All quotes

As the racial distinction of humanity lies in its social relation, so we find the distinctive gains and losses of humanity to lie also in its social relation. We are more affected by our relation to each other than by our physical environment.

Economic independence is a relative condition at best.

Language is our largest common medium, and leads on into literature, which is but preserved speech.

Little by little, very slowly, and with most unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life holds most dear, it is being gradually established by many martyrdoms that human work is woman’s as well as man’s.

That any living woman should prefer it to home and husband, to love and motherhood, throws a fierce light on what women must have suffered for lack of freedom before.

The basic condition of human life is union; the organic social relation, the interchange of functional service, wherein the individual is most advantaged, not by his own exertions for his own goods, but by the exchange of his exertions with the exertions of others for goods produced by them together.

The brain of man is the social organ, the organ of communication. Through it flows the current of thought, whereby we are enabled to work together.

The inevitable trend of human life is toward higher civilization.

The progress of society rests upon the increasing collectivity of human labor.

The spirit of personal independence in the women of to-day is sure proof that a change has come.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature: to make beautiful things has more.

To specialize any form of labor is a step up: to organize it is another step.

To teach, to rule, to make, to decorate, to distribute,—these are not sex-functions: they are race-functions.

What we do modifies us more than what is done to us.