Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jane Addams (American Social Reformer)

Jane Addams (1860–1935) was an American social reformer, suffragist, feminist, and pacifist. This co-winner of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize founded the Hull House in Chicago in 1889—it was one of the original social settlements in North America.

Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Addams attended Rockford College, Illinois. In 1899, she founded the Hull House in Chicago. It was a center for settlement work among the immigrant poor. Addams worked to secure social justice by sponsoring legislation relating to housing, factory inspection, female suffrage, and pacifism.

Addams also campaigned for the abolition of child labor and the recognition of labor unions. The Progressive Party adopted many of these reforms as part of its platform in 1912. Addams seconded Theodore Roosevelt’s nomination for president and was an active campaigner on his behalf.

Addams also led the National Conference of Social Work, the National Federation of Settlements (1911–35,) and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1911–14.) She helped establish the American Civil Liberties Union (1920.)

President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1919–35,) she shared the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her efforts to end World War I.

Addams’s notable works include Democracy and Social Ethics (1902,) Newer Ideals of Peace (1907,) and Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jane Addams

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Action, Ethics

Regret, which is guilt without the neurosis, enables us … to move forward instead of back.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Regret

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
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Optimism, Health

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain – until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Poverty

It is perhaps significant that the adherents of war are more and more justifying it by its past record and reminding us of its ancient origin… . The little lad who stoutly defends himself on the school ground may be worthy of much admiration, but if we find him, a dozen years later, the bullying leader of a street-gang … our admiration cools amazingly.
—Jane Addams
Topics: War

Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Progress, Socialism

The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is held.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Conviction, Dedication, Commitment

Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Unemployment

The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Hypocrisy, Immortality

America’s future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what it is taught, hence we must watch what we teach it, how we live before it.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Home, America, Education

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.
—Jane Addams
Topics: Attitude, Civilization

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