Angelina Grimke

“I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.”

“We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would enable them to perform this duty.”

“I am a mystery to myself.”

“Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.”

“I trust the time is coming, when the occupation of an instructor to children will be deemed the most honorable of human employment.”

“The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.”

“The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.”

“What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.”

“If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly.”

“Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?”

“We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.”

“I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed?”

“Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.”