Sarah Grimke Quotes on Mind
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 mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
Letter 2 (July 17, 1837). -
“The “cause” was two-fold: abolition of slavery and establishment of women’s rights, especially suffrage. Some abolitionists and feminists thought it essential to win the support of clergymen.”
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman(1837) -
“The reason why women effect so little and are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage is the prize for which they strive; if foiled in that they rarely rise above disappointment.”
The Female Experience(1977) | Written in 1852, as quoted in ch. 87. -
“If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.”
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman(1837) | Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).