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There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for these is the answer.

Margaret Sanger

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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
Higher
Reply
Answers
Request
Asks
Minded
Government
Insane
Back
Burden
Firsts
Intelligent
Sterilization
First
Answer
Mandatory
Take
Among
Feeble

More quotes by Margaret Sanger

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While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.
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The real hope of the world lies in putting as painstaking thought into the business of mating as we do into other big businesses.
Margaret Sanger
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... it has always been the depth of my belief, my faith, or my love that was the mainspring of my behavior. When once I believed in doing a thing, nothing could prevent my doing it.
Margaret Sanger
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As a cause becomes more and more successful, the ideas of the people engaged in it are bound to change.
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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
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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
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Birth control is nothing more or less than...weeding out the unfit.
Margaret Sanger
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I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther.
Margaret Sanger
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The greatest issue is to raise the question of birth control out of the gutter of obscenity ... into the light of intelligence and human understanding.
Margaret Sanger
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Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jail with large families.
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The most serious charge that can be brought against modern benevolence is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.
Margaret Sanger
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Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone.
Margaret Sanger
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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
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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
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Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying . . . demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism.
Margaret Sanger
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Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.
Margaret Sanger
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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
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We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates ... that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable traits.
Margaret Sanger
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Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man's equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.
Margaret Sanger
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Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes.
Margaret Sanger