JANE ADDAMS QUOTES
American social worker (1860-1935)
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
JANE ADDAMS
attributed, Reader's Digest Quotable Quotes
In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull House
What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him, and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.
JANE ADDAMS
address to the Union League Club of Chicago, Feb. 23, 1903
What after all has maintained the human race on this old Globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them.
JANE ADDAMS
Peace and Bread in Time of War
The identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience, because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
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.
JANE ADDAMS
attributed, The Words of Extraordinary Women
We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another's burdens.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
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.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull House
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
JANE ADDAMS
address to the Union League Club of Chicago, Feb. 23, 1903
This dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
The blessing which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.
JANE ADDAMS
The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House
Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.
JANE ADDAMS
speech in Honolulu, 1933
Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics