Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Profoundly inspirational Margaret Sanger quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Margaret Sanger Quotes
While she was a woman of heroic accomplishments, Margaret Sanger had some beliefs, practices, and associations that we acknowledge, denounce, and work to rectify today. Her life story provides a portrait that is bold, fascinating, formidable, human, complicated, and flawed. Planned Parenthood
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body. Margaret Sanger
Sanger’s battle for family planning was unrelenting, unyielding, and totally focused.
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. Margaret Sanger
The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color. Karen Seltzer
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
They tell me that The Woman Rebel was badly written; that it was crude; that it was emotional and hysterical; that it mixed issues; that it was defiant, and too radical. Well, to all of these indictments I plead guilty. 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
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
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 undeniably feeble minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. 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
No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood. Margaret Sanger
No gods, no masters. Margaret Sanger
Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion. 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
The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it. Margaret Sanger
Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race. 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
The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. Margaret Sanger
Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees. Abused soil brings forth stunted growths. Margaret Sanger
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
More children from the fit, less from the unfit that is the chief aim of birth control. 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
No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective. 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
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
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
Woman must not accept; she must challenge. Margaret Sanger
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
Every woman should be absolute mistress of her own body. Margaret Sanger
No woman can call herself free who does not control 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
Women must have economic and social equality with men. Margaret Sanger
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
Margaret Sanger was an early feminist and women’s rights activist who coined the term birth control and worked towards its legalization.
