Quote

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

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
Sign
Delinquents
Charity
Perpetuating
Constantly
Eugenics
Civilization
Bred
Numbers
Surest
Breeding
Increasing
Organized
Dependents

More quotes by 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
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
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
Image
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
Image
Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Through sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will transform the world, which will light up the only path to earthly paradise.
Margaret Sanger
Image
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
Image
... 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
Image
A woman’s duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes… to speak and act in defiance of convention.
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
The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees... . Abused soil brings forth stunted growths.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The masses of Negroes...particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disasterously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Negroes and Southern Europeans are mentally inferior to native born Americans.
Margaret Sanger
Image
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
Image
As often as I have witnessed the miracle [birth], held the perfect creature with its tiny hands and feet, each time I have felt as though I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.
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
Image
The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.
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
No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective.
Margaret Sanger