Best Sojourner Truth Quotes & Sayings

Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin' soon. I shan't go till I can do that. — Sojourner Truth

I'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star. — Sojourner Truth

Truth is powerful and it prevails. — Sojourner Truth

I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votesas they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if the woman's vote looks any different from the rest
if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. — Sojourner Truth

Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff. — Sojourner Truth

When I enter a library, when I enter the world of books, I feel the ghosts of the past on my shoulders urging me to speech. I hear Patrick Henry cry to the Burgsses, 'Is Life so dear, or Peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?' I hear Sojourner Truth tell me that the hand that rocks the cradle can also rock the boat, and William Lloyd Garrison say, 'I am in earnest, I will not be silenced.' — Sara Paretsky

It is the mind that makes the body. — Sojourner Truth

We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. — Sojourner Truth

What we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord. — Sojourner Truth

The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another. — Sojourner Truth

Then I will speak upon the ashes. — Sojourner Truth

And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the 'Peculiar Institution'? If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system - which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her minsters and churches - we wish to be shown where it can be found. — Sojourner Truth

You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. — Sojourner Truth

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say. — Sojourner Truth

All the heroes of black emancipation - from the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, to the woman who organized the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, to the leader whose actions finally destroyed American slavery, Abraham Lincoln - were Republicans. It is of the utmost importance to progressive propagandists to conceal or at least ignore this essential historical truth. — Dinesh D'Souza

I am a woman's rights. I have as much as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? — Sojourner Truth

This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book. — Sojourner Truth

Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me. — Sojourner Truth

When evil rules a time and place, certain good people are called upon to tell the truth to those who don't want to hear it. — Anne F. Rockwell

We live in a society that says "You Gotta get yours" and I'm not suggesting that you don't handle your business but I want to show people ... Gandhi gave, Mother Theresa gave, Martin Luther King gave, Rosa Parks gave, Sojourner Truth gave, and these people had a rich life! They may have not had a Rolls Royce, Range Rover, or lived in the best neighborhoods but they changed history forever and they changed lives forever and that's what I aim to do. — Eric Thomas

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show. — Ethel Waters

I am above eighty years old ... I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. — Sojourner Truth

I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! — Sojourner Truth

I did not run away, I walked away by daylight ... . — Sojourner Truth

If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there. — Sojourner Truth

The Spirit calls me, and I must go. — Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, who squelched the heckler with an oft-quoted speech. In the first place, she said, Jesus came from "God and a woman - man had nothing to do with it."66 Secondly, Truth asserted that women were not inherently weak and helpless. Raising herself to her full height of six feet, flexing a muscled arm, and bellowing with a voice one observer likened to the apocalyptic thunders, Truth informed the audience that she could outwork, outeat, and outlast any man. Then she challenged: "Ain't I a woman?"67 — Paula J. Giddings

If my cup won't hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full? — Sojourner Truth

Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter — Sojourner Truth

When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wasn't going to keep nothing of Egypt on me, an' so I went to the Lord an' asked him to give me a new name. And he gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up and down the land showing the people their sins and bein' a sign unto them. I told the Lord I wanted two names 'cause everybody else had two, and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people. — Sojourner Truth

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne five children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? — Sojourner Truth

I can do as much work as any man ... We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough of our own. — Sojourner Truth

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time. — Nell Irvin Painter

Let ... individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbors do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable. — Sojourner Truth