Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relation to society—more specifically to find your work."

"We are not here to do what has already been done."

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

"The world would be better if women ruled. They can't possibly do worse."

"Death may be the end, but there is hope in the work we leave behind."

"Motherhood, properly understood, is a social service, not a private indulgence."

"The economic independence of women is the basis of everything."

"We fail to adequately educate women to serve the state because we have not yet realized that they are part of the state."

"In large measure we are makers of our own fate."

"Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune or broken heart is excuse for cutting oneself off from others."

"The range of human knowledge is incomprehensibly vast, but the individual human mind is limited."

"Progress is not inevitable, it requires conscious effort."

"The growth of human decency doesn't happen automatically."

"A woman should be able to support herself by her own labor."

"We are obsessed with the pursuit of leisure while the work of the world goes undone."

"The child who is not trained for some legitimate and useful work is trained for crime."

"Art, in the fullest sense, is not a luxury but a necessity of human life."

"Consciousness is not a luxury—it is essential to survival."

"The woman of to-day, who does things, who has things, who goes places, is no longer a relic of past civilization."

"We cannot hold a man down without staying down with him."

"The human animal must work to live and should live better by working."

"Fiction is a very old and universal form of human expression."

"Imagine trying to live in a well while the rest of the world moves forward."

"The environment shapes the person as much as the person shapes the environment."

"Human beings are not born to remain static."

"The desire for beauty is as essential to human nature as hunger."

"We are paying for the mistakes of our economic system in every divorce, every disease, every crime."

"Peace comes not from the absence of conflict but from the resolution of its causes."

"The human mind expanded by new knowledge never returns to its original dimensions."

"What seems unthinkable today becomes the law of tomorrow."