Frances Willard quotes

Frances Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffrage leader. One of the most influential women of her era, she served as president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She championed social reforms and worked tirelessly for women’s rights throughout her life. Here are 6 of her quotes:

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.

Frances Willard

This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.

Frances Willard

In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.

Frances Willard

If I were black and young, no steamer could revolve its wheels fast enough to convey me to the dark continent. I should go where my color was the correct thing, and leave these pale faces to work out their own destiny.

Frances Willard

A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind. I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from .......... to sixteen years.

Frances Willard