Anna Julia Cooper Quotes - Page 2

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Country Giving Growth Heart Humanity

The great, the fundamental need of any nation, any race, is for heroism, devotion, sacrifice; and there cannot be heroism, devotion, or sacrifice in a primarily skeptical spirit.

Anna Julia Cooper

Sacrifice, Race, Heroism

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.193, Rowman & Littlefield

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One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence, Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation.

Anna Julia Cooper

Country, Ideas, Southern

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.97, Rowman & Littlefield

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... while our men seem thoroughly abreast of the times on almost every other subject, when they strike the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic. They leave nothing to be desired generally in regard to gallantry and chivalry, but they actually do not seem sometimes to have outgrown that old contemporary of chivalry--the idea that women may stand on pedestals or live in doll houses,... but they must not furrow their brows with thought or attempt to help men tug at the great questions of the world.

Anna Julia Cooper

Men, Ideas, House

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Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

Anna Julia Cooper

Uplifting, Growth, Development

Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.145, Courier Dover Publications

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... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.

Anna Julia Cooper

Men, Thinking, Dancing

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.85, Rowman & Littlefield

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Nothing natural can be wholly unworthy.

Anna Julia Cooper

Natural, Unworthy

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.135, Rowman & Littlefield

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... so long as woman sat with bandaged eyes and manacled hands, fast bound in the clamps of ignorance and inaction, the world of thought moved in its orbit like the revolutions of the moon; with one face (the man's face) always out, so that the spectator could not distinguish whether it was disc or sphere.

Anna Julia Cooper

Ignorance, Eye, Thoughtful

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.76, Rowman & Littlefield

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Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him.

Anna Julia Cooper

Vices, Cost, Sap

Anna Julia Cooper (1990). “A Voice From the South”, p.281, Oxford University Press

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... women are more quiet. They don't feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.

Anna Julia Cooper

Ideas, Oratory, Quiet

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.85, Rowman & Littlefield

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Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to stand there too.

Anna Julia Cooper

Agnostic, Convince, Impart

Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.143, Courier Dover Publications

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No man can prophesy with another's parable.

Anna Julia Cooper

Men, Authenticity, Parables

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.135, Rowman & Littlefield

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I constantly felt (as I suppose many an ambitious girl has felt) a thumping from within unanswered by any beckoning from without.

Anna Julia Cooper

Girl, Ambitious, Unanswered Questions

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.86, Rowman & Littlefield

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Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day - respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.

Anna Julia Cooper

Mean, Men, Age

Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.3, Courier Dover Publications

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... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.

Anna Julia Cooper

Girl, School, College

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Humanity from the first has had its vultures and sharks, and representatives of the fraternity who prey upon mankind may be expected no less in America than elsewhere. That this virulence breaks out most readily and commonly against colored persons in this country, is due of course to the fact that they are, generally speaking, weak and can be imposed upon with impunity. Bullies are always cowards at heart.

Anna Julia Cooper

Country, Heart, Sharks

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.93, Rowman & Littlefield

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As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering hisfellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.

Anna Julia Cooper

Taken, Despair, Principles

Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.143, Courier Dover Publications

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With five to ten hundred pure-minded young women threading the streets of the village every evening unattended, vice must slink away, like frost before the rising sun.

Anna Julia Cooper

Rose, Vices, Frost

Anna Julia Cooper (2016). “A Voice from the South”, p.24, Courier Dover Publications

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If our vaunted rule of the people does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done it must and will inevitably give place to something better.

Anna Julia Cooper

Men, People, Giving

Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.187, Rowman & Littlefield

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Born: August 10, 1858
Died: February 27, 1964
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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