Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator and author. Profoundly inspirational Jane Addams quotes will fire up your brain and encourage you to look at life differently while making you laugh.
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Famous Jane Addams Quotes
We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing. Jane Addams
It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as the other. Jane Addams
A woman should have the ballot, because without this responsibility she cannot best develop her moral courage. Jane Addams
Is it not Abraham Lincoln who has cleared the title to our democracy? He made plain, once for all, that democratic government, associated as it is with all the mistakes and shortcomings of the common people, still remains the most valuable contribution America has made to the moral life of the world.Jane Addams
A city is in many respects a great business corporation, but in other respects it is enlarged housekeeping may we not say that city housekeeping has failed partly because women, the traditional housekeepers, have not been consulted as to its multiform activities? Jane Addams
You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! Jane Addams
Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party. Jane Addams
With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world! Jane Addams
I am not one of those who believe broadly speaking that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance. Jane Addams
The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional incentive. Jane Addams
Old fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled. Jane Addams
The supreme religious test of our social order is the hideous commerce of prostitution. Jane Addams
Many women today are failing properly to discharge their duties to their own families and household simply because they fail to see that as society grows more complicated it is necessary that women shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her home, if only to preserve the home in entirety. Jane Addams
A Settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted. Jane Addams
The very word woman in the writings of the church fathers stood for the basest of temptations As women were lowered in the moral scale because of their identification with her at the very bottom of the pit, so they cannot rise themselves save as they succeed in lifting her with whose sins they are weighed. Jane Addams
We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith. Jane Addams
With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world! Jane Addams
The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. Jane Addams
All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to their attitude toward the social order itself Jane Addams
The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it. Jane Addams
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics. Jane Addams
One’s faith is kept alive as one occasionally meets a realized ideal of better human relations. Jane Addams
We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith Jane Addams
A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly relations. Jane Addams
This piteous dependence of the poor upon the good will of public officials was made clear to us in an early experience with a peasant woman straight from the fields of Germany, whom we met during our first six months at Hull House. Jane Addams
The classical city promoted play with careful solicitude, building the theater and stadium as it built the market place and the temple. Jane Addams
Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited. Jane Addams
Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that. Jane Addams
We revolted not only against the cruelty and barbarity of war, but even more against the reversal of human relationships which war implied. .Jane Addams
A long established occupation may form the very foundations of the moral life, that the art with which a man has solaced his toil may be the salvation of his uncertain temperament Jane Addams
We had almost forgotten what it was like to be in a neutral country where it entailed no odium to be a pacifist. Jane Addams
If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave Jane Addams
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights. Jane Addams
Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole Jane Addams
We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by traveling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burdens. Jane Addams
The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is held. Jane Addams
On the theory that our genuine impulses may be connected with our childish experiences, that one’s bent may be tracked back to that No Man’s Land where character is formless but nevertheless settling into definite lines of future development, I begin this record with some impressions of my childhood. Jane Addams
The lessons of great men and women are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves; they are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of their highest ideas. Jane Addams
Would it not provoke to ironic laughter that very nemesis which presides over the destinies of nations, if the most autocratic government yet remaining in civilization should succeed in utilizing for its own autocratic methods the youngest and most daring experiment in democratic government which the world has ever seen? Jane Addams
If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse. Jane Addams
The Settlement House must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy. Jane Addams
The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist. Jane Addams
Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward. Jane Addams
As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community, however humble he may be. Jane Addams
In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life. Jane Addams
Intellectual life requires for its expansion and manifestation the influences and assimilation of the interests and affections of others. Jane Addams
But stranger than any episode was the fact itself that neither the convict, his wife, nor his godfather for a moment considered him a criminal. Jane Addams
Even death itself sometimes fails to bring the dignity and serenity which one would fain associate with old age. Jane Addams
It has been pointed out many times that Art lives by devouring her own offspring and the world has come to justify even that sacrifice. Jane Addams
The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels.Jane Addams
The Settlement is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. Jane Addams
Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans. Jane Addams
Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself. Jane Addams
Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited. Jane Addams
The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. Jane Addams
I dreamed night after night that everyone in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. Jane Addams
The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional incentive. Jane Addams
All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them. Jane Addams
This dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth. Jane Addams
This dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth. Jane Addams
What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved. Jane Addams
When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. Jane Addams
True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice. Jane Addams
The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is rich and successful. Jane Addams
An unscrupulous contractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too small for his workroom as these conditions imply low rental. Jane Addams
No one so poignantly realizes the failures in the social structure as the man at the bottom, who has been most directly in contact with those failures and has suffered most. Jane Addams
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. Jane Addams
A wise man has told us that men are once for all so made that they prefer a rational world to believe in and live in. Jane Addams
That person is most cultivated who is able to put himself in the place of the greatest number of other persons. Jane Addams
In this effort toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection with the activity of the many. Jane Addams
The excellent becomes the permanent. Jane Addams
Must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy. Jane Addams
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. Jane Addams
The blessing which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent. Jane Addams
What after all has maintained the human race on this old Globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them. Jane Addams
The cheap drama brings cause and effect, will power and action, once more into relation and gives a man the thrilling conviction that he may yet be master of his fate. Jane Addams
We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself. Jane Addams
Pliable human nature is relentlessly pressed upon by its physical environment. Jane Addams
The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it. Jane Addams.
One’s faith is kept alive as one occasionally meets a realized ideal of better human relation. Jane Addams
That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself. Jane Addams
