Margaret Sanger quotes - page 3

It is said a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets. According to one writer, the rapist has just enough brain development to raise him above the animal, but like the animal, when in heat knows no law except nature which impels him to procreate whatever the result. Every normal man and Woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells in thinking deeply, are never sensual. (Margaret Sanger)
...thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall 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. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Birth control is woman's problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place for her children to live. View quote
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. View quote
Margaret Sanger
I started to take the pulse of the child and as I did so, I saw two bodies of the child - one slightly above the other exactly in the same position and an exact replica - except that it was not flesh but a substance more like cob-webs the color of smoke. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Peggy was sleeping. Her pulse was so soft and slow. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Peggy had left for the great unknown and beyond. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Throughout the 200+ pages of this book Sanger called for the elimination of "human weeds," for the cessation of charity, for the segregation of "morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races." View quote
Margaret Sanger
The main objects of the Population Congress would be [...] (f) to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization. View quote
Margaret Sanger
(We) are seeking to assist the white race toward the elimination of the unfit. (Margaret Sanger)
It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us. View quote
Margaret Sanger
The ministers work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. 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. View quote
Margaret Sanger
We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock. View quote
Margaret Sanger
If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds. In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word. View quote
Margaret Sanger
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. View quote
Margaret Sanger
When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. View quote
Margaret Sanger
War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted. View quote
Margaret Sanger
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. View quote
Margaret Sanger
The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding. (Margaret Sanger)
While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and syphilitic, I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit. They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe in regard to these, as in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter. View quote
Margaret Sanger
We are convinced that racial regeneration like individual regeneration, must come "from within." That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without. In other words, every potential parent, and especially every potential mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and central importance of bringing children into this world. ... Not until the parents of the world are thus given control over their reproductive faculties will it ever be possible ... to improve the quality of the generations of the future, [or] even to maintain civilization even at its present level. ... An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. View quote
Margaret Sanger
Discrimination is a world-wide thing. It has to be opposed everywhere. That is why I feel the Negro's plight here is linked with that of the oppressed around the globe. View quote
Margaret Sanger
The Negro race has reached a place in its history when every possible effort should be made to have every Negro child count as a valuable contribution to the future of America. Negro parents, like all parents, must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness; from health, not from despair. View quote
Margaret Sanger