Margaret Sanger Quotes (61 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Woman and the New Race

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger: 61 quotes 2 likes

Famous Margaret Sanger Quotes

“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.”

Margaret Sanger

"The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda", October 1921, page 5.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

“More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue in birth control.”

Margaret Sanger

Editors of American Medicine in a review of Sanger's article "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" published in Birth Control Review, May 1919
Misattributed

“Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.”

Margaret Sanger

Unknown source, attributed by Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) http://www.blackgenocide.org/planned.html and by Roger L. Roberson, Jr, The Bible & the Black Man: Breaking the Chains of Prejudice (2007), p. 18.
Seems to take "human weeds" from "a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds" or from "the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks– those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization" and "exterminated" from "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea" (see above).
Misattributed

“It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 2, "Women's Struggle for Freedom"

“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 18, "The Goal"

“I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance to be a human being, practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin — that people can — can commit.”

Margaret Sanger

The Mike Wallace Interview (ABC) http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret_t.html,
Posed question: "Do you believe in sin — When I say "believe" I don't mean believe in committing sin, do you believe there is such a thing as a sin

Margaret Sanger Quotes about children

“…thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

“Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing. […] Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand. In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938), Chapter 29, "While the Doctors Consult", p. 366.

“Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Birth control is woman's problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place for her children to live.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 8, "Birth Control; A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"

“The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.”

Margaret Sanger

W.E.B. DuBois, Birth Control Review, June 1932. Quoted by Sanger in her proposal for the "Negro Project."
Misattributed

“I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race. The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938), Chapter 30, "Now Is the Time for Converse", pp. 374-375.

“[Charity] conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. … Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"

Margaret Sanger Quotes about birth

“Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks— those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

Margaret Sanger

"Apostle of Birth Control Sees Cause Gaining Here", The New York Times, , p. XII http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C01E1DF1F30E333A2575BC0A9629C946295D6CF.

“Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class – and so tenaciously withheld from the working women – brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

“As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation…. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

Margaret Sanger

"The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda", October 1921, page 5.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

“But during all the long years this matter has been discussed, advocated, refuted, the people themselves—poor people especially—were blindly, desperately practicing family limitation, just as they are practicing it today. To them birth control does not mean what it does to us. To them it has meant the most barbaric methods. It has meant the killing of babies—infanticide,—abortions,—in one crude way or another.”

Margaret Sanger

My Fight for Birth Control, 1931, page 133.

“Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.”

Margaret Sanger

Unknown source, often attributed to The Woman Rebel.
Misattributed

“Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Margaret Sanger: Trending quotes

“I started to take the pulse of the child and as I did so, I saw two bodies of the child - one slightly above the other exactly in the same position and an exact replica - except that it was not flesh but a substance more like cob-webs the color of smoke.”

