Quotes from Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the male. He is her food supply.

Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?

The best proof of man's dissatisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it.

A man does not have to stay at home all day, in order to love it; why should a woman?

For men obsessed with women's underwear, a course in washing, ironing and mending is recommended.

It is not for nothing that a man's best friends sigh when he marries, especially if he is a man of genius.

When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of evolution.

To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.

We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon as we choose.

One religion after another has accepted and perpetuated man's original mistake in making a private servant of the mother of the race.

Eternity is not something that begins after you're dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

It will be a great thing for the human soul when it finally stops worshipping backwards.

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

In business life, that is, in its material processes, we eagerly accept the new. In social life, in all our social processes, we piously, valiantly, obdurately, maintain the old.

To speak broadly, the troubles of life as we find them are mainly traceable to the heart or the purse.

The difference is great between one's outside "life," the things which happen to one, incidents, pains and pleasures, and one's "living."

The time is approaching when we shall consider it abhorrent to our civilization to allow a human being to die in prolonged agony which we should mercifully end in any other creature.

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.

Life is a verb, not a noun.