Women Authors From The United States

"But if the practices were not universal, if there was a steady, though slow, progress, ought not the public to recognize it? Was it not the duty of those who were called muckrakers to rake up the good earth as well as the noxious? Was there not as much driving force in a good example as in an evil one?"

"I gave myself time around these factories. The observer who once in his life goes down for half a day into a mine or spends two or three hours walking through a steel mill, naturally revolts against the darkness, the clatter, the smoke, the danger. As a rule he misses the points of real hardship; he also misses the satisfactions. As my pilgrimage lengthened, I became more and more convinced that there is no trade which has not its devotee. "Once a miner, always a miner." "Once a sailor, always a sailor." One might go through the whole category."

"It was not long before I found I was being taken for something more serious than a mere journalist. Conservative Standard Oil sympathizers regarded me as a spy and not infrequently denounced me as an enemy to society. Independent oilmen and radical editors, who were in the majority, called me a prophet."

"In final analysis it was the failure patiently to listen to the political objections coming from the United States and trying openly to meet them which kept us out of the largest and soundest joint attempt the world had ever seen, to put an end to war. For that is what I believed the Covenant of the League of Nations to be when I heard the final draft read and adopted at the Plenary Session of the Conference on April 28."

"the obsession of the Standard Oil Company, that danger lurked in small as well as great things, that nothing, however trivial, must live outside of its control."

"As to the relation of workmen to their union-for often they belonged to a union-I concluded that in the average industrial community it was not unlike that of the average citizen to his political party and political boss. Both the union and the employer seemed to me to be missing opportunities to help men to understand the structure of industry, perhaps because they did not themselves understand it too well, or sank their understanding in politics. Both union and employer depended upon one or another form of force when there was unrest, rather than education and arbitration. In doing this they weakened, perhaps in the end destroyed, that by which they all lived. The most distressing thing in mills and factories seemed to me to be the atmosphere of suspicion which had accumulated from years of appeal to force. I felt it as soon as I went into certain plants everybody watching me, the guide, the boss, the men at the machines."

"I never had an animus against their size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form. I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and rich as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me. I am convinced that their brilliant example has contributed not only to a weakening of the country's moral standards but to its economic unsoundness. The experience of the last decade particularly seems to me to amply justify my conviction."

"I did not dance-the Methodist discipline forbade it. I was incredibly stupid and uninterested in games-still am. I had no easy companionable ways, was too shy to attempt them. I had my delights; the hills which I ran, the long drives behind our little white horse, the family doings, the reading of French regularly with my splendid friend Annette Grumbine, still living, still as she was then a vitalizing influence in the town and state for all that makes for a higher social life-these things and my precious evening walks, the full length of Titusville's main street, alone or with some girl friend while we talked of things deepest in our minds."

"economic independence-the first plank in my platform."

"The deluge of monopolistic trusts which had followed the close of the Spanish-American War and the "return of prosperity" was disturbing and confusing people. It was contrary to their philosophy, their belief that, given free opportunity, free competition, there would always be brains and energy enough to prevent even the ablest leader monopolizing an industry. What was interfering with the free play of the forces in which they trusted? They had been depending on the Federal Antitrust Law passed ten years before. Was it quite useless? It looked that way."

"In spite of my painful efforts to make a regular worker out of myself, life at college was lightened by my discovery of the Boy."

"I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer, a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain. One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before."

"When I entered Allegheny College in the fall of 1876 I made my first contact with the past. I had been born and reared a pioneer; I knew only the beginning of things, the making of a home in a wilderness, the making of an industry from the ground up. I had seen the hardships of beginnings, the joy of realization, the attacks that success must expect; but of things with a past, things that had made themselves permanent, I knew nothing. It struck me full in the face now, for this was an old college as things west of the Alleghenies were reckoned-an old college in an old town. Here was history, and I had never met it before to recognize it."

"I realized at the start that I had found what I had come to college for, direction in the only field in which I was interested-science."

"One must be an artist before he can create-that I knew."

"The documents in this case, which I later analyzed for the character sketch on which we had decided, present a fair example of what were popularly called "Standard Oil methods" as well as what they could do to the minds and hearts of victims. The more intimately I went into my subject, the more hateful it became to me. No achievement on earth could justify those methods, I felt."

"There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral."

"I soon discovered that, if we were not afraid, I must work in a field where numbers of men and women were afraid, believed in the all-seeing eye and the all-powerful reach of the ruler of the oil industry. They believed that anybody going ahead openly with a project in any way objectionable to the Standard Oil Company would meet with direct or indirect attack."

