Quote

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward.

Jane Addams

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jane Addams
Age: 74 †
Born: 1860
Born: September 6
Died: 1935
Died: June 21
Autobiographer
Feminist
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Political Theorist
Social Critic
Social Reformer
Laura Jane Addams
Dzheyn Edems
Hands
Oldest
Human
Tool
Humans
Significance
Nothing
Constantly
Way
Tools
Men
Forward
Groping
Perhaps
Fraught
Hand
Savagery

More quotes by Jane Addams

Image
When the sense of justice seeks to express itself quite outside the regular channels of established government, it has set forth on a dangerous journey inevitably ending in disaster.
Jane Addams
Image
The very word woman in the writings of the church fathers stood for the basest of temptations... As women were lowered in the moral scale because of their identification with her at the very bottom of the pit, so they cannot rise themselves save as they succeed in lifting her with whose sins they are weighed.
Jane Addams
Image
The lessons of great men and women are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves they are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of their highest ideas.
Jane Addams
Image
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
Jane Addams
Image
But the paradox is here: when cultivated people do stay away from a certain portion of the population, when all social advantages are persistently withheld, it may be for years, the result itself is pointed to as a reason and is used as an argument for the continued withholding.
Jane Addams
Image
Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans.
Jane Addams
Image
The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is held.
Jane Addams
Image
Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations that wisdom to deal with a man's difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole.
Jane Addams
Image
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
Jane Addams
Image
Young people need pleasure as truly as they need food and air.
Jane Addams
Image
As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune.
Jane Addams
Image
Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.
Jane Addams
Image
We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another's burdens.
Jane Addams
Image
Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.
Jane Addams
Image
A woman should have the ballot, because without this responsibility she cannot best develop her moral courage.
Jane Addams
Image
As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community, however humble he may be.
Jane Addams
Image
Intellectual life requires for its expansion and manifestation the influences and assimilation of the interests and affections of others.
Jane Addams
Image
It is dreadful the way all the comfortable, happy people stay off to themselves.
Jane Addams
Image
Keep friends close but keep enemies closer.
Jane Addams
Image
It is possible that an individual may be successful, largely because he conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code.
Jane Addams