All Quotes

"A consciousness of the fact that war means practically total destruction is the reason, I think, for the rising tide to prevent what seems such a senseless procedure. I understand that it is perhaps difficult for some people, whose lives have been lived with a sense of the need for military development, to envisage the possibility of being no longer needed. But the average citizen is beginning to think more and more of the need to develop machinery to settle difficulties in the world without destruction or the use of atomic bombs. (20 December 1961)"

"We should begin in our own environment and in our own community as far as possible to build a peace-loving attitude and learn to discipline ourselves to accept, in the small things of our lives, mediation and arbitration. As individuals, there is little that any of us can do to prevent an accidental use of bombs in the hands of those who already have them. We can register, however, with our government a firm protest against granting the knowledge and the use of these weapons to those who do not now have them. (20 December 1961)"

"As long as we are not actually destroyed, we can work to gain greater understanding of other peoples and to try to present to the peoples of the world the values of our own beliefs. We can do this by demonstrating our conviction that human life is worth preserving and that we are willing to help others to enjoy benefits of our civilization just as we have enjoyed it. (20 December 1961)"

"We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight."

"There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor."

"We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity. In the final analysis, a democratic government represents the sum total of the courage and the integrity of its individuals. It cannot be better than they are. … In the long run there is no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, state it bravely and then act boldly."

"What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now."

"Example is the best lesson there is."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

"Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water."

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift... that's why they call it the present."

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself"

"America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed."

"I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday."

"I believe that women writers have not engaged or been allowed to participate in the discourse of official remembrance and that this is why their literature has been able to capture the frailty of the human spirit as well as its depth. Women writers who have contributed to the softness of remembrance can be traced from the early diary writings of young Anne Frank, to the visionary human rights declaration of Eleanor Roosevelt, and finally, to the powerful denouncing of apartheid by Nadine Gordimer."

"We know now, thanks to historian Blanche Weisen Cook, that Eleanor had a very complicated, intimate, most-probably sexual relationship with Lorena Hickok, who was a journalist. At one point, Eleanor moved her into the White House with her. And that Hickok's reporting upon Eleanor Roosevelt was integral to Eleanor Roosevelt's promotion of herself as a social reformer. Along with this, we do know that Eleanor Roosevelt had a wide, wide circle of female friends, many of whom were lesbians, many of whom were involved with social work. These women as an aggregate were called "Roosevelt's Brain Trust." And, in fact, Eleanor brought them to Washington and they were instrumental in forming the New Deal. Francis Perkins, one of Eleanor's intimate friends, was the first woman to head the Labor Department. So I think when we're looking at Eleanor Roosevelt's life, it's not just interesting that she had this affair with a woman-- she also apparently had an affair with her chauffer, named Earl Miller, as well, so Eleanor's life was complicated-- but what is really amazing that there is this circle of friends--which, again, Blanche Weisen Cook calls "female support networks"--that literally changed our very notions of how social work functions in American society and how reform functions. All again based upon lesbian--or women being intimate with women--relationships."

"Eleanor Roosevelt came to New York City and I was in a, a contest, a debating contest, and I won the debate in the whole city of New York…I'll never forget this tall woman, her hair in a chignon, and this little porkpie hat on, and she was ugly. She was very ugly. But Eleanor, the moment she opened her mouth, you felt a warmth. It was beautiful."

"Eleanor Roosevelt, fine, precise, hand-worked like ivory. Her voice was almost attractive ... One had the impression of a lady who was finally becoming a woman, which is to say that she was just a little bitchy about it all; nice bitchy, charming, it had a touch of art to it, but it made one wonder if she were not now satisfying the last passion of them all, which was to become physically attractive, for she was better-looking than she had ever been."

