Women Authors From The United States

"Feminists are not nuns, that first must be established. We want to love and be loved, and most of us want children, one or two at least. But we want our love to be joyous and free – not clouded with ignorance and fear."

"Indifference is harder to fight than hostility, and there is nothing that kills an agitation more than having everyone admit that it is fundamentally right."

"June Sochen, in her study of Greenwich Village feminism, singled out Crystal Eastman, Neith Boyce, Susan Glaspell, and Henrietta Rodman as representative of those newly liberated socialist women. As professional women, they identified with mainstream feminism by working for suffrage, while at the same time they attempted to prod organized feminists toward socialism. Crystal Eastman possessed a broad vision of a future egalitarian society which included civic and legal equality for women, an end to job discrimination, the right of access to birth-control information, and economic independence for all women based on the socialist principle of the responsibility of the society as a whole to provide for its individual members."

"To start in just now on a great program of naval expansion, to spend millions on submarines and battleships, to increase the standing army, to start military training camps, to talk, think, and act ‘preparation for war,’ is, psychologically speaking, like pouring kerosene on the roofs instead of water. Sparks are bound to fall – if they fall on cool wet roofs there is a chance of their going out. If they fall on dry roofs prepared with kerosene, what chance is there?"

"There is nothing new since Ezekiel’s time in their terror and declaration that the enemy is upon us. They are saying to Congress, ‘Never mind the death of democracy, nor our foreign policies, whether they be just or unjust, but prepare!’ In the face of this, we say to Congress, ‘Gentlemen, wait; go slow. We are not afraid.’"

"Certain learned gentlemen, well supported by gentlemen of great wealth, urged upon us the necessity of spending more of the people’s money for national defense. As I understand their line of reasoning, it is this: All Europe is at war…the only way to be safe is to be stronger than any one else, or stronger than all the rest put together, if possible. Now that seems to my poor feminine intellect like high school boy logic. All those men were grown men, however. Some of them were old men. They were old enough to know better…"

"No narrow, nationalistic spirit made the [Russian] revolution…You held out your hands to every people, allied and enemy, and asked them to join you. And you will teach many things to America. You will teach America that there can be no real democracy with the women left out."

"Seriously, does anyone suppose that love-making has gone out of fashion in California, or marriage fallen off in Wyoming, or the birth rate decreased in Colorado as a result of woman suffrage?"

"If this Congress adjourns without taking action on the woman suffrage amendment…every woman voter will know this…and we have faith that the woman voter will stand by us. We are ready to go into this struggle if you force us to, but we are not eager for it. Gentlemen, why turn us into enemies. Why not keep us as friends?"

"Women must have work of their own, first because no one who has to depend on another person for his living is really grown up; and second, because the only way to be happy is to have an absorbing interest in life which is not bound up with any particular person. Children can die or grow up, husbands can leave you. No woman who allows husband and children to absorb her whole time and interest is safe from disaster."

"When the strong young body of a free man is caught up by a little projecting set-screw, whirled around a shaft and battered to death, when we know that a set-screw can be countersunk at a trivial cost, when we know that the law of the state has prohibited projecting set-screws for many years, then who wants to talk about ‘three years wages to the widow’ and ‘shall it be paid in installments, or in a lump sum?’ and ‘shall the workman contribute?’ What we want is to put somebody in jail. And when the dead bodies of girls are found piled up against locked doors leading to the exits after a factory fire, when we know that locking such doors is a prevailing custom in such factories, and one that has continued in New York City since those 146 lives were lost in the Triangle Waist Company fire, who wants to hear about a great relief fund? What we want is to start a revolution."

"If I had my way…we would tell the men of this country we were not going to work any more [sic], we were not going to contribute or to assist them with anything until they gave us a share in the government of the country…If this strike were possible I am willing to wager that women would be given the ballot within several hours."

"The current legal system is vicious when it comes to labor because it does not provide relief when it is most needed, because it lays too heavy a burden on the claimant and allows the corporation to escape liability by carrying the case from court to court, because it encourages dishonesty on the part of the claims agent and the ambulance chaser, and because…the greater portion of the damages paid by employers goes out in attorneys’ fees."

"The first thing brought home to me was that working people do not have the ‘luxury of grief.’ The daily tyranny of hard work in their lives leaves little time for pondering the unanswerable ‘Why’ of sorrow."