"Why," I asked, "could not the present Woman's Committee be continued after the War in the Department of the Interior? Why could it not be put under a woman assistant secretary and used as a channel to carry to women in the last outposts of the country knowledge of what the various departments of the Government are doing for the improvement of the life of the people? You know how limited is the reach of many of the findings of the bureaus of research, of their planning for health and education and training? Why not do for peace what we are doing for war?"

"Be your genuine self. Don’t edit yourself. Women especially do this because we’re raised to be people-pleasers"

"Do it if you are creative or a risk-taker. Don’t let your talents go to waste. It’s so freeing to be in charge of your destiny on some level, to rise and fall on your abilities."

"You’ve got to tune out your self-doubts and understand that it’s okay to fail"

"They get isolated, isolated, isolated, and their circles become ever smaller. They never meet real people. Except online, and that’s not real."

"Usually no one sees the city of his birth until he leaves and then returns to it with new eyes, but, ridiculously proud of my brand-new press badge, I was discovering San Francisco as though it were a strange city. I began to realize the city's many hills, as if they had been erected only last month. You go up and down those hills by cable car or auto, and a dozen times a day you catch your breath in the suddenness of beautiful vistas—water, ships, wooded hills across the bay . . . and sea gulls, no matter where the neighborhood, never once letting you forget the nearness of the ocean. They really dominated the Embarcadero, that long stretch of San Francisco's beautiful harbor. On one side were brine-encrusted piers, their pilings creaking against the sides of ships with exciting cargoes from all parts of the world. Across the way were shabby marine stores, pawnshops, tattoo parlors, bedraggled flophouses, and seedy bars. The constant calling of the sea gulls often had to compete with the sirens of police cars. pp. 112–113"

"Next week the Independent and Press will bring you a new column published for the first time anywhere [...] It will be titled "Mary McCarthy's Column." Anything more pretentious would offend Mary Eunice McCarthy."

""I don't like the word tolerance. It sounds stuck up". It was a little old lady speaking, very little and quite old. Her name was Kitty, and she was my mother. "There ain't any respect in tolerating," she continued, the blue of her eyes grown darker with indignation. "That's just putting up with them, like with bad plumbing when you can't afford to move..." [...] She did not "tolerate" the Negro or the Asiatic, the Protestant or the Jew, despite their racial or religious difference. Instead, she respected every human being equally, because she thought Thomas Jefferson had meant every word of the Declaration. pp. 1, 3"

"In the spacious mansions of San Francisco's Nob Hill a Chinese cook was a must. The first thing the nouveau riche did as they tried to scramble up the ladder of society was to jingle gold pieces in the ears of a Lee or a Wong to lure him into their newly furnished houses. But the Chinese themselves had a social position only slightly above that of the rodents who sometimes threatened the fine mahogany wainscoting of their employers' houses. They were commonly referred to as "Chinks," with or without accompanying epithet, except by the gentler of tongue, who invariably spoke of a Chinese as "John Chinaman." pp. 5–6"

"Jimmy: Hey, Callahan! Callahan: Hey, Cupid, who sent you down here? Jimmy: Never mind the smart cracks; something important has happened. Callahan: Yeah? Jimmy: Yeah, I... I've decided maybe I was wrong about you. Callahan: So what? Jimmy: Well... so how do you spell your name?, Callahan: My name? C, A, double L, A, H, A, N. Why? Jimmy: Mm hmm. Look... would you mind writin' it for me? Callahan: Writing it? Jimmy: Yeah. Callahan: [Signs.] What's the gag? Jimmy: Well, if this proves you're all right, you're gonna get Susie. Callahan: Hey, are you crazy? Jimmy: No, no! No, I'm a graphologist; now be quiet."

"Gaiety and God were closely connected in my mother's mind. Going to church on Sunday was not enough. Having fun was necessary, if the worship of God were to be complete. "We should enjoy ourselves, especially on Sunday, to show Him how happy we are on His day. If we can't help having a long face once in a while, then for heaven's sake let's have it on a week day." p. 103"

"I want you to instruct the sisters."

"What they need to do is to look more closely at the fundamentals of American life, sympathetically, not with intent to "commit a message.""

"If Americans don't give up their prejudices because of false notions of religious or racial or national superiority, then, by golly, they're going to have to give them up because the other fellows are getting the guns."

"Woman must save her self. I would not risk my salvation to any man or being I must stand before my God and be judged If I act as a priestest [priestess] unto my God I must earn my position[.]"

"In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare; Truth is reason—truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there. When I leave this frail existence— When I lay this mortal by, Father, mother, may I meet you In your royal court on high?"

"My sisters, let us cultivate ourselves, that we may be capable of doing much good. We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, and our position as Saints of the Most High is at the head of the world."

