Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman in America ordained by a congregation that was part of a regular, or major, denomination. She was also a lecturer and writer for women's rights, abolition, and temperance -- and mother of five daughters.
Selected Antoinette Brown Blackwell Quotations
• As a woman whose husband scorned the idea of an obedient wife and did loyal service, in teaching human equality of rights and privileges, I will never give my adherence to an exclusively male-made and a male-administered government in family, in church or in state. I, who lived and saw the evils of that awful dispensation, and early protested with heart and voice and still protest. Women's future part in civil, religious, society and domestic world-making remains to unfold itself.
• We fully believed, so soon as we saw that woman's suffrage was right, every one would soon see the same thing, and that in a year or two, at farthest, it would be granted.
• There were angry men confronting me and I caught the flashing of defiant eyes, but above me and within me, there was a spirit stronger than them all.
• A woman finds the natural lay of the land almost unconsciously; and not feeling it incumbent on her to be guide and philosopher to any successor, she takes little pains to mark the route by which she is making her ascent.
• If woman's sole responsibility is of the domestic type, one class will be crushed by it, and the other throw it off as a badge of poverty. The poor man's motto, "Women's work is never done," leads inevitably to its antithesis -- ladies' work is never begun.
• Every nursing mother, in the midst of her little dependent brood, has far more right to whine, sulk or scold, as temperament dictates, because beefsteak and coffee are not prepared for her and exactly to her taste, than any man ever had or ever can have during the present stage of human evolution.
• ... you asked me one day if it seemed like giving up much for your sake. Only leave me free, as free as you are and everyone ought to be, and it is giving up nothing.
• The brain is not, and cannot be, the sole or complete organ of thought and feeling.
• Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and evolution.
• Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions.
• The sexes in each species of being... are always true equivalents - equals but not identical.
• Work, alternated with needful rest, is the salvation of man or woman.
• The law of grab is the primal law of infancy.
• Slavery is malignantly aristocratic.
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About These Quotes
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2010. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.
Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Antoinette Brown Blackwell Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/ab_blackwell_qu.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)
