Elizabeth Blackwell quotes

Elizabeth Blackwell was a British-born American physician and medical pioneer, known as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Her determination challenged social norms and opened doors for women in medicine. She inspired future generations by advocating for medical education for women and public health reform. Here are 9 of her quotes:

If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled.

Elizabeth Blackwell

It is not easy to be a pioneer but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.

Elizabeth Blackwell

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.

Elizabeth Blackwell

A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.

Elizabeth Blackwell

I must have something to engross my thoughts, some object in life which will fill this vacuum, and prevent this sad wearing away of the heart.

Elizabeth Blackwell

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.

Elizabeth Blackwell

Our school education ignores, in a thousand ways, the rules of healthy development.

Elizabeth Blackwell

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honourable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.

Elizabeth Blackwell