Nellie L. McClung Quotes

I am a believer in women, in their ability to do things and in their influence and power. Women set the standards for the world, and it is for us, women in Canada, to set the standards high.

I think this is the greatest and best country in all the world, with its great sunlit spaces and its long long roads, and best of all the roads that are not made yet, and the stories that no one has told because they are too busy living them.

By nice women ... you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care.

No nation ever rises higher than its women ...

Disturbers are never popular - nobody ever really loved an alarm clock in action, no matter how grateful he may have been afterwards for its kind services!

A wound in a young heart is like a wound in a young tree. It does not grow out. It grows in.

Chivalry is a poor substitute for justice, if one cannot have both. Chivalry is something like the icing on the cake, sweet but not nourishing.

I saw what could be done with words, for I had a vision of a new world as I talked.

Men alone are not capable of making laws for men and women.

Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known.

We may yet live to see the day when women will be no longer news! And it cannot come too soon. I want to be a peaceful, happy, normal human being, pursuing my unimpeded way through life, never having to stop to explain, defend or apologize for my sex.

Every season of life has its compensations ...

The average reader can contemplate with considerable fortitude the sorrows and disappointments of someone else.

War is the antithesis of all our teaching. It breaks all the commandments; it makes rich men poor, and strong men weak. It makes well men sick, and by it living men are changed to dead men.

The grief that can be turned into words soon heals.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

That seems to be the haunting fear of mankind - that the advancement of women will sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man's comfort.

Always in Alberta there is a fresh wind blowing.

The horse on the treadmill may be very discontented, but he is not disposed to tell his troubles, for he cannot stop to talk.

I am one of those irritating people, who hang on to the door-knob after they say good-bye, and will neither come back nor go, always remembering something else which must be said ...

Canada is destined to be one of the great nations of the world and Canadian women must be ready for citizenship.

Never complain, never explain, get the thing done and let them howl.

Humanity has to travel a hard road to wisdom, and it has to travel it with bleeding feet.

Chivalry is like a line of credit. You can get plenty of it when you do not need it.

Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.

In regard to tenacity of life, no old yellow cat has anything on a prejudice. You may kill it with your own hands, bury it deep, and sit on the grave, and behold! the next day it will walk in at the back door, purring.

It makes a great difference to a speaker whether he has something to say, or has to say something.

War is a crime committed by men and, therefore, when enough people say it shall not be, it cannot be.

Thought without expression is dynamic and gathers volume by repression. Evolution when blocked and suppressed becomes revolution.

Women had first to convince the world that they had souls and then that they had minds and then it came on to this matter of political entity and the end is not yet ...

Women who set a low value of themselves make life hard for all women.

Prohibition is a hard sounding word, worthless as a rallying cry, hard as a locked door or going to bed without your supper.

Have we not the brains to think? Hands to work? Hearts to feel? And lives to live?

Why are pencils equipped with erasers if not to correct mistakes?