Sojourner Quotes

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored
men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will
take a great while to get it going again. ~ Sojourner Truth

It is hard for the old slave holding spirit to die. But die it must. ~ Sojourner Truth

And ar'n't I a woman? ~ 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

In the upstate farmhouse he had dubbed Mount Zion, Matthias had apparently established for himself a community of seven wives - a "harem," Locke called it - six of them wealthy white women and the seventh a black servant by the name of Isabella Van Wagenen, and "had one appointed to each working day in the week, and the black one consecrated for Sundays." (Isabella Van Wagenen was a former slave who would later join the abolitionist movement, changing her name to the one by which she would be forever remembered: Sojourner Truth.) ~ Matthew Goodman

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other. ~ Sojourner Truth

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

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say. ~ Sojourner Truth

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. ~ Alice Walker

When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wasn't going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an' so I went to the Lord an' asked him to give me a new name. And he gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing the people their sins and bein' a sign unto them. I told the Lord I wanted two names 'cause everybody else had two, and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people. ~ Sojourner Truth

I am above eighty years old ... I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. ~ Sojourner Truth

If my cup won't hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full? ~ Sojourner Truth

All the heroes of black emancipation - from the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, to the woman who organized the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, to the leader whose actions finally destroyed American slavery, Abraham Lincoln - were Republicans. It is of the utmost importance to progressive propagandists to conceal or at least ignore this essential historical truth. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Growing up is not easy for anyone but for anyone to deliberately block the path of the child from their family, it is nothing short of a sin." Lowering her voice a little she quietly said, "I believe she has done us all an injustice." The smile that she gave Melanie lit up her entire face as she patted the scrapbook. "Please look over the book and call me anytime. I don't sleep much and I will be here for you. ~ Sojourner McConnell

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament. ~ Nancy Gibbs

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

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

I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votesas they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if the woman's vote looks any different from the rest
if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. ~ Sojourner Truth

Return, thou wanderer! Fly back to thy ark, This is not thy home. Think not of building tabernacles here. Thou art but a stranger, a sojourner upon earth; a creature of a day, but just launching out into an unchangeable state. Make haste. Eternity is at hand. Eternity depends on this moment. An eternity of happiness, or an eternity of misery! ~ Michael R. Martin

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show. ~ Ethel Waters

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. ~ Sojourner Truth

Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit. ~ Sojourner Truth

Assisi was like something, but like what? Like something one had always known, but never seen. Something perceived from afar, like a wind from the promised land that greeted the stranger and sojourner coming up out of bondage from Egypt. It was joy, no doubt about that. But a joy unlike any other joy he had ever experienced. Unexpected joy in a dark time. Curious joy. There was no other word that approximated it. A taste of sweetness like the fecundity of grape arbors in the terraces below, ~ Michael D. O'Brien

You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. ~ Anonymous

What emerged for me as purpose was the search for and cultivation of possibilities for experiencing meaningful human transactions in different languages and across cultural differences through play, sports, travel, food, literature, and conversation. I sought to establish relations of mutual understanding and love with people no matter what their culture or place of origin in the world - relations based on philia, eros, and agape, according to context and persons. I perhaps sensed instinctively that such relations were the key to being equally at home everywhere, even in la Yunai. More than an immigrant, at that time I still felt myself to be a sojourner in this country, but I wanted my sojourn to be imbued with the meaning found in earnest, sincere connections with the people and places that life brought to my experience. ~ Daniel G. Campos

Some of our national heroines were defined by the fact that they never nested - they were peripatetic crusaders like Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Dix. ~ Gail Collins

When evil rules a time and place, certain good people are called upon to tell the truth to those who don't want to hear it. ~ Anne F. Rockwell

I am a woman's rights. I have as much as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? ~ 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

The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another. ~ Sojourner Truth

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time. ~ Nell Irvin Painter

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

Sojourner [Truth]'s life exemplifies the process that occurs within ourselves as we grow to understand that we hold the authority to shape our own lives. This inner authority came when she embraced all of herself, which enabled her to speak from an authentic voice. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt

Similar to the Bodhisattvas of India, the Buddhist way-showers, I play the role of the guide along the esoteric trail and aim to bring the seeker across the water. There I wait and watch from the shore as the pilgrim continues. This is not my journey; I have brought the sojourner to this place, to this state of grace and divine connection, and I set my intention and prayers that all is well. Great Spirit – be with us now! ~ Stephen Poplin

When I enter a library, when I enter the world of books, I feel the ghosts of the past on my shoulders urging me to speech. I hear Patrick Henry cry to the Burgsses, 'Is Life so dear, or Peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?' I hear Sojourner Truth tell me that the hand that rocks the cradle can also rock the boat, and William Lloyd Garrison say, 'I am in earnest, I will not be silenced.' ~ Sara Paretsky

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

I tell you I can't read a book, but I can read de people. ~ 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

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 ... individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbors do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable. ~ 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

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs. ~ Annie Dillard

Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

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

We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. ~ Sojourner Truth

Love has won infinitely more converts than theology. The first believers were drawn to Christ's mercy long before they understood His divinity. That brings us back to the overemphasis on Sunday morning as the front door: If love is the most effective way - and the Bible says it is - then how much genuine love can one pastor show an entire congregation? His bandwidth is not wide enough; this is a crippling, impossible burden. When he fails to connect with every person (which he will), the congregation becomes disgruntled because he can't fulfill what should have been their mission. Nor can a random group of strangers standing in a church lobby offer legitimate community to some sojourner who walks in the door. ~ Jen Hatmaker

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them. ~ Stephen King

Because we cannot repair the loss of years away, homecomings are almost always conflicted. We are not longer at "home" in our former familiar place. And we do not live between two or more cultures, but rather in both. We are neither fully away, nor fully home.

In the pain of this tension, there is a strange blessing, a nudge that helps us to realise the fundamental sojourner status of our human existence. Life moves towards death. And for the Christian, there is the sense that this world as it is now is not our final home. Having made the return, our pilgrim status in the journey of faith becomes even more evident. This reminds us that in some strange way we are too early for heaven and too late for this world. ~ Charles Ringma