Quotes by Women Abolitionists

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Tubman

Sojourner Truth

Elizabeth Blackwell

Julia Ward Howe

Lydia Maria Child

Lucy Stone

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.

I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win.

There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own.

Julia Ward Howe

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.

Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.

Lydia Maria Child

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

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

Elizabeth Blackwell

I grew up like a neglected weed—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly.

Angelina Grimké

The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

You tell those newspaper people that they may be smart, but I'm smarter. They deal with words. Some folks say that words were made to reveal thoughts. That ain't so. Words were made to conceal thought.

Mary Ellen Pleasant

Self-reliance Is the Fine Road to Independence.