"Her real need to be of service overcame the hurt caused by her critics however, and she worked tirelessly all the years of Franklin's presidency. When he died she filled the void by working all the more. She had believed that When she was out of the White House there would he nothing more for her to do, "because she considered herself as an auxiliary to her husband and felt that her own value had been as First lady, not Eleanor Roosevelt. President Truman felt otherwise however, prevailing upon her to work for the newly formed United Nations. She spent the last years of her life travelling and working for the possibility of permanent world peace... she never stinted on her own time, energy, money, or compassion to help a stranger in need. Her greatness was in her kindness and empathy not, as her critics often pointed out, in her intellect ... She was given more tributes, medals and awards than any other woman in American history. Her books were translated into all major European languages, including Russian and Serbo Croatian, four Indian dialects and Hebrew, but in spite of all this Eleanor was not satisfied. She judged herself not on what she had accomplished, but what yet remained to be done, commenting that the knowledge of how little one can do alone had taught her humility. So she kept up her struggle against the injustices of the world."

"I buy 100 copies at a time of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was Eleanor Roosevelt's great work...I sometimes, if it's an adult audience, ask how many of them are familiar with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Most highly educated people have never read it. It's a tragic erasure of our heritage. It was such a time of hope. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes economic rights."

"Besides giving me the most interesting job I could possibly imagine, the Women's Trade League brought many wonderful friends into my life. Among them were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. I first met her when I was raising money for the League clubhouse. She called me her teacher, for she said I taught her all she knew about trade unionism. Always generous and understanding, she never refused me anything I asked for. This is quite a statement coming from me because, though I find it hard to ask for things for myself, I could ask for the moon if I needed it for the League. For twelve weeks during the depression, when we were having a hard time meeting our obligations, she shared her broadcasting fees with us. That $300 each week kept us going at a time when many of our supporters, hard-hit by the stock-market crash, could not help us."

"I have lost more than a beloved friend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world."

"She thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but she walked in beauty in the ghettos of the world, bringing with her the reminder of her beloved St. Francis, "It is in the giving that we receive." And wherever she walked beauty was forever there."

"Part of my job in Noumea consisted in briefing frequent important visitors. One was Mrs. Roosevelt, who had tried unsuccessfully to visit us on Guadalcanal. She now turned up sporting a letter from the President to Halsey and me- she would go to the island provided we could take satisfactory security precautions, which we did. Eleanor Roosevelt was a remarkable woman, seemingly tireless during her frequent peregrinations. When Halsey and I met her in Noumea we proposed to take her to the Red Cross center where she could comfortably rest from her long flight. No, indeed- she insisted on going directly to the nearest hospital. She spent the bulk of her time in new Caledonia visiting our sick and wounded, talking to them by the hundreds. In each case she took the man's home address and upon her return to America wrote his family."

"such courageous spirits as Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt."

"I think of Eleanor Roosevelt as a woman of such human and uncompromising qualities that they make her not just in name but truly the first lady of the land."

"Honey, I jes' walked round an' round in a dream. Jesus loved me! I knew it - I felt it. Jesus was my Jesus. Jesus would love me always. I didn't dare tell anybody; it was a great secret. Everything had been taken away from me that I ever had; an' I thought that if I let white folks know about this, maybe they'd get him away - so I said, 'welcome folks, ready for some giggles~?'"

"But then there came another rush of love through my soul, an' I cried out loud,- 'Lord, Lord, I can love even de white folks!'"

""I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race Who dwell in freedom's boasted land with no abiding place I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored, For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield, Although both late and early, they labor in the field. While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash, I'm pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash. I'm pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair upon the hated auction block, and see their children there. I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them. I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men. Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live; For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive! I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death. For I love to not hear the sound of war's tempestuous breath. I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife. I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life. But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam, I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home. I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars, and note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars."

"Sisters, I ain't clear what you're after. If women want any rights more than they're got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?"

"Well, children, when there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?"

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

"That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him."

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! And now they are asking to do it, the men had better let them."

"Sojourner combined in herself the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her, she also liked women."

"Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Sojourner Truth were not evolutionaries, they were revolutionaries, just as many of the young women in today’s society and more and more women must join their rank."

"It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike."

