Quote

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

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
Human
Equal
Humans
Steps
First
Control
Take
Goal
Must
Freedom
Emancipation
Important
Woman
Step
Men
Women
Toward
Firsts
Birth

More quotes by 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 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
No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective.
Margaret Sanger
Image
The most successful educational approach to the Negro is throgh a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
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
Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries.
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
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
Image
The procreation of [the diseased, the feeble-minded and paupers] should be stopped.
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
Women must have economic and social equality with men.
Margaret Sanger
Image
Negroes and Southern Europeans are mentally inferior to native born Americans.
Margaret Sanger
Image
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.
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
The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.
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
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
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
How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.
Margaret Sanger