Sojourner Truth > Quotes

“If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
― Sojourner Truth

“I'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.”
― 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 five 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

“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! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”
― Sojourner Truth

“I feel safe in the midst of my enemies, for the truth is all powerful and will prevail.”
― Sojourner Truth

“Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”
― Sojourner Truth

“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

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, these women together ought to be able to turn it right again.”
― Sojourner Truth

“It is the mind that makes the body.”
― Sojourner Truth

“If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.”
― Sojourner Truth

“Let others say what they will of the efficacy of prayer, I believe in it, and I shall pray. Thank God! Yes, I shall always pray,”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.”
― Sojourner Truth

“Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway”
― Sojourner Truth

“Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause 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.

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! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”
― Soujourner Truth

“After turning it in her mind for some time, she came to the conclusion, that she had been taking part in a great drama, which was, in itself, but one great system of robbery and wrong. 'Yes,' she said, 'the rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.' True, she had not received labor from others, and stinted their pay, as she felt had been practised against her; but she had taken their work from them, which was their only means to get money, and was the same to them in the end. For instance–a gentleman where she lived would give her a dollar to hire a poor man to clear the new-fallen snow from the steps and side-walks. She would arise early, and perform the labor herself, putting the money into her own pocket. A poor man would come along, saying she ought to have let him have the job; he was poor, and needed the pay for his family. She would harden her heart against him, and answer–'I am poor too, and I need it for mine.' But, in her retrospection, she thought of all the misery she might have been adding to, in her selfish grasping, and it troubled her conscience sorely; and this insensibility to the claims of human brotherhood, and the wants of the destitute and wretched poor, she now saw, as she never had done before, to be unfeeling, selfish and wicked.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin' soon. I shan't go till I can do that.”
― 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

“And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the 'Peculiar Institution'? If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system - which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her minsters and churches - we wish to be shown where it can be found.”
― Sojourner Truth

“Many slaveholders boast of the love of their slaves. How would it freeze the blood of some of them to know what kind of love rankles in the bosoms of slaves for them! Witness the attempt to poison Mrs. Calhoun, and hundreds of similar cases. Most 'surprising ' to every body, because committed by slaves supposed to be so grateful for their chains.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: Including Her Speech Ain't I a Woman?

“Oh Lord,' inquired Isabella, 'what is this slavery, that it can do such dreadful things? what evil can it not do?' Well may she ask, for surely the evils it can and does do, daily and hourly, can never be summed up, till we can see them as they are recorded by him who writes no errors, and reckons without mistake.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: Including Her Speech Ain't I a Woman?

“Yes,' she said, 'the rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: Including Her Speech Ain't I a Woman?

“Through all the scenes of her eventful life may be traced the energy of a naturally powerful mind—the fearlessness and child-like simplicity of one untrammelled by education or conventional customs—purity of character—an unflinching adherence to principle—and a native enthusiasm, which, under different circumstances, might easily have produced another Joan of Arc. With all her fervor, and enthusiasm, and speculation, her religion is not tinctured in the least with gloom. No doubt, no hesitation, no despondency, spreads a cloud over her soul; but all is bright, clear, positive, and at times ecstatic. Her trust is in God, and from him she looks for good, and not evil. She feels that ‘perfect love casteth out fear.”
― Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life

“Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black?...Does not God love coloured children as well as white children? And did not the same Saviour die to save the one as well as the other?”
― Sojourner Truth

“he was soon drawn into a circle of associates who did not improve either his habits or his morals.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“I tell you I can’t read a book, but I can read de people.”
― Sojourner Truth

“absurdity of the claims so arrogantly set up by the masters, over beings designed by God to be as free as kings; and at the perfect stupidity of the slave, in admitting for one moment the validity of these claims.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“her unwavering confidence in an arm which she believed to be stronger than all others combined could have raised from her sinking spirit.”
― Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

“In heartening contrast to our own “culture of complaint,” in which the idea of human solidarity seems lost in the clamor of victim groups competing for attention and entitlement, Sojourner Truth grew to understand that her personal quest for freedom was meaningful only as a moment in a larger struggle against the burden of injustice.”
― Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life