"At Battle Creek, between a housing project dedication at which I spoke and a meeting with local Democratic officials, we made time to visit the grave of another black woman, not a little one but a giant physically as well as spiritually. I put a wreath on her grave and read the sign there: "Sojourner Truth, a renowned lecturer and reformer who championed anti-slavery, rights of women and the freedmen, rests here.""

"Aymar Jean Christian of Northwestern University historically contextualizes and updates the notion of intersectional storytelling in his recent book Race and Media: Critical Approaches. “Most creators are ‘intersectional,’ meaning they identify with multiple communities marginalized by their race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, disability, or citizenship status,” he writes. He argues that the framework of intersectionality was developed throughout the 20th century by women writers of color like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Those early intersectional writers sought to describe “the interlocking nature of oppression and the specificity of being both Black and woman (and often queer).”"

"She's quoted as if she was speaking in heavy Southern dialect, but it was what was leftover from Dutch."

"On another occasion, I returned to Boston, where Cell 16 had fulfilled one of my dreams by organizing a forum in historic Fannueil Hall in old Boston. In that hall, Lucy Stone, the Grimké sisters, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass had held antislavery and profeminist meetings during the decades before the Civil War. Their legacy had motivated me to move to Boston to launch female liberation."

"Most will remember Ms. Truth’s oration for its vivid descriptions regarding physical labor; Black women were forced to plough, plant, herd, and build — just as men. Yet far too little attention centers on her condemnation of that system, which made sexual chattel of Black women, and then cruelly sold off Black children. This was human trafficking in the American form, and it lasted for centuries."

"Who is a revolutionary woman? A revolutionary woman wants change, not mere cosmetic change but change to the status quo, and she is willing to sacrifice to make this happen. We have some extraordinary examples: Sojourner Truth, Las Adelitas, Frida Kahlo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Dorothy Day, Malala Yousafzai, Coretta Scott King, and others."

"First a name, just a person's name, you've heard it before. Sojourner Truth. That name is a language in itself. But Sojourner Truth spoke the unlearned language; about a hundred years ago, talking it in a public place, she said, "I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all." Along at the end of her talk she said, "I wanted to tell you a mite about Woman's Rights, and so I came out and said so. I am sittin' among you to watch; and every one and awhile I will come out and tell you what time of night it is." She said, "Now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.""

"It was only after the development of the Negro women's club movement that feminist consciousness first appeared among black women, and here, too, it is an exceptional attitude rather than a pervasive one. One must note here the single exception, the strong feminism of Sojourner Truth, who was distinctly a forerunner and whose ideas were not shared by black women of her day."

"In the person of Sojourner Truth, the fusion of the abolition and woman's rights movements seemed personified."

"Sojourner Truth said it very well. You know, after the Civil War in the large women's meeting in 1898 which took place with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all the rest, the woman's rights, feminists' rights meeting at which Sojourner Truth spoke. She said that they say that women need to be helped, that they cannot drive horses, they cannot work, they cannot walk, but I have walked so many miles; I have worked as a blacksmith; I have drawn carriages, never mind driven them, and am I not a woman? right? So, the economic basis of the kinds of prejudices and stereotypes of racism, of sexism, are very obvious. When we need strong, pioneer women to cut down forests, to work beside "their men" that's fine. But on the other hand, when that need passes, we tie them into girdles, if they're white. We set them in a drawing room, and we say they have vapors."

"Black women have been doing this for centuries, not only in Africa but certainly in the United States of America, whether it was picking cotton with the children bound on our backs, whether it is heading for freedom with the underground railroad, with the Sojourner Truths. This is part of our history: we know we can bear arms and children. This is one of the functions of myth: To underline the fact that even in our dreams and our visions we are not alone. And to have them be black women, because I am tired of seeing only white Christs and white Virgins and white goddesses-all the time I was growing up. I raised a girl child, and I know I wanted to have black images, I wanted to have black queens I could tell her about in her bedtime stories. I wanted to have these images. That is important because that is how we raise children."