Mayanot Birthright Quotes

The recognition that human beings are specifically and deliberately responsible for whatever aberrances farm animals may embody, that their discordances reflect our, not their, primary disruption of natural rhythms, and that we owe them more rather than less for having stripped them of their birthright and earthrights has not entered into the environmentalist discussions that I've encountered to date. ~ Karen Davis

Swaraj is our birthright. No one can deprive us of it unless we forfeit it ourselves. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The darkness is my birthright. ~ Rick Riordan

Evil is boring. Cynicism is pointless. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Hopelessness is self-indulgent. On the other hand: Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Chronic ecstasy is a learnable skill. ~ Rob Brezsny

Now, we are agreed, I and my destinies. The total world, Above, below, whate'er is seen or known, And all that men, and all that gods enact, Hopes, fears, imaginations, purposes; With joy, and pain, and every pulse that beats In the great body of the universe, I give to the eternal sisterhood, To make my peace withal! And cast this husk, This hated, mangled, and dishonour'd carcase Into the balance; so have I redeem'd My proper birthright, even the changeless mind, The imperishable essence uncontroll'd. ~ Hartley Coleridge

In the meantime, the Bear had attained the Avenue, where blinding, brilliant traffic travelled like a line of light from north to south, as if between worlds. But it was Jacob who saw the ladder, wrestled with the angel, and obtained a birthright under false pretenses. The Bear had done none of these things. He pulled the hat brim farther down on his face and walked south beneath the vault of darkness, above him like guardians or heralds the electric signs of bars and stores- white, orange, yellow, gold, red, brilliant blue and green, occasional imperial purple - as if they were angels that had descended to earth only to hire themselves out as lures for business, possibly for reasons of pity. The Bear walked beneath them like a resolute and powerful man, the saxophone case at his side swinging like a cache of fate, love, gold or vengeance. When he realised that he could have his pick of them - that all options, attributions and possibilities actually were open to him, that he was, at the moment, exalted, liberated, free - he stopped walking for a moment, put down the saxophone case, looked gradually around him at the Avenue, raised his snout and smiled broadly, and there on the pavement stretched out his great and inevitable arms. Aah. The night entered him like honey, and he began so heartily and with such depth of pleasure that it might have been for the first time in his life, to laugh out loud. ~ Rafi Zabor

Flourishing is everyone's birthright. I'm trying to break this hold that being smiley and cheery has on what people think the good life is. ~ Steve Jurvetson

I was Prince Charming's sister. You know---a real princess. Not through marriage, but by birthright. And---hold on. Are you listening? This is important---So. Are. You. ~ Julie C. Donaldson

It's about time you admitted that you are a miraculous work of art. You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises. ~ Rob Brezsny

Worth, courage, honor, these indeed
Your sustenance and birthright are. ~ Edmund Clarence Stedman

I couldn't comprehend what we were about to face, but I knew it was my birthright to fight for it. ~ Nicole Gulla

Amend Constitution to remove aliens' birthright citizenship. ~ Ron Paul

We're compensated metaphysically with the absolute freedom to define and pursue whatever it is we believe will make our lives worthwhile- a dubious birthright that imparts a wearisome burden of its own. Rather like choosing one all-important meal from an infinite menu. ~ Chris Chester

Other attempts appear as scars, weals, parentheses in conversation, absent days in his diary. But, at the same time, according to Stuart's weird sense of etiquette on such subjects, only one son in a family is allowed to kill himself, else it puts too much strain on the parents, and his brother, Gavvy, like Jacob in the Old Testament, has stolen Stuart's birthright. ~ Alexander Masters

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat. ~ George Bernard Shaw

As if it were our very birthright, which we could not come to grasp the meaning of until this time of middle life when we looked on only as many years ahead as already lay behind us. ~ Anne Rice

Oh, go on' you prod encouragingly. 'Well, just a small one then,' they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish. All this is completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright. You might as well say 'Oh, I shouldn't really' if someone tells you to take a deep breath. ~ Bill Bryson

Sell the damned estate, Devon. You owe nothing to those people. Eversby Priory isn't your birthright."
Devon sent him a sardonic glance. "Then how did I end up with it?"
"By bloody accident! ~ Lisa Kleypas

I really want to believe. I find the goodies offered by Christianity extremely attractive. But I am damned (again!) if I am going to sell my evolutionary birthright for a mess of religious pottage. ~ Michael Ruse