Margaret Sanger

To Roy Jansen, June 30, 1931. "Roy Jansen (1889-1975), an editor at the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, wrote to Sanger on June 12 asking her to contribute 'some particularly intense or interesting moment in your life' for use in a series called 'Interesting Moments' that was to appear in several newspapers throughout the country." https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22Selected+Papers+of+Margaret+Sanger%22&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&tbm=bks&q=%22%281889-1975%29%2c%20an%20editor%20at%20the%20pittsburgh%20sun-telegraph%2c%20wrote%20to%20sanger%20on%20june%2012%22
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger: Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928-1939, (2007), Esther Katz, editor, University of Illinois Press, p. 99. (Interlineations within the text are rendered within up and down arrows (T I) https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22on+the+reverse+often+with+an+arrow%22&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&tbm=bks&q=%22interlineations%20within%20the%20text%20are%20rendered%20within%20up%20and%20down%20arrows%22) https://www.google.com/#tbm=bks&q=%20%22dear%20mr.%20jansen:%20the%20most%20interesting%20incident%20of%20my%20life%20was%20some%20years%20ago%20when%20i%20was%20sitting%20beside%20a%20dying%20child%27s%20bed%22 https://www.google.com/#tbm=bks&q=%20%22i%20saw%20two%20bodies%20of%20the%20child%20%E2%80%94%20one%20slightly%20above%20the%20other%20exactly%20in%20the%22 https://www.google.com/#tbm=bks&q=%22in+a+horizontal+position+across+the+room+and+through+the+closed+steel+door%22
Notes at bottom of p. 99 read: "TLcy MSP, DLC (LCM 103:61). For ADf version dated June 12, 1931, see LCM 103:59. The published version was not found. 1. MS was probably referring to her daughter, Peggy Sanger, who died of pneumonia on November 6, 1915. 2. MS did not write about the two-body phenomena anywhere else, though she wrote in My Fight [for Birth Control] of Peggy's death that 'I saw the frail strength of her little body slip away' (126) http://birthcontrolreview.net/My%20Fight%20for%20Birth%20Control/Chapter%2009.pdf." http://books.google.com/books?id=yngbAQAAMAAJ&q=%22probably+referring+to+her+daughter,+Peggy+Sanger%22&dq=%22probably+referring+to+her+daughter,+Peggy+Sanger%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AslqVNqkNMagNsWtg-AC&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA (MS = Margaret Sanger, TLcy = Typed Letter Carbon Copy, DLC = Library of Congress, ADf = Autograph Draft, LCM = Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.google.com/search?q=Margaret+Sanger+Papers+on+microfilm%2C+Library+of+Congress+edition.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs#rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=rcs&q=Margaret+Sanger+Papers+microfilm%2C+Library+of+Congress https://www.google.com/search?q=Margaret+Sanger+Papers+on+microfilm%2C+Library+of+Congress+edition.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs#rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=bks&q=%22When+citing+documents+on+a+microfilm+edition%2C+the+microfilm+abbreviation%22+ https://www.google.com/search?q=Margaret+Sanger+Papers+on+microfilm%2C+Library+of+Congress+edition.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs#rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=bks&q=%22For+those+items+that+also+appear+on+the+Sanger+microfilm%2C+reel+and+frame+citations+follow+the+entry%22+
Context: The most interesting incident of my life was some years ago when I was sitting beside a dying child's bed, watching the pulse and waiting for the crisis. It was about two o'clock in the morning. I started to take the pulse of the child and as I did so, I saw two bodies of the child - one slightly above the other exactly in the same position and an exact replica - except that it was not flesh but a substance more like cob-webs the color of smoke. I stood back and beheld this extraordinary phenomena and watched the upper body move majestically away in a horizontal position across the room and through the closed steel door. The physical body remained and was still breathing. Consciousness was never regained and an hour after, the little girl ceased to breathe.

Color

“Peggy was sleeping. Her pulse was so soft and slow.”

Margaret Sanger

This second version of Peggy Sanger's death quoted in Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, (2012), Jean H. Baker, Hill and Wang, New York, p. 103. https://www.google.com/#q=%22Peggy+was+sleeping.+Her+pulse+was+so+soft+and+slow%22&tbm=bks
Context: Peggy was sleeping. Her pulse was so soft and slow. I was unable to realize that the end was near and had my fingers on her ankle to get the pulse when before my eyes arose another Peggy horizontally sleeping [who] rose about a foot or more—fluttering and quivering a moment as if taking leave of its bondage and slowly and majestically [she] soared and floated across the bed and out through the iron closed door... Peggy had left for the great unknown and beyond.

Sleep

“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families."
Context: Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months. This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five. Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members.

Family

Margaret Sanger Quotes

“Peggy had left for the great unknown and beyond”

Margaret Sanger

“I should be the Hunger Strikee.”

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger asking Ethel Bryne to agree to Sanger's historically revised biopic. https://books.google.com/books?id=b3GBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT264&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q=tied%20up&f=false

Hunger

“Throughout the 200+ pages of this book Sanger called for the elimination of "human weeds," for the cessation of charity, for the segregation of "morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races."”

Margaret Sanger

" Who Was Margaret Sanger? http://www.ewtn.com/library/prolife/pp04a.txt", brochure published by the American Life League, regarding The Pivot of Civilization http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689.txt.
None of those quoted phrases actually appear in the book.
Misattributed

Books

“Margaret Sanger: On the contrary, it seems to me that it is more practical and Humane.”

Margaret Sanger

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

“The main objects of the Population Congress would be […] (f) to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.”

