Grimke Quotes & Sayings

Nina was one wing, I was another
Sarah Grimke — Sue Monk Kidd

It is through the tongue, the pen, and the press that truth is principally propagated. — Angelina Grimke

I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by bribery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered? — Angelina Grimke

Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians. — Sarah Moore Grimke

We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would enable them to perform this duty. — Angelina Grimke

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it. — Angelina Grimke

[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls? — Sarah Moore Grimke

Who has ever attempted to draw a line of separation between the duties of men and women, as moral beings, without committing the grossest inconsistencies on the one hand, or running into the most arrant absurdities on the other? — Angelina Grimke

There is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity. — Angelina Grimke

Race prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down. — Francis J. Grimke

Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight? — Sarah Moore Grimke

I trust the time is coming, when the occupation of an instructor to children will be deemed the most honorable of human employment. — Angelina Grimke

I want to be identified with the negro; until he gets his rights, we shall never have ours. — Angelina Grimke

The reason why women effect so little and are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage is the prize for which they strive; if foiled in that they rarely rise above disappointment. — Sarah Moore Grimke

It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul. — Sarah Moore Grimke

If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic work would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. — Sarah Grimke

If the sewing societies, the avails of whose industry are now expended in supporting and educating young men for the ministry, were to withdraw their contributions to these objects, and give them where they are more needed, to their advancement of their own sex in useful learning, the next generation might furnish sufficient proof, that in intelligence and ability to master the whole circle of sciences, woman is not inferior to man. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Hatred of oppression seems to me so blended with hatred of the oppressor that I cannot separate them. I feel that no other injury could be so hard to bear, so very very hard to forgive, as that inflicted by cruel oppression and prejudice. — Charlotte Forten Grimke

I first saw 'The Dinner Party' in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. — Sue Monk Kidd

I prize the purity of his character as highly as I do that of hers. As a moral being, whatever it is morally wrong for her to do,it is morally wrong for him to do. The fallacious doctrine of male and female virtues has well nigh ruined all that is morally great and lovely in his character: he has been quite as deep a sufferer by it as woman, though mostly in different respects and by other processes. — Angelina Grimke

So far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold thathe is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ... — Angelina Grimke

We know it matters not what we have been but this and always this: what we shall be. — Angelina Grimke

A pretty good test of a man's religion is how it affects his pocketbook. — Francis J. Grimke

Our fathers waged a bloody conflict with England, because they were taxed without being represented. This is just what unmarried women of property are now. — Angelina Grimke

[On the New Testament:] I ... must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have. — Sarah Moore Grimke

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians. — Angelina Grimke

There has been a comparatively greater proportion of good queens, than of good kings. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to be understood and asserted. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men havethe same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable. — Angelina Grimke

When the U.S. Government shows a proper appreciation of the services of the Negro who has never failed it in every crisis of its history to do his whole duty, to shed his blood freely in its behalf ... then, and not till then, will I be heard. — Francis James Grimke

It is only what is written upon the soul of man that will survive the wreck of time. — Francis J. Grimke

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I want my sex to claim nothing from their brethren but what their brethren may justly claim from them. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Whatsoever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education. — Angelina Grimke

[On the Adam and Eve story:] They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality. — Sarah Moore Grimke

So precious a talent as intellect never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth. — Angelina Grimke

They had, indeed, come in New York, as witness this from the pen of Lydia Maria Child, who was at the time (August 15) in Brooklyn. Says she: "I have not ventured — Archibald Henry Grimke

The whole land seems aroused to discussion on the province of woman, and I am glad of it. We are willing to bear the brunt of thestorm, if we can only be the means of making a break in that wall of public opinion which lies right in the way of woman's rights, true dignity, honor and usefulness. — Angelina Grimke

Duty is ours and events are God's. — Angelina Grimke

Thou art blind to the danger of marrying a woman who feels and acts out the principle of equal rights. — Angelina Grimke

