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Sarah Moore Grimke Biography

Sarah Moore Grimke

Sarah Moore Grimké (November 26, 1792 – December 23, 1873) was an American abolitionist, writer, and member of the women's suffrage movement. Born and reared in South Carolina to a prominent, wealthy planter family, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1820s where she became a Quaker. Her younger sister Angelina Grimké joined her there and they both became active in the abolition movement. The sisters began to speak on the abolitionist lecture circuit, among a tradition of women who had been speaking in public on political issues since colonial days, including Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anna Dickinson. They recounted their knowledge of slavery firsthand, urged abolition, and also became lawyers for women's rights.

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Sarah Moore Grimke Quotes

Intellect is not sexed;. . . strength of mind is not sexed; and. . . our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals.

Ages, Country, Judgment, Men, Solely, Views

I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by bribery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation.

Bribery, Clergy, Come, Feminism, Heart, Heaven

At sixty I look back on a life of deep disappointments, of withered hopes, of unlooked for suffering, of severe discipline.

Disappointment, Discipline, Hope, Severe, Sixty, Unlooked

If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic work would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.

Enlightened, Intellectual, Intelligent, Mean, Minds, Refreshed

I ask no favors for my sex, I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy.

Feet, God, Justice, Occupy, Sex, Upright

It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul.

Educated, Garments, Sight, Soul, Wise, Woman

Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life.

Estimate, Heart, Men, Mere, Mind, Necessary

[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls?

Girl, Happiness, Ideas, Practical, Reliance, Self

There is another way in which the general opinion, that women are inferior to men, is manifested. . . . I allude to the disproportionate value set on the time and labor of men and women.

Allude, Manifested, Men, Set, Time, Way

Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate.

Education, Law, Profession, Responsibility, Taken

whatsoever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do.

Man, Men, Morality, Morally, Right, Whatsoever

Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.

Adam, Consequently, Equality, Guilt, Men, Wife

I want my sex to claim nothing from their brethren but what their brethren may justly claim from them.

Brother, Claim, Justly, May, Nothing, Sex

Is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?

Class, Devote, Literary, Men, Numbers, Secure

Many a woman shudders. . . at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians.

Army, Art, Happiness, Intellectual, Life, Nervous

[On the New Testament:] I. . . must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have.

Bible, Honor, Passages, Reading, Work, Writing

[On the Adam and Eve story:] They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.

Equality, Fell, Happiness, Innocence, Stories

There has been a comparatively greater proportion of good queens, than of good kings.

Comparatively, Greater, Kings, Leadership, Queens

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.

Extensive, Hands, Interesting, Privileges, Religious

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.

Mean, Men, Say, Selfish, Wrought

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