"The hardest part of the battle is yet to come; the battle with ourselves, with our inherited instincts, with our cultivated taste for leisure, with our wrong early training, with our present physical unfitness… God meant the whole rich world of work and play and adventure for women as well as men. It is high time for us to enter into our heritage – that is my feminist faith."

"Please picture me now as one of these circus-chariot-ladies, with one hand driving an exciting tandem, — arts and law—and with the other hand holding aloft two streaming banners, —love and liberty."

"Everyone is out. Mothers and father and babies line the doorsteps. Girls with their beaux, standing in the shadows, or gathered in laughing groups on the corners. And children, thousands of them everywhere, little girls playing singing games in the middle of the street, and boys running in and out, chasing each other, throwing balls, building fires, fighting, laughing, shouting. Oh it is wonderful, – this human nature with its infinite capacity, and unending desire, for joy…"

"The highest hope I have…is the beginning of a kind of international enthusiasm based on a warm, real knowledge of other races and their contribution to the world’s values – a delight in the culture of other nations as well as our own – and eagerness to see it survive. Out of this must spring a wide tolerance which will make the needs, the grievances, the problems of one nation quite naturally a matter of world interest, the subject of a just and kindly deliberation of a world court."

"The question of woman suffrage is not one that should be cluttering up twentieth century affairs. It belongs back in the eighteenth century."

"The ingenuity and ability which the wife and mother has to exercise in order to buy food and clothing for the family and run the home efficiently should be recognized as productive work… Too many men have the notion that they support their wives."

"Her speeches were tightly woven masterpieces that she worked over for weeks and refined continuously. She then read and reread them, practicing each word so it sounded natural and fluid."

"She knew the Savior — I sensed that even as a child in her schoolroom. I will never forget the image of her in front of our class with a flower in her dark hair. For me as a 7-year-old boy, she was a powerful presence, far beyond her size or dimension. It was the power of goodness. She taught it and she lived it."

"The women of the world were her friends. She will live on because of the profound effect she has had on people throughout the world through her words, her example and her service."

"She accomplished that by being fearlessly honest about herself and the problems that members of the church faced."

"You will be recognized as one who represents those beyond the borders of the United States and Canada, and as it were, an outreach across the world to members of the Church in many, many lands. They will see you as a representative of their oneness with the Church. We bless you that you may be free in speaking, that your tongue may be loosed as you speak to the people. We bless you that you may be wise in counsel, that you may be inspired in what you say."

"Be spiritually independent enough that your relationship with the Savior doesn't depend on your circumstances or on what other people say and do. Have the spiritual independence to be a Mormon—the best Mormon you can—in your own way. Not the bishop's way. Not the Relief Society president's way. Your way."

"The doctrines of the gospel are indispensable. They are essential, but the packaging is optional… The basket and the bottle are different containers, but the content is the same: fruit for a family. Is the bottle right and the basket wrong? No, they are both right. They are containers appropriate to the culture and the needs of the people. And they are both appropriate for the content they carry, which is the fruit."

"Hooray for differences! Without them, there would be no harmony. In principles, great clarity. In practices, great charity."

"The answer of faith is a powerful one, even in the most difficult of circumstances, because it does not depend on us—on our strength to endure, on our willpower, on the depth of our intellectual understanding, or on the resources we can accumulate. No, it depends on God, whose strength is omnipotence, whose understanding is that of eternity, and who has the will to walk beside us in love, sharing our burden. He could part the Red Sea before us or calm the angry storm that besets us, but these would be small miracles for the God of nature. Instead, he chooses to do something harder: He wants to transform human nature into divine nature. And thus, when our Red Sea blocks our way and when the storm threatens to overwhelm us, he enters the water with us, holding us in the hands of love, supporting us with the arms of mercy. When we emerge from the valley of the shadow, we will see that he was there with us all the time."

"Remember, our real calling to be a compassionate Christian came when we stepped out of the waters of baptism. The gift of the Holy Ghost is ours by right of confirmation. We don't need to check it out of the meetinghouse library. We don't need a bishop's assignment to be kind. We don't need to sign up to be thoughtful. We don't need to be sustained by our wards to be sensitive. Rejoice in the power you have within you from Christ to be a nucleus of love, forgiveness, and compassion."

