I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages... of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simply... more voters, but better voters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Political life in our country has plowed in muddy channels, and needs the infusion of clearer and cleaner waters. I am not sure th...at women are naturally so much better than men that they will clear the stream by the virtue of their womanhood; it is not through sex but through character that the best influence of women upon the life of the nation must be exerted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
More than the changing of institutions we need the development of a national conscience, and the upbuilding of national character.... Men may boast of the aristocracy of blood, may glory in the aristocracy of talent, and be proud of the aristocracy of wealth, but there is one aristocracy which must ever outrank them all, and that is the aristocracy of character; and it is the women of a country who help to mold its character, and to influence if not determine its destiny; and in the political future of our nation woman will not have done what she could if she does not endeavor to have our republic stand foremost among the nations of the earth, wearing sobriety as a crown and righteousness as a garment and a girdle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has al...ready gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So close is the bond between man and woman that you can not raise one without lifting the other. The world can not move ahead with...out woman's sharing in the movement, and to help give a right impetus to that movement is woman's highest privilege.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I ask of American Christianity is not to show us more creeds, but more of Christ; not more rites and ceremonies, but more rel...igion glowing with love and replete with life,--religion which will be to all weaker races an uplifting power, and not a degrading influence. Jesus Christ has given us a platform of life and duty from which all oppression and selfishness is necessarily excluded. While politicians may stumble on the barren mountains of fretful controversy and ask in strange bewilderment, "What shall we do with the weaker races?" I hold that Jesus Christ answered that question nearly two thousand years since. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is said that the Negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put out my eyes to make ...a parade of my blindness,--to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money.... If he is poor, what has become of the money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The Negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and rece...ived his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »