Quotes from Sojourner Truth

The Lord gave me 'Sojourner,' because I was to travel up an' down the land, showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name 'cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me 'Truth,' because I was to declare the truth to people.

And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen 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?

I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.

Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.

I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And aren't I a woman?

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

The rich rob the poor, and the poor rob one another.

God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?

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.

When I preaches, I has just one text to preach from, an' I always preaches from this one. My text is, 'When I found Jesus.'

It is written that there shall be a separation, and the sheep shall be separated from the goats. The other preachers have the sheep; I have the goats. And I have a few sheep among my goats, but they are very ragged.

Good man! Genuine gentleman! God bless George Thompson, the great-hearted friend of my race.

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 your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.

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.

I tell you I can't read a book, but I can read de people.

I know and do what is right better than many big men who read.

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.

The slaveholders are terrible for promising to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will do thus and so, and when the time of fulfillment comes, and one claims the promise, they, forsooth, recollect nothing of the kind; and you are, like as not, taunted with being a liar.

Though it seems curious, I do not remember ever asking for anything but what I got it. And I always received it as an answer to my prayers.

The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.

I feel safe even in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail.

Truth is powerful and it prevails.

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.