Quotes by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.”

“The child learns more of the virtues needed in modern life-of fairness, of justice, of comradeship, of collective interest and action-in a common school than can be taught in the most perfect family circle”

“Eternity is not something that begins after youre dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.”

“New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American”

“Exciting literature after supper is not the best digestive.”

“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”

“The people people have for friends You common sense appall But the people people marry Are the queerest folk of all.”

“A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband. (on the term housewife)”

“It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. They all eat one another! he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, They all feed one another, and called it good.”

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

As for mother Eve - I wasnt there and cant deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lions share of keeping it going ever since.

Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

Woman in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.

In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy. Woman in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother. We looked for nervousness—there was none. For terror, perhaps—there was none. For uneasiness, for curiosity, for excitement—and all we saw was what might have been a vigilance committee of women doctors, as cool as cucumbers, and evidently meaning to take us to task for being there.

it is only in social relations that we are human...to be human women must share in the totality of humanitys common life. Women, forced to lead restricted lives, retard all human progress. Growth of organism, the individual or social body requires use of all of our powers in four areas: physical, intellectual, spiritual and social

Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

Its time we woke up,” pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. “Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?

the human mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better informed