Quote

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Margaret Sanger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Margaret Sanger
Age: 86 †
Born: 1879
Born: September 14
Died: 1966
Died: September 6
Activist
Feminist
Film Director
Nurse
Sex Columnist
Trade Unionist
Corning
New York
Margaret Higgins
Margaret Higgins Sanger
Margaret Hennessy Higgins
Doe
Independent
Body
Choose
Control
Call
Whether
Free
Sterilization
Woman
Contraception
Mother
Consciously

More quotes by Margaret Sanger

Image
It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jail with large families.
Margaret Sanger
Image
No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Birth control is nothing more or less than...weeding out the unfit.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive periodwe prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.
Margaret Sanger
Image
As I look back upon my life, I see that every part of it was a preparation for the next. The most trivial of incidents fits into the larger pattern like a mosaic in a preconceived design.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.
Margaret Sanger
Image
I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies. I would strikeout--I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard.
Margaret Sanger
Image
I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance to be a human being, practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin - that people can - can commit.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Woman must not accept she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The procreation of [the diseased, the feeble-minded and paupers] should be stopped.
Margaret Sanger
Image
In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York.
Margaret Sanger
Image
To give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization. g. to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees... . Abused soil brings forth stunted growths.
Margaret Sanger
Image
I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Organized charity itself is. . . the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents
Margaret Sanger
Image
Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.
Margaret Sanger
Image
As a cause becomes more and more successful, the ideas of the people engaged in it are bound to change.
Margaret Sanger