Dora Russell quotes

Dora Russell was a British author, feminist, and campaigner for progressive social change. A leading advocate for women's rights and pacifism, she played a significant role in the social movements of the twentieth century. She dedicated her life to education reform, gender equality, and global peace. Here are 20 of her quotes:

Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying.

Dora Russell

Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system.

Dora Russell

We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.

Dora Russell

Marie Stopes had established the first birth control clinic in Britain; the whole question of informing women, especially those who were poor, about methods of contraception, began to be discussed.

Dora Russell

Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children. To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war.

Dora Russell

We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance.

Dora Russell

Marriage, laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence.

Dora Russell

Feminists have emphasized for a long time the importance of each woman's individual entity and the necessity of economic independence. Perhaps it was necessary. But now I think we need some emphasis on the instinctive side of life, sex and motherhood.... Life isn't all earning your living. Unfortunately we fall in love and Feminism must take that into consideration.

Dora Russell

If an adult uses violence on a child, the child will naturally assume that he too, has the right to use it on one smaller or weaker.

Dora Russell

Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education.

Dora Russell

Measures of self-government and a school council, especially for such young children, were a great innovation.

Dora Russell

Following the rise of the Labour Party it seemed reasonable, in 1927, to expect, or at least hope, that co-operation for the common good might gradually replace the competitiveness of capitalism.

Dora Russell

You could not receive a young man in your room; you might be permitted to have him to tea in one of the public reception rooms, but you could accept no invitation from young men to tea or other entertainment without a chaperone from the College.

Dora Russell

We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction. We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance. Only by learning to love one another can our world be saved. Only love can conquer all.

Dora Russell

All my life I have tried to do too many different things. I wonder if this is not a perpetual dilemma for women. A man enters on a job or profession, needs to stick to it to earn his living, and is unlikely to have to change it on marriage. For a woman marriage presents not only practical problems, but she finds herself emotionally pulled all ways, and tends by tradition and impulse to put the needs of others before her own. What is more, opening her eyes on the world, she feels intensely responsible for setting it to rights.

Dora Russell

Nothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by lies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility which they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman in knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to her own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human beings is worth the discomfort and the suffering she must necessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives when choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted to bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and intrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life from which individuals and the community suffer far too much already.

Dora Russell

Marriage laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence. We have not yet found the right road to conquering ourselves and our environment.

Dora Russell

Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?

Dora Russell