Jane Addams Quotes
Jane Addams was an American social philosopher, reformer, and pacifist and the most influential American woman public intellectual of her generation. In 1889 she co-founded Hull House in Chicago, the most famous of the American settlement houses, and from that base contributed in close dialogue with John Dewey and other pragmatists to the development of American pragmatism, social ethics, and progressive reform. The quotes below are attributed to Jane Addams, organized by topic.
Browse Jane Addams by topic
Jane Addams on God
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“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?”
Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War
Jane Addams on Justice
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Attributed to Jane Addams:
“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious until secured for all.”
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“In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.”
As quoted in The MacMillan Dictionary of Quotations (1989) by John Daintith, Hazel Egerton, Rosalind Ferguson, Anne Stibbs and Edmund Wright, p. 374.
Jane Addams on Knowledge
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“The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.”
Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), ch. 1; cf. Al Smith -
“Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), ch. 1; cf. Al Smith”
The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy. -
“The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" ; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)”
These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. -
“Speech, Honolulu (1933), quoted in The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000) edited by Bill Swainson, page 6, Inscribed in stone at the Chicago Public Library reading garden.”
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. -
“If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse.”
Twenty Years at Hull-House(1910) | Ch. 9
Jane Addams on Life
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“I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller's thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened as my father’s had become, during his earlier years of a miller’s life.”
Twenty Years at Hull-House(1910) | Ch. 1 -
“We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.”
Twenty Years at Hull-House(1910) | Ch. 7
Jane Addams on Nature
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“… this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”
Twenty Years at Hull-House(1910) | Ch. 7
Jane Addams on Politics
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Attributed to Jane Addams:
“Democracy is not a form of government, but a way of life.”
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“Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all.”
Speech, Honolulu (1933), quoted in The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000) edited by Bill Swainson, page 6, Inscribed in stone at the Chicago Public Library reading garden. -
“My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position.”
Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War -
“Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War”
My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an uneq -
“Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War”
What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did ever
Jane Addams on Truth
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“Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans.”
Twenty Years at Hull-House(1910) | Ch. 11
Jane Addams on Virtue
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Attributed to Jane Addams:
“Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.”
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Attributed to Jane Addams:
“Old morality is too narrow to give us guidance under the new conditions.”