Quotes by Anna Julia Cooper

“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class-it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity.”

“Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us.”

“How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend.”

“What one relishes, nourishes”

“The aim of love is to love: no more, and no less.”

“Bullies are always cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey.”

“I constantly felt (as I suppose many an ambitious girl has felt) a thumping from within unanswered by any beckoning from without.”

“One needs occasionally to stand aside from the hum and rush of human interests and passions to hear the voices of God.”

“Teach [our girls] that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.”

“. . . women are more quiet. They dont feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.”

“It these broken utterances can in any way help to a clearer vision and a truer pulse-beat in studying the Nations Problem, this Voice by a Black Woman of the South will not have been raised in vain.”

Let our girls feel that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society. Teach them that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help that the world needs and is already asking for their trained and efficient forces.

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.