Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Relationships deepen when both people maintain their individual integrity."

"The greatest courage is admitting when we are wrong and changing course."

"The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society—more briefly, to find your real job and do it."

"We are not here to get all we can. We are here to be of use to the world."

"A person has not begun living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individual concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

"The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society."

"Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age the child is grown, and puts away childish things."

"The higher the stage of development of any society, the greater the freedom and the more equal the rights of women."

"We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there."

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward it is unpleasantly contested."

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling."

"To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominant in the human mind."

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning."

"Obedience is not the highest virtue in a human being—it is the virtue of slaves."

"There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver."

"The unfit shall not breed in the future, being cared for by the fit through a gentle but inexorable pressure."

"We are kept down by our false relations with each other."

"In any large view of the world, we cannot ignore what has been done for us by the minds of antiquity."

"Human life is not a brief candle to be lit and extinguished at pleasure—it is an immortal spirit."

"The human creature is not a being designed for himself alone, but for his use of himself in relation to other humans."

"That is the difference between good teachers and great ones—the great ones will save you years of your life."

"Art is not for the few, or it will be nothing. Art is for the people."

"Women's assumption of social responsibilities requires their economic independence."

"The true human nature is not that of the individual alone, but of the individual as an integral part of human society."

"Progress requires the sacrifice of the individual to the whole."

"A house or a home is based on a natural principle. The human being is a social creature."

"The main object of all of us is not to have earned money but to have earned peace."

"We inherit a tremendous amount of humanity—not our own work, but the work of our ancestors."

"Society is always trying to suppress the truth that is inconvenient to its structure."