forth.

  Matthew Henry

  Prayer, Helping, Mercy

  Matthew Henry, Leslie F. Church (1992). “The NIV Matthew Henry Commentary in One Volume: Based on the Broad Oak Edition”, p.4040, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.

  Stephen Spender

  Justice, Criticism, Certain

  Stephen Spender's lecture at Brooklyn College, as quoted in "The New York Times", November 20, 1984.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was not the midwife of the Law School, but its fraternal twin.

  Norman Lamm

  School, Law, Twins

  22 Copy quote

• No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo's Women's War, the marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.

  Adrienne Rich

  Inspiring, War, Believe

  21 Copy quote

• Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Inspirational, Writing, Ideas

  137 Copy quote

• The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Life, Fall, Kissing

  10 Copy quote

• Paddy was in the delivery room when the midwife handed him a black baby. "Is this yours?" she asked "probably" said Paddy "she burns everything else"

  Billy Connolly

  Funny, Baby, Humor

  13 Copy quote

• It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Mistake, Doctors, Physicians

  FaceBook post by Ina May Gaskin from Jun 28, 2012

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

  Alain de Botton

  Moving, Journey, Ships

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.32, Penguin UK

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The writer is the midwife of understanding.

  Arundhati Roy

  Understanding

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a nutshell, I am a mom, a grandma, and a midwife.

  Robin Lim

  Mom, Grandma

  "An Interview With Robin Lim | CNN Woman of The Year". Interview with Polly Armstrong, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No times were more dangerous than when our country was born, when revolution was our midwife.

  Daniel Inouye

  Country, Revolution, Born

  1987 Response to Adm John M Poindexter and Lt Col Oliver L North's contention that their actions were greatly influenced by 'a dangerous world'. In the NewYork Times, 24 Jul.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Creator is not a careless mechanic.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Pregnancy, Moose, Birth

  Ina May Gaskin (2010). “Ina May's Guide to Childbirth”, p.141, Random House

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Women are being told to get midwives [in UK] because there's not enough room and there's not enough pain medicine at the hospitals.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Pain, Medicine, Rooms

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

  John Dewey

  Democracies Have, Democracy, Generations

  John Dewey (1980). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924”, p.139, SIU Press

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• The one seeks a midwife to deliver his thoughts, the other, someone to assist: thus a good conversation comes into being.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Conversation, Good Conversation, Midwifery

  7 Copy quote

• No other natural bodily function is painful and childbirth should not be an exception

  Grantly Dick-Read

  Pregnancy, Birth, Painful

  26 Copy quote