Are you looking for breastfeeding quotes to encourage and inspire? Look no further for for beautiful breastfeeding quotes from lactation consultants, singers, medical professionals, authors, US Supreme Court justices, and more.

Encouraging breastfeeding quotes

Babies love to nurse! Babies are capable! – Cindy Turner-Maffei, IBCLC

When a mother nurses her baby, she is giving that child her name, her story and her life’s song. A nursed baby will grow to be strong in body, mind and spirit. – Annie Kahn, Round Rock elder

Breastfeeding is a mother’s gift to herself, her baby, and the earth. – Pamela K. Wiggins, IBCLC

The more milk your baby receives, the greater the health benefits. – Dr. Amy Spangler, Breastfeeding: A Parent’s Guide, 9th ed

Mother’s milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food. – Ina May Gaskin, midwife

The newborn has only three demands. They are warmth in the arms of its mother, food from her breasts, and security in the knowledge of her presence. Breastfeeding satisfies all three. – Grantly Dick-Read, MD

Ah, the joys of suckling! She lovingly watched the fishlike motions of the toothless mouth and she imagined that with her milk there flowed into her little son her deepest thoughts, concepts, and dreams. – Czech writer Milan Kundera

You reared him at your breast and endured surgery when your nipple was bruised; this behavior was noble and showed tender affection. – Plutarch, ancient Rome

It is our expectation that nursing will be a joyful and pleasurable experience and also that the baby will thrive and grow on milk. We also expect that breastfeeding will happen in an environment that supports the feeding choice. – Karin Cadwell, PhD, IBCLC

Inspirational breastfeeding quotes

What could be more affirming to your confidence than gazing into the deep navy blue eyes of your newborn, knowing that everything he needs comes from you – security in your arms as he drinks in your smell, your loving gaze and your milk? – Pinky McKay

In my experience, nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby’s continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son’s life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world. – Sarah Manguso

Breastfeeding reminds us of the universal truth of abundance; the more we give out, the more we are filled up, and that divine nourishment -the source from which all draw- is, like a mother’s breast, ever full and ever flowing. – Sarah Buckley, MD

You have the power to sustain the life that God gave her. You have the power to make her happy, to calm her. At any other time in your life, you don’t have this magical superpower. – Serena Williams

Breastfeeding is the most precious gift a mother can give her baby. – Ruth A Lawrence, MD

Being able to nurse in these unknown times has been powerful and healing for me as I didn’t believe I could do it. – Jackie Fawn, artist

Mother’s milk is special. No two mothers make the same milk; no two babies need the same milk. Your milk is custom-made to meet the needs of your baby. – William Sears, MD & Martha Sears, RN, The Baby Book

Nursing gives you superhuman powers. – Gwen Stefani

Perfect happiness. This is what my body is made for. – Thandiwe Newton

Importance of breastfeeding quotes

If breastfeeding did not already exist, someone who invented it today would deserve a dual Nobel Prize in medicine and economics. – Keith Hansen, World Bank

A baby nursing at a mother’s breast is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature. – David Suzuki, PhD

Breastmilk is the ideal food for infants. It is safe, clean and contains antibodies which help protect against many common childhood illnesses. Breastmilk provides all the energy and nutrients that the infant needs for the first months of life, and it continues to provide up to half or more of a child’s nutritional needs during the second half of the first year, and up to one third during the second year of life. – World Health Organization

Optimal breastfeeding is one of the most powerful solutions we have to save the lives of infants and children. Breastfeeding is the first food system, delivering an ideal and personalized mix of nutrients to infants, while also reducing mothers’ risks of certain types of cancers and other chronic diseases. Breastfeeding also goes well beyond just nourishment, and provides comfort and reassurance between baby and mother, resulting in improved cognitive and physical development. – USAID Advancing Nutrition Breastfeeding

A pair of substantial mammary glands has the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor’s brain in the art of compounding a nutritious fluid for infants. – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,  associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

If breastfeeding were scaled up to near universal levels, about 820,000 child lives would be saved every year. – World Health Organization

Lactation in emergencies saves lives. – Lordes Santaballa, IBCLC

Oxytocin and prolactin are even present in breastmilk, bestowing calming, connecting effects on our babies as they suckle. – Dr. Sarah Buckley


Research shows unequivocally that breastfed babies are healthier and smarter, and that the longer babies are nursed, the healthier and smarter they are. That’s because brain development, immune function and all aspects of the baby’s physiology are designed to flourish when the baby is fed her natural food. – Dr. Laura Markham