"If you're doing the best you can, that's good enough."

"I remember very clearly the point at which I made the choice to be a bridge builder. On December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese Imperial Air Force destroyed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, I was fifteen years old… we didn't know if a landing party was on its way, if the Americans would retaliate, or which side might pose the most danger to us as Japanese-Americans. My mother and I were terrified. We gathered everything in the house that had come from Japan and stuffed it into the incinerator… When we were through, I looked in the mirror, saw my face, and thought, I am Japanese. I have never set foot in Japan. I am not Japanese in my heart. If a Japanese submarine landed on our beach and Japanese soldiers came ashore, I would run away from them. But I cannot run away from myself. My eyes, my skin, and my hair are Japanese. I will always be Japanese. That realization cut through my confusion and fear. I realized then that there was no easy answer… But no matter what happened, I would have to deal with reality—and that involved being both Japanese and American. I would have to work out the answer to who I was a day at a time, doing the best that I could."

"I personally believe that the growing awareness of and resistance to sexual abuse in the fulfillment of the scripture which says, "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken [and I would add, have done] in darkness shall be heard in the light, and proclaimed upon the housetops." Each survivor who tells her or his story, each individual who reports abuse, each police officer who arrests a perpetrator, each judge and jury who enforce the law, and each person who teaches children to protect themselves and to report abuse are part of fulfilling this prediction of Jesus Christ about the last days. This evil must be exposed before it can be repented of, and it must be repented of."

"I'm going to struggle. I have struggled. Christ struggled. When He died, He was struggling the most. Yet He is going to come in His perfection when He comes back the second time, and we can, too."

"Writing as a well-trained historian who deliberately chose not to be part of the academy, Beard asserted boldly that women always were and always had been a force in history. Women were central to the historical process and History, to be true to life, would have to be written so that their world-view, their vantage point, would be as fully represented in it as that of men. "Woman is and makes history," she asserted and devoted her life to winning recognition for that fact. Mary Beard was herself an activist in the labor and feminist movement of the 1920s. She, together with a remarkable group of older suffragists, spent years in the struggle to create a World Center for Women's Archives, which was to serve as a repository of the sources of Women's History and was "to encourage recognition of women as co-makers of history." Their effort failed for lack of support in the 1940s, but it did not fail entirely, for out of this struggle came the creation of one of the major Women's History archives in the United States-the Schlesinger Library Archives at Radcliffe College, as well as, eventually, the Miriam Holden collection, now housed at Princeton University. Mary Beard not only conceptualized Women's History as an academic topic, she wrote four pioneering works on the subject and showed in her collaborative works with her husband, the historian Charles Beard, how the shifting focus provided by attention to women would transform the historical narrative."

"Early in my undergraduate studies I had first read Mary Beard's Woman as Force in History. Somehow, I was able to disregard her poor presentation, her fervent, and sometimes ill-tempered rhetoric and to connect with her central idea: that women have always been active and at the center of history. I was struck, as by a sudden illumination, by the simplicity and truth of her insight. Mary Beard had arrived at that conviction the same way I had, by her having been an engaged participant in women's work in society...implicit in Beard's work, whether she fully understood it or not, was the recognition of the duality of women's position in society-women are subordinate, yet central; victimized, yet active...Her greatest contribution is the insight that focusing on the concept of women as victim obscures the true history of women."

"Her methodological suggestions, her practice of comparative history, and her drawing on sources from other disciplines, such as anthropology and sociology, were a revelation to me. Long before the new feminism surfaced, reading Mary Beard raised my feminist consciousness. Essentially, Mary Beard invented the concept of Women's Studies and Women's History. It was Mary Beard, first and foremost, whose critique of an androcentric academic establishment led her to envision new models of education for women. "Equal education for which women have clamoured," she wrote, "has merely meant the extension to women of men's education in their own history and judgements of themselves." But such "history consists of threads... selected from men's activities in war, business and politics, woven together according to a pattern of male prowess and power as conceived in the mind of man. If the woman's culture came into this pattern in any way, it is only as a blurring of a major concept." Here was a statement which expressed what during my graduate education I had experienced only vaguely as dissatisfaction with and resistance to what I was being taught. Traditional history fixed women into marginality; I knew and now found confirmation in Mary Beard's writing that this was not the truth."

