Quotes from Jane Addams

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

True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice.

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.

I am not one of those who believe - broadly speaking - that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.

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

In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels as best we may, that at the propitious moment somewhat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the barren places of life.

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

Action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. (U.S. Social Worker, 1860-1935)

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

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward.

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

In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.

It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy's phrase "the snare of preparation," which he insists we spread before the feet of young people, hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at the very period of life when they are longing to construct the world anew and to conform it to their own ideals.

It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that Ethics is but another word for righteousness, that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless.

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.

For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics.

Yet in moments of industrial stress and strain the community is confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise from the mere fact that the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of today, and that which may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is really but a choice between virtue and virtue. In the disorder and confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself.

In this effort toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection with the activity of the many.

Is it not Abraham Lincoln who has cleared the title to our democracy? He made plain, once for all, that democratic government, associated as it is with all the mistakes and shortcomings of the common people, still remains the most valuable contribution America has made to the moral life of the world.

We stand today united in a belief in beauty, genius, and courage, and that these can transform the world.

It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless.

We can all recall acquaintances of whose integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.

But stranger than any episode was the fact itself that neither the convict, his wife, nor his godfather for a moment considered him a criminal. He had merely gotten excited over cards and had stabbed his adversary with a knife. Why should a man who took his luck badly be kept forever from the sun? was their reiterated inquiry.

Samuel Johnson once remarked that it was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society contained.