The Accident Of Birth Quotes

#1. We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.

John Berger

#2. What we have earned by the sweat of our brow, we defend with pride. What we have gained by the accident of birth, we guard with prejudice.

Robert Breault

#3. None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

#4. The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

Eric Liu

#5. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

Richard Dawkins

#6. When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson

#7. I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds;
I do not make the accident of birth
The standard of their merit.

Sarah Josepha Hale

#8. Professor Dr Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld often reflected on how fortunate he was to be exactly who he was, and nobody else. When one paused to think who one might have been had the accident of birth not happened precisely as it did, then, well, one could be quite frankly appalled.

Alexander McCall Smith

#9. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#10. Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.

Annie Dillard

#11. There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

Barack Obama

#12. Yet as a distinction, citizenship is entirely artificial. An accident of birth, a quirk in the law, or the whim of a bureaucrat can mean the difference between a life of comfort or a life of struggle.

Stephan Faris

#13. I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.

Emil Cioran

#14. You can't understand samsara, the cycle of birth and death. But try to understand what you can, for it's the essence of Vedic philosophy. Karma determines birth. It is not an accident. It's the fruit of your karma.

D.V. Murthy

#15. I started to say that couldn't happen, that the people I knew wouldn't turn on their friends and neighbors because of an accident of birth. But in the end, I didn't say that, because I wondered if it was the truth.

Charlaine Harris

#16. An accident of birth had signed her death warrant.
He could mark her name off his to-do list.

Linda Howard

#17. I stare at the long, almost elegant thinness of the wrist bone jutting out from a heap of flesh and cloth. All that separates us, that poor woman and me, is an accident of birth.

L.E. Sterling

#18. Talent is no accident of birth. In today's society a good many people seem to have the idea that if one is born without talent, there is nothing he can do about it; they simply resign themselves to what they consider to be their fate.

Shinichi Suzuki

#19. 'Yogi Bear' changed my life in ways that I can't explain because it's not a full feature on me. 'Yogi Bear' - there's everything before 'Yogi Bear,' and there's everything after 'Yogi Bear.' Like a major car accident, or the birth of Christ.

T. J. Miller

#20. You don't belong here if you are unhappy," she continued. "Your mother makes you hateful, and you make her hateful. It doesn't matter if she's your mother. It's an accident of birth. It doesn't have to mean so much." ... "You belong where you have the best chance of being happy ...

Laura Moriarty

#21. We're wedged tight into the accident of our moment in history.

Tessa Hadley

#22. Roth was irritated. Just because he was a Jew too, they always assumed he felt the same way about things. It made him feel a little frustrated. No doubt some of his bad luck had come because he was one, but that was unfair; it wasn't as if he took an interest, it was just an accident of birth.

Norman Mailer

#23. Difference is the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth, and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.

John Hume

#24. Time. Time has a way of standing still during the moments that define one's life.
The first kiss, the birth of one's first child, a paralyzing car accident, hearing of the death of a parent, the last kiss.

Benjamin M. Strozykowski

#25. Tis the center to which all gravitates. One finds no rest elswhere than here. There may be other cities that please us for a while, but Rome alone completely satisfies. It becomes to all a second native land by predilection, and not by accident of birth alone.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#26. But the people who mattered were the people you chose instead of the people who were yours by an accident of birth. Real family was heart as much as, if not more than, blood.

Martina Boone

#27. The core concept of Samasource is essentially that technology helps us unlock human talent wherever it may happen to reside. That we should no longer be victims of the birth lottery. That no one should be stuck in a poor place where they don't have a job simply because of an accident of birth.

Leila Janah

#28. The news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged, a tragic car accident on a late night highway - most milestones of the human journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of a ringing.

Mitch Albom

#29. It never ceased to amaze him how most nobles considered themselves so much better than the people they ruled, even though that rule was always no more than an accident of birth.

R.A. Salvatore