Explore Quotes by Jane Addams

If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.

Things that make us alike are finer and stronger than the things that make us different.

National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand.

What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them?

The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress.

Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.

The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.

America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Of all aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.

I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.

Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party.

A Settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted.

We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith.

The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it.