Charlotte Perkins Gilman quotes

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American writer, feminist, and social reformer, best known for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Her work focused on gender roles, women's rights, and the need for social change. She continues to inspire discussions on feminism and mental health. Here are 51 of her quotes:

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A million million worlds that move in peace;A million mighty laws that never cease;And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,Rich with eggs, slaves and store of millet-seeds.They sleep beneath the sodAnd trust in God. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I do not want to be a fly,I want to be a worm! View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Where young boys plan for what they will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
To-day there is hardly a woman of intelligence in all America ... who is not definitely and actively concerned in some social interest, who does not recognize some duty besides those incident to her own blood relationship. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A concept is stronger than a fact. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A normal feminine influence in recasting our religious assumptions will do more than any other one thing to improve the world. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Said I, in scorn all burning hot, In rage and anger high, "You ignominious idiot, Those wings are made to fly!" View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the women behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This is the woman's century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place . . . and the world waits while she powders her nose. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
What we do modifies us more than what is done to us. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. View quote
Charlotte Perkins Gilman