“And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

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.

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

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?

The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.

It is hard for the old slave holding spirit to die. But die it must.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.

The best thing about it is you’re showing kids that no matter where you grow up, what race you are, that you can achieve your dream.

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!

If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

I go through life like a karate kid.