Margaret Sanger Quotes

Margaret Sanger didn't just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies. ~ Roxane Gay

As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to know ... ~ Faye Wattleton

Some lives drift here and there like reeds in a stream, depending on changing currents for their activity. Others are like swimmers knowing the depth of the water. Each stroke helps them onward to a definite objective. ~ Margaret Sanger

Many people are horrified at the idea of birth control ... It is simply the keynote of a new moral program. ~ Margaret Sanger

Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class - and so tenaciously withheld from the working women - brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community. ~ Margaret Sanger

No woman can call herself free who cannot choose the time to be a mother or not as she sees fit. ~ Margaret Sanger

Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child ... ~ Margaret Sanger

More children from the fit, less from the unfit
that is the chief aim of birth control. ~ 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

Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tryanny of Christianity no less than Capitalism. ~ Margaret Sanger

Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization. ~ Margaret Sanger

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

If we are really to live at all we must put our convictions into action. ~ 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

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

She made people accept that women had the right to control their own destinies. ~ Margaret Sanger

Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. ~ Margaret Sanger

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

Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock. ~ Margaret Sanger

Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees ... Abused soil brings forth stunted growths. ~ Margaret Sanger

It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will. ~ 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

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

Woman was and is condemned to a system under which the lawful rapes exceed the unlawful ones a million to one. ~ Margaret Sanger

The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. ~ Margaret Sanger

We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates ... that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable traits. ~ Margaret Sanger

Like the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, postmodernism seeks to institutionalize dishonesty as a legitimate school of thought. The idea of truth as the ultimate goal of the intellectual is discarded. In its place, scholars are asked to pursue political objectives
so long as those political objectives are the 'correct' ones. Postmodernism is not fringe within the community of scholars. It is central. This tells us a great deal about the life of the mind today. Peruse any university course catalogue, and you find names like Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes. Scour the footnotes of scholarly books and journals and a similar story unfolds. With the primacy of philosophies
postmodernism, Critical Theory, and even the right-leaning Straussianism
that exalt dishonesty in the service of supposedly noble causes, is it at all surprising that liars like Alfred Kinsey, Rigoberta Menchu, Alger Hiss, and Margaret Sanger have achieved a venerated status among the intellectuals? ~ Daniel J. Flynn

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

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. ~ Margaret Sanger

A woman's duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes ... to speak and act in defiance of convention. ~ Margaret Sanger

The procreation of [the diseased, the feeble-minded and paupers] should be stopped. ~ Margaret Sanger

Through sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to earthly paradise. ~ Margaret Sanger

Never be ashamed of passion. If you are strongly sexed, you are richly endowed. ~ Margaret Sanger

Covertly invest into non-White areas, invest in ghetto abortion clinics. Help to raise
money for free abortions, in primarily non-White areas. Perhaps abortion
clinic syndicates throughout North America, that primarily operate in
non-White areas and receive tax support, should be promoted. ~ Margaret Sanger

Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jail with large families. ~ Margaret Sanger

We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all-that the wealth of individuals and of state is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization. ~ Margaret Sanger

Birth control is the means by which woman attains basic freedom ... ~ Margaret Sanger

No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective. ~ Margaret Sanger

Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. Both are seeking a single end but they lay emphasis upon different methods. ~ Margaret Sanger

The contemporary Planned Parenthood movement was started by a woman named Margaret Sanger, who defended abortion rights on the basis of eugenics, the search for "good genes" based on the racist and evolutionary notions of "social Darwinism" prevalent in her day. ~ Russell D. Moore

We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees. ~ Margaret Sanger

Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism, ~ Margaret Sanger

Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception ... Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding. ~ Margaret Sanger

The masses of Negroes ... particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disasterously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit ... ~ Margaret Sanger

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

Opponents of legal birth control, including abortion, have tried for decades to play the race card, saying that legal abortion is racist. What they ignore is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966. ~ Karen DeCrow

Wonder Woman didn't begin in 1941 when William Moulton Marston turned in his first script to Sheldon Mayer. Wonder Woman began on a winter day in 1904 when Margaret Sanger dug Olive Byrne out of a snowbank. ~ Jill Lepore

In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when
we were finally through it was too late to return to New York. ~ Margaret Sanger

The real hope of the world lies in putting as painstaking thought into the business of mating as we do into other big businesses. ~ Margaret Sanger

There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for these is the answer. ~ Margaret Sanger

Enthusiasm is a divine possession. ~ Margaret Sanger

It is ... marvellous ... to have a period of apparent fanaticism. No obstacle can discourage you. The single vision of your quest obscures defeat and lifts you over mountainous difficulties. ~ Margaret Sanger

The first right of every child is to be wanted, to be desired, to be planned for with an intensity of love that gives it its title to being. ~ Margaret Sanger

No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural resources. ~ Margaret Sanger

The most successful educational approach to the Negro is throgh a religious appeal. 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. ~ Margaret Sanger

Women must have economic and social equality with men. ~ Margaret Sanger

It now remains for the United States government to set a sensible example to the
world by offering a bonus or a yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow
themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. ~ 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

Placing Margaret Sanger on the $20 bill will remind us of what she has done for women and our reproductive health and how the fight for reproductive freedom is an ongoing one. ~ Roxane Gay

As I look back upon my life, I see that every part of it was a preparation for the next. The most trivial of incidents fits into the larger pattern like a mosaic in a preconceived design. ~ Margaret Sanger

Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race. ~ Margaret Sanger

No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood. ~ Margaret Sanger

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man's equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation. ~ Margaret Sanger

Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated. ~ Margaret Sanger

Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes. ~ Margaret Sanger

As a cause becomes more and more successful, the ideas of the people engaged in it are bound to change ... ~ Margaret Sanger

The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it. ~ Margaret Sanger

In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists [sic], one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails. ~ Margaret Sanger

I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world. ~ Margaret Sanger

I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther. ~ Margaret Sanger

The ocean could not be swept back with a broom. The truth was out. It illuminated the world. Motherhood no longer cringed before the relentless laws of fecundity. ~ Margaret Sanger

No gods, no masters. ~ Margaret Sanger

The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. ~ Margaret Sanger

I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies. I would strikeout
I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard. ~ Margaret Sanger

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. ~ Margaret Sanger

Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It
has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion. ~ Margaret Sanger

Margaret [Hodge] is obviously entitled to do what she wishes to do. I would ask her to think for a moment, a Tory prime minister resigned, Britain's voted to leave the European Union, there are massive political issues to be addressed, is it really a good idea to start a big debate in the Labour Party when I was elected less than a year ago with a very large mandate not from MPs, I fully concede and understand that, but from the party members as a whole. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

But when launches were delayed, everything moved into a strange sort of limbo...a launch that was supposed to have gone up one morning but wouldn't attempt again until the next made us all feel we were living in a day that didn't count, a day between parentheses. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

Constructionism thus impoverishes humanity, by subtracting from our human powers and accrediting all of them - selfhood, reflexivity, thought, memory and emotionality - to society's discourse. ~ Margaret Scotford Archer

We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Lewis appeared beside them, roguish grin on his handsome face. "Miss Macy, as I live and breathe! How I have longed to see you again. Do say you'll dance with me. Nate won't mind if I cut in. Will you, ol' boy?" Nathaniel felt the old stab of jealousy. He glanced from his brother's face - perfectly confident she would agree - to Margaret's. She looked at Lewis squarely and said, "Actually, I would prefer to dance with your brother." Lewis's mouth parted in disbelief. Heart lifting, Nathaniel whirled Margaret away from his stunned brother. It was likely the first time a woman had turned him down for anything. ~ Julie Klassen

But Mother, I don't want to go. It's just that ... I have to. I can't spend the rest of my life hiding in the attic.
[ ... ]
I don't want to be a burden[ ... ]I want to do something with my life. Figure out ways to help other third kids. Make - make a difference in the world. ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

The anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand. ~ Margaret Deland

For reliable information, apply to a lawyer, a barber or prostitute. My informant hasn't found out so far who paid the captain.' 'But she will,' said Margaret, her face grave. 'I hope so,' he said with equal gravity, ~ Dorothy Dunnett

In France her tutor had once taught her that to truly fix an image in the mind to fasten it down completely so that it remained forever captive and vivid she should carefully name each aspect of the thing to herself as though she were describing it to a blind person.
"For ma petite such is the fickleness of the human mind that it soon lets go of whatever it sees if you would keep it you must tack it down with words." She had tried it and found that it worked on flowers rooms faces ceremonies. ~ Margaret George

Where I'm going, anything may happen. Nothing may happen. Maybe I will marry a middle-aged widower, or a longshoreman, or a cattle-hoof-trimmer, or a barrister or a thief. And have my children in time. Or maybe not. Most of the chances are against it. But not, I think, quite all. What will happen? What will happen. It may be that my children will always be temporary, never to be held. But so are everyone's.
I may become, in time, slightly more eccentric all the time. I may begin to wear outlandish hats, feathered and sequinned and rosetted, and dangling necklaces made from coy and tiny seashells which I've gathered myself along the beach and painted coral-pink with nail polish. And all the kids will laugh, and I'll laugh, too, in time. I will be light and straight as any feather. The wind will bear me, and I will drift and settle, and drift and settle. Anything may happen, where I'm going. ~ Margaret Laurence

Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state, according to him. In addition it was humiliating, because it put you at a disadvantage, it gave the love object too much power. As for sex per se, it lacked both challenge and novelty, and was on the whole a deeply imperfect solution to the problem of intergenerational genetic transfer. ~ Margaret Atwood

The two officers seemed more puzzled by Emily's costume than by the presence of a corpse in the Mercedes. Perhaps corpses were more regular. ~ Margaret Scherf

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings. Nothing ties me down. ~ Margaret Atwood

You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She didn't go on to say anything about inheriting the earth. ~ Margaret Atwood

Big data will never give you big ideas ... Big data doesn't facilitate big leaps of the imagination. It will never conjure up a PC revolution or any kind of paradigm shift. And while it might tell you what to aim for, it can't tell you how to get there ~ Margaret Heffernan

War is what happens when language fails. ~ Margaret Atwood

? Life is all about relationships and what actually happens when people relate, when people understand each other. To see each other for who they are, not what we want or expect of them. Margaret Bouchard ~ Ted Magnuson

None of us wanted to look like that, ever. For a moment, even though we knew what was being done to her, we despised her. Crybaby. Crybaby. Crybaby. We meant it, which is the bad part. I used to think well of myself. I didn't then. ~ Margaret Atwood

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams. ~ Margaret Mead

I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it. ~ Margaret Atwood

Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imagining will not stand up. ~ Margaret Culkin Banning

I was there laughing and joking with everyone else, but it's like there was some part of me
standing back, watching, thinking, Is this as good as it gets? ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

Of course there are mothers,
squeezing their breasts
dry, pawning their bodies,
shedding teeth for their children,
or that's our fond belief.
But remember - Hansel
and Gretel were dumped in the forest
because their parents were starving. ~ Margaret Atwood

You just have to learn not to care about the dusty mites under the beds. ~ Margaret Mead