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Jane Addams

Jane Addams Quotes

Sociologist

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Famous Jane Addams Quotes

“The popular books are the novels, dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.”

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Author:Jane Addams
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“The identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience, because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd.”

HumansWellsIdeasEndsSocialCommonDemocracyJourneyExpressionSourceDrinkEssentialsEthicsCrowdsHeatHuman ExperienceIdentificationDraught
Book:Democracy and Social Ethics
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“What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him, and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.”

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Author:Jane Addams
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“We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.”

DoeDoneActionForgetSituationMoralCasesTheoryMoralityIntellectualRegardObservationCommentSpheresConcreteSpeculationObliged
Book:Democracy and Social Ethics
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“Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon another.”

BelieveMadeIdeasSufferingCoursesActingMoralDevelopmentHabitMoralityDifficultyCustomsConceptionStrainHypothesisAdjustmentIndecisionHardenedAdjusting
Book:Democracy and Social Ethics
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“We all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have "arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.”

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Book:Democracy and Social Ethics
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“The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.”

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Book:The second twenty years at Hull-House, September 1909 to September 1929, with a record of a growing world consciousness
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“As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune.”

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Book:Democracy and Social Ethics
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“It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.”

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Book:The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Vol. 2: Venturing into Usefulness
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“My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position.”

ShouldWellsWarOrderLeftSocialNumbersClearMiddleSubjectsPositionHabitConvincedReformTemperamentSocial ReformPacifistSmall NumbersMiddle Of The RoadUnequivocal
Book:The Jane Addams Reader
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“If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him.”

IfsTryingSometimesMightUnderstandingTroubleDifficultyPrejudiceAddPossessionPigsUnderdogUnderstanding Him
Book:Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes, by Jane Addams. With a Foreword by Henry Steele Commager, Drawings by Norah Hamilton
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“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. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?”

IfsMenFeelsHumansOrderRacePathFailingMankindPossibilityCriminalsTraditionalDespiteHuman RaceUnconsciousTragicBoresGlobesHighwaysExileObligedCalamityFugitiveNew Possibilities
Book:Peace and Bread in Time of War
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“The Settlement ... is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other.”

EndsProblemSocialEffortCitiesModernConditionsSolutionsAidsPortionsConfinedSettlementGreat CitiesHull House
Book:Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes
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“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”

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Book:Twenty Years at Hull House
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“In a thousand voices singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's "Messiah," it is possible to distinguish the leading voices, but the differences of training and cultivation between them and the voices in the chorus, are lost in the unity of purpose and in the fact that they are all human voices lifted by a high motive.”

HumansFactsPurposeLostVoiceDifferencesThousandSingingTrainingUnityMotiveMessiahChorusCultivationHallelujahHuman VoiceHandelVoice SingingUnity Of Purpose
Book:Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes
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“Perhaps I may record here my protest against the efforts, so often made, to shield children and young people from all that has to do with death and sorrow, to give them a good time at all hazards on the assumption that the ills of life will come soon enough. Young people themselves often resent this attitude on the part of their elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if they were denied the common human experiences.”

PeopleIfsGivingFeelsHumansMayChildrenMadeEnoughYoungCommonEffortAttitudeRecordsSorrowAssumptionGood TimesProtestDeniedHuman ExperienceEldersShieldsResentHazardsSoon Enough
Book:Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes
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