Margaret Sanger

"A Plan for Peace", April 1932, pp. 107-108, summarizing an address to the New History Society, New York City,
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

“(We) are seeking to assist the white race toward the elimination of the unfit”

Margaret Sanger

blacks
Falsely attributed to "Birth Control and Racial Betterment", Birth Control Review, February 1919 http://lifedynamics.com/app/uploads/2015/09/1919-02-February.pdf, by Steve Deace, " Planned Parenthood: The next relic from our racist past that must be purged http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/13/steve-deace-planned-parenthood-the-next-relic-from/", Midwest Conservative (The Washington Times),
Actual quote: "Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenicists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit."
Misattributed

“I care nothing for Free Speech in and by itself. All of us place too much value on the power of the printed word and the power of the spoken word. We read too much. We listen too much. We live too little. We act too little…. I speak to you by my actions past and present. I have been gagged, I have been been suppressed, I have have been hauled off to jail. Yet every time, more people ave listened to me, more have protested, more have lifted their voices, more have been responded with courage and bravery…. As a propagandist I see immense advantaged in being gagged. It silences me, but it makes millions of others talk about me, and the cause in which I live.”

Margaret Sanger

Ford Hall Forum Boston Speech, Woman Rebel, The Margaret Sanger Story, Peter Bagge.

People , Courage , Silence , Time

“It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will.”

Margaret Sanger

Birth Control Review, December 1920
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Women , Law

“Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”

Margaret Sanger

"The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda", October 1921, page 5.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Problem

“The marriage-bed is the most degenerating influence of the social order.”

Margaret Sanger

Alice Groff, "The Marriage Bed", The Woman Rebel, V.I No. 5, p. 39 (edited by Margaret Sanger)
Misattributed

Marriage

“Eugenics aims to arouse the enthusiasm or the interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty generations in the future. On its negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 8, "Dangers of Cradle Competition"

People , World , Future , Wealth

“While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 10, "Contraceptives or Abortion?"

Law

“Our laws force women into celibacy on the one hand, or abortion on the other. [npg] Both conditions are declared by eminent medical authorities to be injurious to health.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Women , Health , Law

“The church has ever opposed the progress of woman on the ground that her freedom would lead to immorality. We ask the church to have more confidence in women. We ask the opponents of this movement to reverse the methods of the church, which aims to keep women moral by keeping them in fear and in ignorance, and to inculcate into them a higher and truer morality based upon knowledge. And ours is the morality of knowledge. If we cannot trust woman with the knowledge of her own body, then I claim that two thousand years of Christian teaching has proved to be a failure.”

Margaret Sanger

The Morality of Birth Control, 18 November 1921, Park Theatre, NY http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretsangermoralityofbirthcontrol.htm

Women , Fear , Confidence , Failure

“Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure… It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 2, "Women's Struggle for Freedom"

Family , Intelligence

“John Parsons: What about the women who want babies now and in 10 years won’t be able to have babies? Rather impractical don’t you think?”

Margaret Sanger

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Women , Thinking , Baby

“All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class, and if morality is to mean anything at all to us, we must regard all the changes which tend toward the uplift and survival of the human race as moral.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Problem , Change

“John Parsons: But Mrs. Slee in this country having babies is the only thing left which is both unrationed and untaxed, do you think we really ought to stop?”

Margaret Sanger

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Thinking , Baby , Country

“Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race.”

Margaret Sanger

Unknown source. Often falsely cited as Birth Control Review, April 1933 http://lifedynamics.com/app/uploads/2015/09/1933-04-April.pdf, as in William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family (1992), p. 464 https://books.google.com/books?id=vZsQ5d_43zEC&pg=PA464. No letters or articles by Sanger appear in that issue.
John George, in American Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists & Others (1992), p. 415, describes this quote as "evidently concocted in the late 1980s".
Misattributed

“Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception… Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938), Chapter 30, "Now Is the Time for Converse", p. 374.

Love , Time

“In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 8, "Dangers of Cradle Competition" (also quoted in Charles Valenza, "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.)

Idea , Question

“These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have to-day produced their full harvest of human waste, of inequality and inefficiency, were fully recognized in the last century at the moment when such ideas were first put into practice.”

Margaret Sanger

The Pivot of Civilization, 1922

Idea

“Margaret Sanger: Oh, John you do ask hard questions. I should think, that instead of being impractical, it is really very practical and intelligent and humane.”

Margaret Sanger

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Intelligence , Question , Thinking

“It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us.”

