Sojourner Quotes & Sayings

I'm washed, I'm forgiven, I'm whole, and I'm healed. I'm cleansed and I'm glory bound. I am only a sojourner on the earth. I am but a pilgrim on this planet, on my way to perfection, and I don't need anybody to tell me who I am, because I know who I am. I am a child of the King, a son (or daughter) of God, born again through Jesus Christ, bought with the price of His blood. I am a new creation, totally new, thoroughly loved and completely accepted as a child of my Father, precious in His sight. — Myles Munroe

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

Assisi was like something, but like what? Like something one had always known, but never seen. Something perceived from afar, like a wind from the promised land that greeted the stranger and sojourner coming up out of bondage from Egypt. It was joy, no doubt about that. But a joy unlike any other joy he had ever experienced. Unexpected joy in a dark time. Curious joy. There was no other word that approximated it. A taste of sweetness like the fecundity of grape arbors in the terraces below, — Michael D. O'Brien

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other. — Sojourner Truth

We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here. — 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

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs. — Annie Dillard

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

On occasion, resisting saying a public "I'm sorry" is the best way to handle a situation. — Sojourner McConnell

Let others say what they will of the efficacy of prayer, I believe in it, and I shall pray. Thank God! Yes, I shall always pray, — Sojourner Truth

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

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them. — Stephen King

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

I feel safe in the midst of my enemies, for the truth is all powerful and will prevail. — Sojourner Truth

Then I will speak upon the ashes. — Sojourner Truth

I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool. — Sojourner Truth

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

This busyness was not about money--despite the chic catalogs piled on the kitchen table. It was only marginally about good-heartedness or politics. I was a woman disconnecting from my moments alone, when the world seemed to shatter into terror, into madness coming toward me at the speed of loss. The moment for which--I could not have guessed--my spirit and writing longed. — Mary Sojourner

Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit. — Sojourner Truth

You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. — Anonymous

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. — Alice Walker

Oh no, honey, I can't read little things like letters. I read big things like men. — Sojourner Truth

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. — Sojourner Truth

It is hard for the old slave holding spirit to die. But die it must. — Sojourner Truth

Every day I wear my Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth medallions around my neck. When I think I'm having a bad day, I try to think about their day, and I get up. — Marian Wright Edelman

And ar'n't I a woman? — Sojourner Truth

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

In the upstate farmhouse he had dubbed Mount Zion, Matthias had apparently established for himself a community of seven wives - a "harem," Locke called it - six of them wealthy white women and the seventh a black servant by the name of Isabella Van Wagenen, and "had one appointed to each working day in the week, and the black one consecrated for Sundays." (Isabella Van Wagenen was a former slave who would later join the abolitionist movement, changing her name to the one by which she would be forever remembered: Sojourner Truth.) — Matthew Goodman

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored
men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will
take a great while to get it going again. — Sojourner Truth

Sojourner [Truth]'s life exemplifies the process that occurs within ourselves as we grow to understand that we hold the authority to shape our own lives. This inner authority came when she embraced all of herself, which enabled her to speak from an authentic voice. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. — Sojourner Truth

If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it. — Sojourner Truth

Growing up is not easy for anyone but for anyone to deliberately block the path of the child from their family, it is nothing short of a sin." Lowering her voice a little she quietly said, "I believe she has done us all an injustice." The smile that she gave Melanie lit up her entire face as she patted the scrapbook. "Please look over the book and call me anytime. I don't sleep much and I will be here for you. — Sojourner McConnell

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them. — Sojourner Truth

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament. — Nancy Gibbs

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

Some of our national heroines were defined by the fact that they never nested - they were peripatetic crusaders like Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Dix. — Gail Collins

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

Love has won infinitely more converts than theology. The first believers were drawn to Christ's mercy long before they understood His divinity. That brings us back to the overemphasis on Sunday morning as the front door: If love is the most effective way - and the Bible says it is - then how much genuine love can one pastor show an entire congregation? His bandwidth is not wide enough; this is a crippling, impossible burden. When he fails to connect with every person (which he will), the congregation becomes disgruntled because he can't fulfill what should have been their mission. Nor can a random group of strangers standing in a church lobby offer legitimate community to some sojourner who walks in the door. — Jen Hatmaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no protection at home, or resting place abroad ... I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were. — Frederick Douglass

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will. — William Wordsworth

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

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 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

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

Return, thou wanderer! Fly back to thy ark, This is not thy home. Think not of building tabernacles here. Thou art but a stranger, a sojourner upon earth; a creature of a day, but just launching out into an unchangeable state. Make haste. Eternity is at hand. Eternity depends on this moment. An eternity of happiness, or an eternity of misery! — Michael R. Martin

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

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