"I began to read an enormous amount of history around this time. I was very taken with Charles Beard-at that point his writings seemed to me to represent great Marxist truths because he talked about the things that high school history never talked about, the underlying economic motives of history makers. I read everything he and his wife Mary Beard wrote."

"Mary Beard undertook in several of her books to trace the positive achievements of women, their social role, and their contributions to community life. Her concepts are most successfully reflected in The Rise of American Civilization, which she co-authored with her husband Charles Beard. In it the position of women is treated throughout in an integrated way with great attention to the economic contributions made by women. But the Beards' approach to the subject of women had little influence on the historical profession. Perhaps this was due to the fact that in the 1930s and 1940s both the general public and historians became somewhat disenchanted with the woman's rights movement."

"History does not exactly repeat itself. Modern mechanical economy, nation-wide, even worldwide in its sweep, is a novel experiment. If civilization-the great society of today-is to continue, then the problem becomes one of making the huge superstructure of economics and politics function for the essential purposes of life and at the same time of maintaining a sound and creative community life at the basis."

"So marked has been this recent trend of social thought that it is scarcely too much to say that we are now in the very midst of an intellectual revolution, perhaps the most fundamental in the long course of civilization that we are today passing over the threshold of a period even more re-constructive than the Renaissance which flowered in the sixteenth century."

"I am inclined to think that all fact finders should be recruited from the ranks of experienced journalists with noses for the relevant and a knowledge of how to state it, or from the ranks of such poets as Miss Clinch Calkins, whose Some Folks Won't Work told more truths about unemployment than all the Department of Labor reports rolled into one."

"But when the panic that opened in 1929 spread with devastating sweep over the nation supposedly secure, the question was whether a civilization based on profit-making industry and spoils-dividing politics, so enriching for women of the leisure class and so generous in opportunities for higher employments offered to women of the lower middle class, was not after all a transitory phase of history, notwithstanding its duration of a century or more. That "man's world," in which women had secured a foothold, had been more of a nightmare than a dreamland for millions of working women. This they knew from bitter experience."

"Having made the broad change against man, the convention then presented a list of grievances to support it, patterning them on the American men's Declaration of Independence submitted to a "candid" world as well as to the British government in 1776. Though the women found it somewhat difficult to match the exact number of grievances which had been assembled in the men's Declaration of 1776, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton later confessed, they finally accomplished the feat and specified the "abuses and usurpations" of which man was guilty in gaining his object - "the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her [woman].""

"There are some simple-minded persons who accept this dictum as the final word on the subject, but those women who have studied even a little American history and politics know very well that the border line between national and State matters can not be settled by a mathematical process or by an ipse dixit of some interested politician. They know that neither the Republican Party, the champion of nationalism, nor the Democratic Party, the champion of State rights, has been consistent in its attitude toward national and State rights. They know that each of them has leaned toward National or State Governments exactly whenever it has suited the party and economic interests."

"At the close of that ever-to-be-regretted war the Nation wrote into the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments the fundamental principle that the suffrage is a national matter Those amendments were intended to establish forever adult male suffrage throughout the American empire. It is true that those amendments are in many respects nullified by ingenious provisions. But there they stand. You are confronted by this dilemma: Either you must openly flaunt and scorn them, and thus virtually say to the Nation, We will obey just as much of the Constitution as we please, which is the doctrine of the anarchist; or you must say suffrage is by the Constitution a national matter and we abide by the Constitution."

"Cultural sociology, the larger view, reveals in elaborate studies how, from primitive times to the modern era, societies have been organized with reference to the supreme functions of life-its continuance, care, and protection. Societies that are not so organized, it shows, are robber bands exploiting other societies until inevitable degeneration sets in."

"the labor movement is more than an economic enterprise or a field for energetic leadership. It has a deep social and spiritual significance. It draws men and women together in a great cooperative undertaking which grows in strength day and night and develops ideals of peace and well-being in society as well as practical contests of force."

"Luisa Moreno spent her storied career advocating for Latino workers' rights, organizing thousands of Louisiana sugarcane workers, Texas pecan shellers, Colorado sugarbeet workers, and a multiethnic union of thirteen thousand cigar makers in Florida."

"As the union's official representative, Moreno organized the strikers into a united, disciplined force that employers could no longer ignore."