Margaret Sanger

People , Color , Knowledge , Success

“John Parsons: Don’t you think such a theory, such a radical theory, is anti-social?”

Margaret Sanger

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Thinking

“The ministers work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Margaret Sanger

Commenting on the 'Negro Project' in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. http://smithlibraries.org/digital/items/show/495 - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
(Note: There is a different date circulated, e.g. Oct. 19, 1939; but Dec. 10 is the correct date of Mrs. Sanger's letter to Mr. Gamble.)

Hope , Idea , Training

“…we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way — no matter how early it was performed it was taking a life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way — it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.”

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938)

Life , Way , Time

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Margaret Sanger

Misquoted by Diane S. Dew http://www.dianedew.com/sanger.htm (2001)
Omits words from a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble Sanger proposing the "Negro Project", where Sanger wrote: "And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
The quote was similarly misused in "Women, Race, & Class" (12 February 1983) by Angela Davis, where it is implied that that Sanger was organizing an extermination campaign and the minister would be the main propaganda milling machine.
Misattributed

“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”

Margaret Sanger

Misquoting Ernst Rudin, "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need", Birth Control Review, April 1933. http://lifedynamics.com/app/uploads/2015/09/1933-04-April.pdf
Actual quote by Rudin: "Not only is it our task to prevent the multiplication of bad stocks, it is also to preserve the well-endowed stocks and to increase the birth-rate of the sound average population."
Misattributed

“Our 'overhead' expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded 'captains of industry,' financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 12, "Woman and the Future"

Education , Home , Communication , Failure

“The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”

Margaret Sanger

Speech quoted in "Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do." The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.

People , Disease , Exercises , Support

“If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds. In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word.”

Margaret Sanger

Radio WFAB Syracuse, , transcripted in "The Meaning of Radio Birth Control", April 1924, p. 111
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Love , Women , Men , Children

“MOTHERS! / Can you afford to have a large family? / Do you want any more children? / If not, why do you have them? / DO NOT KILL, / DO NOT TAKE LIFE / BUT PREVENT / Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained nurses at / 46 AMBOY STREET.”

Margaret Sanger

(Handbill advertising Sanger's first clinic, Brooklyn, New York, October 1916) https://sangerpapers.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/sanger_flyer.jpg
published in "Birthright: What's next for Planned Parenthood." Jill Lepore. The New Yorker, Nov. 14 2011 - page 48.

Life , Children , Family , Training

“The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 8, "Birth Control; A Parents' Problem or Woman's?"

World , Freedom , Daughters

“You caused this. Mother is dead from having too many children.”

Margaret Sanger

To her father at her mother's funeral.
Quoted in [2010-05-09, The Pill turns 50, Nidhi Bhushan, DNA, http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_the-pill-turns-50_1380774]

Children , Dead

“Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race.”

Margaret Sanger

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Birth , Knowledge

“Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the "failure" of philanthropy, but rather at its success.”

Margaret Sanger

The Pivot of Civilization, 1922

Spring , Failure , Evil , Success

“Margaret Sanger: Well I suppose a subject like that is really so personal that it is entirely up to the parents to decide, but from my view, I believe there should be no more babies in starving countries for the next ten years.”

Margaret Sanger

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BG11OHrCDk http://www.britishpathe.com/video/one-minute-news-8/query/margaret+slee
Ban on Babies is All Wet, Cry Angry Britons, Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1947, p. 9. https://www.google.com/search?q=MS+to+Robert+C.+Nowe%2C+Aug.+22%2C+1947&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=%22Ban+on+Babies+is+All+Wet%22
Granny Sanger' Drops a Bomb - A Ten Year Moratorium on Births, Margaret Sanger Papers, Newsletter #65 (Fall 2013) http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/articles/grannysanger.php
One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Parent , Baby , Personality , Country

“Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months. This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five. Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 5, "The Wickedness of Creating Large Families."

Family , Chance , Children , Health

“It is said a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets. According to one writer, the rapist has just enough brain development to raise him above the animal, but like the animal, when in heat knows no law except nature which impels him to procreate whatever the result. Every normal man and Woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells in thinking deeply, are never sensual.”

Margaret Sanger

Source: What Every Girl Should Know (1913), Chapter 4, "Sexual Impulses--Part II", p. 47.

Family , Law , Nature , Animals