Margaret Sanger > Quotes

“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.”
― Margaret Sanger

“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
― Margaret Sanger

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
― Margaret Sanger

“The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near . . . Memories of mother drying my tears, reading aloud, cutting cookies and singing as she did, listening to prayers I said as I knelt with my forehead pressed against her knee, tucking me in bed and turning down the light. They have carried me through the years and given my life such a firm foundation that it does not rock beneath flood or tempest.”
― Margaret Sanger

“Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.”
― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race

“A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, it should not take place. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.”
― Margaret Sanger

“No gods, no masters. ”
― Margaret Sanger

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. [Explaining rationale for using prominent black leaders to advocate birth control and abortion]”
― Margaret Sanger

“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
― Margaret Sanger

“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger”
― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race

“Because I believe that deep down in woman's nature lies slumbering the spirit of revolt.

Because I believe that woman is enslaved by the world machine, by sex conventions, by motherhood and its present necessary child-rearing, by wage-slavery, by middle-class morality, by customs, laws and superstitions.

Because I believe that woman's freedom depends upon awakening that spirit of revolt within her against these things which enslave her.

Because I believe that these things which enslave woman must be fought openly, fearlessly, consciously.”
― Margaret Sanger

“The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the "unfit" and the "fit," admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
― Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization

“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan...I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses...I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak...In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.”
― Margaret Sanger

“Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.”
― Margaret Sanger

“progeny. We want fewer and better children who can be reared up to their full possibilities in unencumbered homes, and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.”
― Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization

“Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must—if we are really to live at all, if we are to enjoy the life more abundant promised by the Sages of Wisdom—we must put our convictions into action. My remuneration has been that I have been privileged to act out my faith.”
― Margaret Sanger

“Every woman should be "absolute mistress of her own body.”
― Margaret Sanger

“She had chained herself to her place in society and the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains thus strong could have bound her lot as a brood animal for the masculine civilizations of the world.”
― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race

“Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.”
― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the new Race

“We want statesmen and poets and musicians and
philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The
qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.'' We want,
most of all, genius. Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to
eliminate many of the great geniuses of the world who were not only
``Bohemian,'' but actually and pathologically abnormal--men like
Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe, Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte,
Guy de Maupassant”
― Margaret Sanger, The Pivot Of Civilization

“An easy and even a pleasant task is it to reduce human problems to numerical figures in black and white on charts and graphs, an infinitely difficult one is it to suggest concrete solutions, or to extend true charity in individual lives. Yet life can only be lived in the individual; almost invariably the individual refuses to conform to the theories and the classifications of the statistician.”
― Margaret Sanger, Motherhood in Bondage

“Conditions, rather than theories, facts, rather than dreams, govern the problem. They place it squarely upon the shoulders of woman. She has learned that whatever the moral responsibility of the man in this direction may be, he does not discharge it. She has learned that lovable and considerate as the individual husband may be, she has nothing to expect from men in the mass, when they make laws and decree customs. She knows that regardless of what ought to be, the brutal, unavoidable fact is that she will never receive her freedom until she takes it for herself.”
― Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race