"Jimmy "Mr. Cupid" O'Brien: Come on, step on it, Jefferson! We're an hour late for our deliveries now. Thomas H. Jefferson: Aw, have a heart, Mr. Cupid. Look at that speed meter. Jimmy: What're you worried about? Jefferson: About goin' to my own funeral. [Siren heard.] Mm mm. What'd I tell you? Here come the cops. Jimmy: Now listen! You keep quiet. I'll get out of this. Jefferson: You wouldn't be in it if you would go where the flowers was goin', instead of stoppin' where they ain't."

"Women had much more to do in moulding Society than men had We want to be living monuments of the character of our Heavenly Father and Mother and if we lived up to the priveliges we had we would all meet in their presence and have a good time together, if we could only get through without a spot on our Garments without speaking against the Priesthood or the principles of the Gospel Then what a Glorious thing it would be, how pure how holy and how enobled we would feel be if we could live thus."

"What the Alliance wants are money, land and cheaper transportation. We want the abolition of national banks and we want power to make loans direct from the government. We want either the amendment or the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. Land equal to a tract thirty miles wide and ninety miles long in Kansas has been foreclosed on and bought in by the loan sharks in a year. We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dog us beware!"

"My speech was not popular. What they wanted from me was a rousing attack on the Standard Oil Company. They wanted a Mary Lease to tell them to go on raising hell, and here I was telling them they had got all they could by raising hell and now they must settle down to doing business."

"Eliza R. Snow arose and said that she felt to concur with the President, with regard to the word Benevolent, that many Societies with which it had been associated, were corrupt,—that the popular Institutions of the day should not be our guide—that as daughters of Zion, we should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which had been heretofore pursued."

"Tariff is not the paramount question. The main question is the money question. Kansas suffers from two great robbers, the Sante Fe railroad and the loan sharks. The common people are robbed to enrich their masters. There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one and one-half billions of dollars."

"Wall Street owns this country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrated before the manufacturing East. Money rules and our Vice President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags."

"E. R. Snow offer'd an amendment by way of transposition of words, instead of The Nauvoo Female Relief Society, it shall be call'd the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo—Seconded by Prest. J. Smith and carried."

"Jefferson: But Mr. Cupid: if you go through that book, lookin' all through them Joneses, we're gonna be late. And we gonna get another traffic ticket, and... Jimmy: Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Don't you want to get a boy friend for a nice girl like Susie? Jefferson: Yeah. And I wanna keep a job for a nice boy like Jefferson."

"The North and South have been kept separated because of the unscrupulous scheming of the leaders of both political parties. Let us today cherish none but sacred and fraternal memories for the boys in blue and the boys in grey. It was only those who skulked at home who all these years have kept up the strife between the North and South. The mortgage indebtedness and the opposition by the money power rests just as heavily on the Southern states as on the Federal states, just as heavily on the Democratic brother as on the Republican brother."

"Jimmy: This is awful! It's terrible! Hey, Jefferson! [Shouting] Hey! Hey. Jefferson: What's the matter? Jimmy: I made a mistake! Jefferson: Which one? Jimmy: Well... according to this, Morgan isn't a G-man! Jefferson: How can you tell? Well, this claims he's a liar. Jefferson: How does that prove he ain't no G-man?"

"... on many questions involving science and public affairs those who know cannot speak whereas those who are free to speak often do not do so for fear that their information is not adequate."

"In the strenous autumn of 1945, when scientist tried to provide legislators with a new set of facts and a new concept of military destruction, two courses were advocated. Leo Szliard called for intensive pressure on key individuals; the scientists' lobby, which helped to establish civilian control of atomic energy, was a collective exercise in this technique. Rabinowitch, while supporting this crash program, argued that the radical change in patterns of political behavior required by the new weapons would be achieved only by the long, painfully slow process of education. The education must begin with the scientists themselves for, said Rabinowitch, the scientists had a lot to learn about how to handle political and social evidence as scrupulously as they used laboratory data, and how to think politically with the same blend of imagination and rationality that they applied to scientific questions."

"Had the outcome of Los Alamos been anything less than the threat of man's self-destruction, I daresay what would have stuck longest in everyone's mind is the sheer absurdity, the general wackiness, of the whole operation."

"Szilard is one of a brilliant group of Hungarian émigrés, which also included John von Neumann, Michael Polanyi, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller. He believes this remarkable concentration of scientific talent grew out o( a special environment in Budapest at the turn of the century—a society where economic security was taken for granted, a high value was placed on intellectual achievement, and physics was taught so badly that serious students were thrown upon their own resources."