No one who survives to speak
new language, has avoided this:
the cutting-away of an old force that held her
rooted to an old ground
the pitch of utter loneliness
where she herself and all creation
seem equally dispersed, weightless, her being a cry
to which no echo comes or can ever come.
But in fact we were always like this,
rootless, dismembered: knowing it makes the difference.
Birth stripped our birthright from us,
tore us from a woman, from women, from ourselves
so early on
and the whole chorus throbbing at our ears
like midges, told us nothing, nothing
of origins, nothing we needed
to know, nothing that could re-member us. ~ Adrienne Rich

Self-empowerment is our birthright. ~ Miss Dee

Fumbling for a word is everybody's birthright. ~ Anthony Burgess

The right to pursue happiness sends me and other Americans, even here where we are meant to resist outside temptation, on a hunt for it. If I'm not hungry, I might seek other forms of happiness, or pleasure, which is part of my American birthright, though the most misconceived notion of them or the most difficult to realize; I can pursue several means and ways to be happy, if I am able to forget what makes me habitually sad. ~ Lynne Tillman

Just as we send young American Jews to Israel through the Birthright program, we need to also consider a 'reverse Birthright' for Israeli kids to come see America. ~ Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things. ~ Sarah Lacy

Life itself has become the final disposable, exploitable resource. We will do anything. Level whole mountains, erase whole species, relocate mighty rivers, burn forests to the ground, change the pH of the water, blanket ourselves in toxic chemistry. It took two million years for our species just to stand up and only five hundred to do the rest. Our culture is one of abundance, of entitlement, and basically little else. We've put our birthright at risk because we don't know how to control ourselves. Our lust. ~ Stephen Markley

History is part of our birthright. We must claim it back and make it transform our lives ~ Ambeth R. Ocampo

One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin's novel, Dead Lagoon: There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven. ~ Samuel P. Huntington

The embrace of essential beastliness, made scientific and respectable by a reading of Darwin that may or may not have done justice to his intentions, thrilled and enthralled Western thought in certain quarters and in fact still does enthrall persons and groups that experience live in society as a barely tolerable constraint on a kind of freedom they consider a birthright. This freedom appears to have most of the essential features of a war of each against all, whether a hot war that compels them to go armed to Starbucks or to church or a cold war that makes a virtue of craftiness and guile, the ability to loot and wreck the national economy without getting caught. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Every child's birthright is a happy home. ~ Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Unconditional Love is our birthright, not judgment or condemnation, and there's nothing we need to do to earn it. This is simply who and what we are. ~ Anita Moorjani

What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor. The worthiness of the man in the white socks who would pull out a picture of his grandkids from his wallet. For us, the factory would never do. And turning away from our birthright - our grandfather in the white socks - is the thing that ruined us. ~ Charlie LeDuff

Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright. He tho ... ught that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. ~ Ayn Rand

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to the standards of that context, any scientific theory is turned into mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. ~ Charles P. Pierce

We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing ... a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use. ~ Plotinus

It is undeniable that every human being is entitled to living space, daily bread, and the protection of the law as a common birthright; these are fundamentals and should not be handed out as an act of charity. ~ Alfred Delp

I went to the States with that amount of prejudice which seems the birthright of every English person, but I found that, under the knowledge of the Americans which can be attained by a traveller mixing in society in every grade, these prejudices gradually melted away. ~ Isabella Bird

I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

As stripped of our ancestral knowledge as we Settlers seem to be, we defy the position of patriarchal dominance and undermine the notion of cultural superiority when we reclaim the roots of our authentic indigenity. It is our birthright as human beings to declare our true status as People of the Earth (as it is for all cultural groups), and if we collectively reject the delusional separation from nature that Empire has forced upon us, we move back into right relationship with Earth Community. Anchoring ourselves deeply into our earth-honoring culture and reclaiming our EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) is a powerful blow against the monolith of cultural imperialism. (Page 43, Chapter 6, "We All Have IK") ~ Pegi Eyers

What seed was planted when you or I arrived on earth with our identities intact? How can we recall and reclaim those birthright gifts and potentials? ~ Parker J. Palmer

An America where every person, no matter their race, their disability or their sexual orientation realizes the full promise of equality that is our birthright as Americans. ~ Bernie Sanders