Breastfeeding for social justice quotes

Breastfeeding is our social justice movement as we declare the health and vitality of our infants as critical to the health and vitality of our communities. – Kimberly Seals Allers, Black Breastfeeding is a Racial Equity issue

When researchers looked at all the possible means of preventing infant and young child death they found that improving breastfeeding practices could prevent more deaths than any other single strategy; even more than such key benefits as the provision of safe water, sanitation, immunization and medical services. – Gabrielle Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business

Breastfeeding is a weapon of mass construction. – Camie Jae Goldhammer, IBCLC

Breastfeeding is food sovereignty. Breastfeeding is health equity. Breastfeeding is healing. – Jessica Fedenia

Exclusive breastfeeding goes a long way toward canceling out the health difference between being born into poverty and being born into affluence. It is almost as if breastfeeding takes the infant out of poverty for those first few months in order to give the child a fairer start in life and compensate for the injustice of the world into which it was born. –James P. Grant, former Executive Director, UNICEF

Breastfeeding advocacy quotes

I’m an advocate of ‘indiscreet’ breastfeeding – the more that people see babies at the breast, the more normal it will be. – Jack Newman, MD

If they’re hungry, breastfeed them, without fear, feed them, because that’s a language of love. – Pope Francis

Breast milk has all the building blocks for the immune system (food does not). Much like what happens during fetal life in the womb, breast milk provides a tailored cocktail of what that baby needs that day and at that time of day, and by gender! – Darcia F Narvaez, PhD

there is no such thing as standard breastmilk. Every mother produces milk which varies from feeding to feeding, from day to day, from morning to evening, from week to week. And the milk is tailored to the needs of her baby as the baby’s needs change. And if there is no such thing as standard breastmilk, then a formula can never duplicate breastmilk. – Jack Newman, PhD

When a woman is breastfeeding, the first and only thought that should appear in your mind is that the purpose of those breasts is to nourish a life… ― Abhijit Naskar

The problem is that boobs have been so oversexualised, we can’t even feed our child in peace or without worry of judgement. We are told it’s attention seeking, when we couldn’t think of anything worse than people paying us attention. We are expected to cover up, when we are hot and flustered and our babies do not want to eat with something on their heads. We are told to go into public toilets, yet adults would not eat in one. Support and encourage mums, HOWEVER and WHEREVER they feed their babies. – Ashley James

Breastfeeding support quotes

I don’t think it’s so much that breastfeeding is important to her as that breastfeeding is what they do.  We don’t treat asthma in mothers to whom breathing is important. The importance of breathing is assumed by everyone at every level, and anyone having trouble with it is going to do what she needs to do to get it to work.  Period.  What a wonderful world it will be – and how much more easily successes will come – when breastfeeding is nothing more than what our own culture does. – Diane Wiessinger, IBCLC

It’s time we support what’s healthy (breastfeeding) instead of judge it – P!ink

No one bats an eyelid prepping their own breakfast, why choose to get flustered over my baby having his? Boobs were designed to feed. How funny that some fat, cells and glands could so deeply offend so many. – Myleene Klass

It takes time for you and your baby to really get the hang of breastfeeding. Fortunately, you’ll be breastfeeding very frequently and getting LOTS of opportunities to practice – Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, 8th ed.

Extended breastfeeding quotes

It is the lucky child who still breastfeeds past two years old. -C. Everett Koop, MD, US Surgeon General 1982-1989

Whether you are at the start of your breastfeeding journey or the end, whether you want to breastfeed for 3 days, 3 months, or 3 years, you deserve unwavering support every single step of the way. –  Danielle Facey, MSc

I never ever believed that I would be nursing a child over the age of 3. But now that I am, I believe when he is done, he will be done. I believe that he will not need to nurse before he walks down the aisle to greet his bride … and I believe that nursing is natural and beautiful and wonderful. – Mayim Bialik, PhD

What are some of your favorite breastfeeding quotes?

Samantha Radford has a PhD in Chemistry from Emory University (Atlanta, GA). She is an exposure scientist who focuses on maternal-child health. Samantha has years of research into learning about how chemical exposures affect both unborn babies and children, as well as how toxicants and medications are passed through breastmilk. Samantha also studies the effect of exposure to hormones induced by personal experiences, for example, cortisol in babies who are stressed or oxytocin in mothers bonding to their infants. Through the years, Samantha has expanded her academic and personal studies to how exposures to different parenting styles affect the mental and physical health of children as they grow to adulthood.