Sarah Grimke Quotes on Justice
Sarah Moore Grimke was an American abolitionist, philosopher, and one of the founding figures of nineteenth-century American feminist thought, the elder sister of Angelina Grimke and a Quaker convert from a slaveholding South Carolina family. This page collects quotes attributed to Sarah Grimke on the topic of justice, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“I ask no favor for my sex; all I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.”
Letter 2 (July 17, 1837). -
Attributed to Sarah Grimke:
“The page of history teems with woman's wrongs; it is wet with woman's tears.”
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Attributed to Sarah Grimke:
“Slavery and the subordination of women are the same evil with two faces.”
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“Letter to Harriot Hunt (1853), as quoted in The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Woman's [sic] Rights and Abolition , p. 241, by Gerda Lerner. Editorial Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0195106032 .”
At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline. Yet I have sometimes tasted exquisite joy and have found solace for many a woe in the innocence and earnest love of Theodore's children. But for this my life would have little to record of mundane pleasures. -
“Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate.”
As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina , by Gerda Lerner , ch.5 (1969). -
“I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to be understood and asserted.”
Letter 3 (July 1837).