Anna Julia Cooper famous quotes

The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Party #Race #Class

Bullies are always cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Bullying #Heart #Safety

Only the BLACK WOMAN can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Race #Black #Special

It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Intelligent #Men #Voice

One needs occasionally to stand aside from the hum and rush of human interests and passions to hear the voices of God.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Passion #Voice #Needs

The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Heart #Men #Inspire

Peace produced by suppression is neither natural nor desirable.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Natural #Win Win #Suppression

Let woman's claim be as broad in the concrete as the abstract. We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritism, whether of sex, race, country, or condition. If one link of the chain is broken, the chain is broken.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Country #Sex #Race

If our vaunted rule of the people does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done it must and will inevitably give place to something better.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Men #People #Giving

Life must be something more than dilettante speculation.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Speculation

A race cannot be purified from without.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Race

No man can prophesy with another's parable.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Men #Authenticity #Parables

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Vices #Cost #Sap

Let our girls feel that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Girl #Looks #Wells

The cause of freedom is not the...
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#African American #Causes

Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to stand there too.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Agnosticism #Convince

The impulse of humanity toward social progress is like the movement in the currents of a great water system, from myriad sources and under myriad circumstances and conditions, beating onward, ever onward toward its eternity, the Ocean.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Ocean #Water #Humanity

Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Uplifting #Growth #Development

All prejudices, whether of race, sect or sex, class pride and caste distinctions are the belittling inheritance and badge of snobs and prigs.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Sex #Pride #Race

A stream cannot rise higher than its source.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Growth #Source #Streams

woman's cause is one and universal ...
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Women #Feminism #Causes

If women were once permitted to read Sophocles and work with logarithms, or to nibble at any side of the apple of knowledge, there would be an end forever to their sewing on buttons and embroidering slippers.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Education #Women #Apples

tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. It would be subversive of every human interest that the cry of one-half the human family be stifled. ... The world has had to limp along with the wobbling gait and one-sided hesitancy of a man with one eye. Suddenly the bandage is removed from the other eye and the whole body is filled with light. It sees a circle where before it saw a segment. The darkened eye restored, every member rejoices with it.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Women #Eye #Light

It is the curse of minorities in this power-worshipping world that either from fear or from an uncertain policy of expedience they distrust their own standards and hesitate to give voice to their deeper convictions, submitting supinely to estimates and characterizations of themselves as handed down by a not unprejudiced dominant majority.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Voice #Giving #Majority

Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day - respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Mean #Men #Age

The colored woman of to-day occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the least ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which make for our civilization. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem ...
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Country #Unique #Race

Nothing natural can be wholly unworthy.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Natural #Unworthy

I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Country #Destiny #America

We might as well expect to grow trees from leaves as hope to build up a civilization or a manhood without taking into consideration our women and the home life made by them Let our girls feel that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society. Teach them that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Girl #Home #Civilization

I constantly felt (as I suppose many an ambitious girl has felt) a thumping from within unanswered by any beckoning from without.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

#Girl #Ambitious #Beckoning