Quotes About Eugenics

Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.

Eugenic goals are most likely to be attained under another name than eugenics.

Eugenicists weren't just about propaganda, they catalyzed significant political action. As early as 1896 the state of Connecticut passed a eugenic law according to which anyone who was epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded could not obtain a marriage license.

the major legislative achievements of the eugenics movement included a set of involuntary sterilization laws that targeted not immigrants or people of color, but poor "feebleminded" whites.

empirical eugenic research that focused on immigrants, blacks, Indians, Asians, and ethnoracial minorities was almost nonexistent compared to the number of studies of poor rural whites.

For poor whites, some of the most pernicious, invidious, and damaging distinctions imposed by eugenicists were those that focused on intelligence and cognitive skills, areas of human ability that these professionals regarded as key to establishing and organizing a just and meritocratic democracy.

Her rapist went unpunished, and yet she was sterilized.70

Well into the twentieth century, expulsion and even sterilization sounded rational to those who wished to reduce the burden of "loser" people on the larger economy.

When eugenicists thought of degenerates, they automatically focused on the South. To make his point, Davenport said outright that if a federal policy regulating immigration was not put in place, New York would turn into Mississippi.

Antiabortion activists, like eugenicists, think that the state has the right to intervene in the breeding habits of poor single women.

Eugenics appals those who fear its judgment.

The Catholic Church was the first institutional bastion in the U.S. to oppose eugenic sterilization, not just on account of its opposition to birth control, but also because of its theological commitment to the sanctity of all human life regardless of eugenic "fitness.")

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Four states prohibited the marriage of alcoholics, 17 prohibited the marriage of epileptics, and 41 prohibited the marriage of those deemed feebleminded or insane. By the mid-1930s, America was the world leader in banned marriages. (Marriage restriction laws weren't declared unconstitutional until 1967.)

I do not, of course, propose to neglect the sick, the feeble or the unfortunate," wrote Galton, "but I would exact an equivalent for the charitable assistance they receive by preventing the more faulty members of the flock from breeding." Galton argued that lunatics, criminals, and paupers should be placed in monasteries and convents "for the purpose of restricting their opportunities for producing low-class offspring." Breeding had become weeding.

OCTOBER 1910, the Eugenics Record Office opened for business. Its mission was clear: Determine which Americans were of inferior stock and prevent them from marrying or having children.