Sojourner Truth: Right

Sojourner Truth was African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Explore interesting quotes on right.

Sojourner Truth: 28 quotes39 likes

“If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”

As quoted in Sojourner Truth : A Self-made Woman (1974) by Victoria Ortiz
Variant: Sisters, I ain't clear what you be after. If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! and now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

Sojourner Truth

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)

“Well, children, when there is so much racket there be must something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?”

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, as quoted in The Harbrace Guide to Writing, Concise, p. 50, by Cheryl Glenn. Editorial Cengage Learning, 2011. ISBN 113317146X.

“That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman!”

Sojourner Truth

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)
Context: That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

““I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.”

Sojourner Truth

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.