What we do modifies us more than what is done to us. Charlotte Perkins Gilman More Quotes by Charlotte Perkins Gilman More Quotes From Charlotte Perkins Gilman To work is not only a right, it is a duty. To work to the full capacity of one's powers is necessary for human development - the full use of one's best faculties - this is the health and happiness for both man and woman. Charlotte Perkins Gilman useworkmen Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world, Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power, The world must follow you! Charlotte Perkins Gilman complaininghouseworld We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making. Charlotte Perkins Gilman constitutionracedesire Specialization and organization are the basis of human progress. Charlotte Perkins Gilman basesprogressorganization The world is quite right. It does not have to be consistent. Charlotte Perkins Gilman consistentdoeworld Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant! Charlotte Perkins Gilman ethicsmoralitychildren California is a state peculiarly addicted to swift enthusiasms. It is a seed-bed of all manner of cults and theories, taken up, and dropped, with equal speed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman californiabedtaken The best proof of man's dissatisfaction with the home is found in his universal absence from it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman absencehomemen Not woman, but the condition of woman, has always been a doorway of evil. Charlotte Perkins Gilman conditionsdoorwaysevil We are pushed forward by the social forces, reluctant and stumbling, our faces over our shoulders, clutching at every relic of the past as we are forced along; still adoring whatever is behind us. We insist upon worshipping 'the God of our fathers.' Why not the God of our children? Does eternity only stretch one way? Charlotte Perkins Gilman changefatherchildren The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain that altar fire - and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period - has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet. Charlotte Perkins Gilman firehomemean If fifty men did all the work, / And gave the price to five, / And let those five make all the rules - / You'd say the fifty men were fools, / Unfit to be alive. Charlotte Perkins Gilman aliveworkmen There should be an end to the bitterness of feeling which has arisen between the sexes in this century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman bitternessfeelingssex To speak broadly, the troubles of life as we find them are mainly traceable to the heart or the purse. Charlotte Perkins Gilman pursesspeakheart At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth. Charlotte Perkins Gilman mindfeelingsideas A man does not have to stay at home all day, in order to love it; why should a woman? Charlotte Perkins Gilman homemenorder all social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not. Charlotte Perkins Gilman perceptionmenbelieve It cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman faithmenbelieve For men obsessed with women's underwear, a course in washing, ironing and mending is recommended. Charlotte Perkins Gilman underwearobsessedmen In the field of economics we maintain to this day some of the most primitive ideas, some of the most radically false ideas, some of the most absurd ideas a brain can hold. ... but all this give no uneasiness to the average brain. That long-suffering organ has been trained for more thousands of years than history can uncover to hold in unquestioning patience great blocks of irrelevant idiocy and large active lies. Charlotte Perkins Gilman blockaveragelying
