Sojourner Truth Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.

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

Sojourner Truth
I can do as much work as any man... We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough of our own.

Sojourner Truth
I am not going to die. I'm going home like a shooting star.

Sojourner Truth
Our nerves and sinews, our tears and blood have been sacrificed on the altar of this nation's avarice. Our unpaid labor has been a stepping-stone to its financial success. Some of its dividends must surely be ours.

Sojourner Truth
Jesus loved me! I knew it, - I felt it! Jesus was my Jesus. Jesus would love me always. I didn't dare tell nobody; 't was a great secret. Everything had been got away from me that I ever had; an' I thought that ef I let white folks know about this, maybe they'd get Him away, so I said, 'I'll keep this close. I won't let any one know.'

Sojourner Truth
Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff.

Sojourner Truth
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored
men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will
take a great while to get it going again.

Sojourner Truth
I isn't goin' to die, honey, Ise goin' home like a shootin' star.

Sojourner Truth
This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book.

Sojourner Truth
It is hard for the old slaveholding spirit to die. But die it must.

Sojourner Truth
Response upon hearing that Democrats would burn down an Angola, Indiana, building if she spoke, 1863:
Then I will speak upon the ashes.

Sojourner Truth
You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

Sojourner Truth
Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me.

Sojourner Truth
The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.

Sojourner Truth
I am above eighty years old... I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.

Sojourner Truth
If my cup won't hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?

Sojourner Truth
I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring I will step into the pool.

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

Sojourner Truth
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!

Sojourner Truth
That man…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 aren't I a woman?…I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and aren't I a woman?

Sojourner Truth
When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wasn't going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an' so I went to the Lord an' asked him to give me a new name. And he gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing the people their sins and bein' a sign unto them. I told the Lord I wanted two names 'cause everybody else had two, and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.

Sojourner Truth
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?

Sojourner Truth
Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

Sojourner Truth
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.

Sojourner Truth