Gerda Lerner Quotes

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Men develop ideas and systems of explanation by absorbing past knowledge and critiquing and superseding it. Women, ignorant of their own history [do] not know what women before them had thought and taught. So generation after generation, they [struggle] for insights others had already had before them, [resulting in] the constant inventing of the wheel.

Gerda Lerner

Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others--into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one's future.

Gerda Lerner

Nursing was regarded as simply an extension of the unpaid services performed by the housewife - a characteristic attitude that haunts the profession to this day.

Gerda Lerner

The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.

Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner

Creative Commons

Born: April 30, 1920

Died: January 2, 2013 (aged 92)

Bio: Gerda Hedwig Lerner was an Austrian-born American historian and author. In addition to her numerous scholarly publications, she wrote poetry, fiction, theater pieces, screenplays, and an autobiography. She served as president of the Organization of American Historians in 1980-81.

Known for:

Why history matters (1997)
Fireweed (2002)
Black Women in White America (1972)
The majority finds its past (1979)
The Grimké sisters from South Carolina (1967)

Gerda Lerner on Wikipedia

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