“Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”

And ar’n’t I a woman?

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.

Then I will speak upon the ashes.

It is the mind that makes the body.

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

Truth is powerful and it prevails.

Truth burns up error.

I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.

Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.

I don’t read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can’t see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter!

When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wanted to keep nothing of Egypt on me, and so I went to the Lord and asked him to give me a new name.

You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring. Because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

I am above eighty years old … I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.

I am a woman’s rights. I have as much as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?

A woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.

Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.

The older you get, the stronger the wind gets and it’s always in your face.

Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.

Who acts, shall endure. So speaks the voice of the age-old wisdom.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.