Sojourner Truth

“Then I will speak upon the ashes.”

“You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”

“When I preaches, I has just one text to preach from, an' I always preaches from this one. My text is, 'When I found Jesus.'”

“We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.”

“The Lord gave me 'Sojourner,' because I was to travel up an' down the land, showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them. Afterwards, I told the Lord I wanted another name 'cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me 'Truth,' because I was to declare the truth to people.”

“I tell you I can't read a book, but I can read de people.”

“That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men 'cause 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.”

“Though it seems curious, I do not remember ever asking for anything but what I got it. And I always received it as an answer to my prayers.”

“Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.”

“The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.”

“I know and do what is right better than many big men who read.”

“God will take care of the poor trampled slave, but where will the slaveholder be when eternity begins?”

“Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.”

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

“The slaveholders are terrible for promising to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will do thus and so, and when the time of fulfillment comes, and one claims the promise, they, forsooth, recollect nothing of the kind; and you are, like as not, taunted with being a liar.”

“I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And aren't I a woman?”

“Oh God, you know I have no money, but you can make the people do for me, and you must make the people do for me.”

“I'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.”

“Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.”

“When I got religion, I found some work to do to benefit somebody.”