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
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Health, Optimism
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
Topics: Poverty
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Civilization, Attitude
The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is held.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Conviction, Dedication, Commitment
Regret, which is guilt without the neurosis, enables us … to move forward instead of back.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Regret
It is perhaps significant that the adherents of war are more and more justifying it by its past record and reminding us of its ancient origin… . The little lad who stoutly defends himself on the school ground may be worthy of much admiration, but if we find him, a dozen years later, the bullying leader of a street-gang … our admiration cools amazingly.
—Jane Addams
Topics: War
America’s future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what it is taught, hence we must watch what we teach it, how we live before it.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Education, America, Home
Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Unemployment
Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Socialism, Progress
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Ethics, Action
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Hypocrisy, Immortality
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jeannette Rankin American Politician
- W. E. B. Du Bois American Sociologist, Activist
- Helen Keller American Author
- Linus Pauling American Scientist, Peace Activist
- Joan Baez American Singer
- Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
- Barbara Ehrenreich American Social Critic
- Jimmy Carter American Head of State
- Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State
- Eugene V. Debs American Socialist
Leave a Reply