I ask no favors for my sex, I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights; human rights are all that I recognize. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I am a mystery to myself. — Angelina Grimke

I recognize no rights but human rights
I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights ... — Angelina Grimke

The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other. — Angelina Grimke

I knew from reading about Sarah Grimke that she'd been given a handmaid to be her personal slave and that her name was Hetty. The only other fact I knew about her was that Sarah taught her to read: They conspired in a very subversive way, by locking the door and screening the keyhole. — Sue Monk Kidd

The nation is in a death-struggle. It must either become one vast slaveocracy of petty tyrants, or wholly the land of the free. — Angelina Grimke

Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life. — Sarah Moore Grimke

At times I feel it almost impossible not to despond entirely of there ever being a better, brighter day for us. None but those who experience it can know what it is - this constant, galling sense of cruel injustice and wrong. I cannot help feeling it very often, - it intrudes upon my happiest moments, and spreads a dark, deep gloom over everything. — Charlotte Forten Grimke

In all ages, through all the varied experience of individuals and nations, knowledge has been the power which has civilized, elevated and dignified humanity. In those countries where progress has been most rapid, the thirst for knowledge has been most intense. — Sarah Moore Grimke

At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline. — Sarah Moore Grimke

My country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on!go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted. — Angelina Grimke

Intellect is not sexed; ... strength of mind is not sexed; and ... our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals. — Sarah Moore Grimke

There is another way in which the general opinion, that women are inferior to men, is manifested ... I allude to the disproportionate value set on the time and labor of men and women. — Sarah Moore Grimke

One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave. — Angelina Grimke

Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation. — Angelina Grimke

it matters not what we have been but this an always this: what we shall be. — Angelina Weld Grimke

I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime ... Nostation or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin. — Angelina Grimke

The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair. — Angelina Grimke

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for. — Angelina Grimke

Provoking, isn't it? that when one is most in need of sensible words, one finds them not. — Charlotte Forten Grimke

The tendency of organization is to kill out the spirit which gave it birth. Organizations do not protect the sacredness of the individual; their tendency is to sink the individual in the mass, to sacrifice his rights, and to immolate him on the altar of some fancied good. — Angelina Grimke

[Women] are early taught that to appear to yield is the only way to govern. — Sarah Moore Grimke

I believe it is woman's right to have a voice in all the laws and regulations by which she is to be governed; whether in Churchor State; and that the present arrangements of society, on these points, are a violation of human rights, a rank usurpation of power, a violent seizure and confiscation of what is sacredly and inalienably hers
and thus inflicting upon woman outrageous wrongs, working mischief incalculable in the social circle, and in its influence on the world producing only evil, and that continually. — Angelina Grimke

The virtue of female slaves is wholly at the mercy of irresponsible tyrants, and women are bought and sold in our slave markets, to gratify the brutal lust of those who bear the name of Christians. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Unless there comes to the Nation a greater emancipation than Lincoln's Proclamation effected, it is doomed, it is bound to go down. — Francis James Grimke

I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed? — Angelina Grimke

When human beings are regarded as moral beings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon the summit, administering upon rights and responsibilities, sinks into insignificance and nothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live. — Angelina Grimke

Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country
no interests staked in public weal
no liabilities in common peril
no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame? — Angelina Grimke

An idea built the wall of separation between the sexes, and an idea will crumble it to dust ... — Sarah Moore Grimke

Slavery always has, and always will produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things ... — Angelina Grimke

We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down. — Angelina Grimke

If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly. — Angelina Grimke

I wondered how it was possible I had found words out there in the world but could lose them in the house where I was born
Sarah Grimke — Sue Monk Kidd

Good and evil, as we term them, are not antagonistic; they are ever found hand in hand. Humanity has never achieved a single conquest without the aid of both. Indeed how can she? What adds to moral strength, but a grappling with temptation? — Sarah Moore Grimke