[kxsiven]

I love quotes. So much said in short sentence.

What is your favourite circ/intactivism quote?

Maybe we can make collection thread, people could use them in their signatures or make their own bumber stickers or something..

(or is this totally stupid idea? Anyway...

My favourites;

"The only significant drawback to owning a foreskin
is the one just before it's drawn forward again. "

"Foreskin is not the candy wrapper, it is the candy."
-Martin Novoa

"Nature is a possessive mistress, and whatever mistakes she makes about the structure of the less essential organs such as the brain and stomach, in which she is not much interested, you can be sure that she knows best of the genital organs."
- Sir James Spence, 1964

 

[Nathan1097]

I've started a site on circumcision quotes at http://www.circumcisionquotes.com/

 

[baybee]

Thanks, Nathan1097, for posting. . . I thought I'd have to go through my folders to find your link but you were right on it. Great site and congratulations for creating it and maintaining it.

This is my circumcision quote that I made up:

"Foreskins 4 Keeps---an idea whose time has come. The end of circumcision by January 1, 2007, it's time."

I was thinking last night about a course I took where they explained the dynamics of a project. When a project begins, you have to put in 10 units of energy to get 1 unit of results back out. Eventually, you're putting in 5 units of energy and getting 5 out, and, if you keep the momentum up, you get to a place where you put in 1 unit of energy and you get 10 back. I think that's what we're seeing right now in ending circ. Every time we write letters, protest, post an idea, etc, it seems to have far reaching consequences. It's getting easier and easier to get real results. We just have to keep the momentum going and reap the rewards of all the energy that's been put in to this movement for years and years by others.
Baybee

 

[paminmi]

One of my favorites is from NOCIRC's pamphlet #6, Answers To Your Questions About Premature Retraction of Your Young Son's Foreskin:

"The foreskin therefore can be likened to a rosebud which remains closed and muzzled. Like a rosebud, it will only blossom when the time is right. No one opens a rosebud to make it blossom." H.L. Tan, MD

Don't know who this doctor is but I couldn't have said it better myself!

 

[baybee]

This is a perfect one for us female intactivists, too.

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone should be." Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I scooped it off one of our poster's sig line. Love it.
Baybee

 

[ramlita]

I was just thinking of starting a thread just like this! And here it is already

I've been noticing more universal/general quotes lately that fit in quite nicely with intactivist viewpoints/arguments. I like to mix these in with direct circ quotes to pull back to the bigger picture in the hope that it will all sink in even better:

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been so credulous."
~ Carl Sagan

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, Author and Philosopher (someone here on MDC recently pointed this one out- sorry, I forget who

)

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. -Gandhi (not that there's any good at all with circing!!)

It takes less effort to condemn than to think. -Emma Goldman

When we have children we either are woken to our past to help us heal, or we are oblivious to the pain and we inflict it on our children. -Jacqueline Wood

It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair

All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
-Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860

The first real choice a human baby must make is whether to trust or mistrust other humans. This basic trust-versus-mistrust stage is the first building block upon which all later love relationships are formed." ~Dr. Ken Magid

Though of course, there are terrific quotes on the direct subject. Here's Penn's closing statement from the BS episode on the subject:
(I did whittle it down to the very end part, given the profanity and potentially upsetting religious references- pm me if you want the whole paragraph

)
"The first rule of medicine is to do no harm. Cutting off the tip of the penis is at very least a harm. Quite possibly, f'g bad- and bad for f'g! So to all you penis butchers out there: put down the knife, step away from the baby, and Do No Harm." Penn Jillette

 

[pdx.mothernurture]

"Tearing a newborn baby that a woman has carried beneath her heart for nine months from her loving and nurturing breast and inflicting a wound on its tiny, protesting, and immobilized body is an unequivocal act of violence against the mother."

-Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, "Secret Wounds"

"Social reformers are never, ever liked. They are always unpopular because they are always confronting a culture that doesn't want to know more about injustice for which they bear some responsibility."

-Gregg Cunningham, Esq. Executive Director for The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

-Margaret Mead

"You do what you know, and when you know better, you do better."

-Maya Angelou

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

-Albert Einstein

"What we do to children, they will do to society."

-Karl Menninger

"If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From these roots grow fear and alienation, or love and trust."

-Susanne Arms

---

AND a woman who held a babe against her bosom
said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

 

[jee'smom]

"Nothing desensitizes society more to a horror then a custom." I can't remember who said it; I have it written down at home.
I love that one!

 

[ramlita]

Two more that made me think of vaccines first, but they also speak to the recent trend of believing that RIC will reduce the transmission of HIV:

"Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts ". -Thomas Jefferson

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. ~Bertrand Russell

 

[kldliam]

If God intended for men to have foreskins, they would be born with them".

 

[kldliam]

At the AAP booth, when a doc said that, if circumcision is to be done, it certainly should be done with an anesthetic. Aubrey said, "Yes, and, if you're going to rape a girl, you should slip her a mickey."

"If unconsented sex is a crime, then surely unconsented amputation of sexual organs is a crime"

 

[Paper-Bag-Princess]

Quote:

Originally Posted by baybee This is a perfect one for us female intactivists, too. "Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone should be." Anne Morrow Lindbergh I scooped it off one of our poster's sig line. Love it. Baybee

Baybee, that is a wonderful quotation!

I think one of my favourite quotations belonged to A&A in her signature(A&A, I'm shamelessly sucking up

: ).

"Attachment Parenting begins with leaving the foreskin attached".

 

[paminmi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kldliam At the AAP booth, when a doc said that, if circumcision is to be done, it certainly should be done with an anesthetic. Aubrey said, "Yes, and, if you're going to rape a girl, you should slip her a mickey." "If unconsented sex is a crime, then surely unconsented amputation of sexual organs is a crime"

(but who is Aubrey??)

 

[Ilaria]

I love the one is my sig. It says it all.

 

[baybee]

It is no small thing that they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
-Charles Dickens

Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity - a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother.
-Rose Kennedy

 

[ramlita]

Here's a whole bunch of slogan ideas:

http://www.noharmm.org/peopleswall.htm

 

[A&A]

Quote:

Originally Posted by baybee This is a perfect one for us female intactivists, too. "Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone should be." Anne Morrow Lindbergh I scooped it off one of our poster's sig line. Love it. Baybee

great quote.

And I love the quote that is my sig!

 

[MysteryMama]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdx.mothernurture "Tearing a newborn baby that a woman has carried beneath her heart for nine months from her loving and nurturing breast and inflicting a wound on its tiny, protesting, and immobilized body is an unequivocal act of violence against the mother." -Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, "Secret Wounds"

I absolutely love this one. Something about it just reaches into the deepest part of my heart and touches it in a way that alot of other quotes/slogans haven't.

 

[Fyrestorm]

My favorite (I have it on my sweatshirt that I wear to all functions when families are going to be around) is:

Did you know:

Circumcision harms babies and the men they will become.

Questioncircumcision.com

 

[A&A]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeannie81 I absolutely love this one. Something about it just reaches into the deepest part of my heart and touches it in a way that alot of other quotes/slogans haven't.

And the book it comes from, Secret Wounds, is an absolutely amazing read, as well. It's about FGM, MGM, and intersex surgery.