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Rose Pastor Stokes

28 quotes

“it is widely known — and discussed (although not in print) — that not among the least of those who have persecuted the poor law-breakers in this respect have rich law-breaking friends and do themselves break the law and benefit by the scientific knowledge they are instrumental in sending others to prison for disseminating.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it possible that according to the law of our economic autocracy to be poor is to be obscene and to have property is not to be obscene? Ah, but these propertyless agitators who are spreading this scientific knowledge among the poor and the propertyless must be suppressed. For it is the business of our greedy capitalist society to prevent the poor from regulating the size of their families”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Speak in terror of dollars and cents, (the language best understood by the ruling class)”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The thing that impresses the “impractical” radical most is not so much the cost in money as the cost in human life, the toll paid in human suffering, the agony millions of mothers endure when sickness or poverty or other unfavorable conditions (needlessly forced upon them by a maladjusted system) brings them a coffin and carries away the cradle, or — as frequently happens — leaving the cradle, leaves it with something more tragic than a coffin.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science comes to regulate life and prevent needles death. But, say the bigots, these conditions exist by God’s will and must therefore be borne in a meek and humble spirit.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the day that the light of science began to break upon the mind of men, superstition has attempted to place a black curtain of fear between man’s mind and the light.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The battle between Science and Superstition is by no means over, but for Science it has been and continues to be a winning fight.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frankly, then, I have broken the law over and over, because I believe that since science has shown the way, the mothers of the world should have the power and the right of control birth — to have as many or as few children as the conditions of their health or their particular material environment coupled with a decent standards of living, shall dictate.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My chief interest is not birth control, but Socialist propaganda, which aims to place land and industry within the reach of all the people upon terms of equal opportunity — which purposes to eliminate poverty and insecurity by eliminating the waste and robbery of Capitalism. But pending the day when the Socialists have sufficient control to effect these basic changes, there are lesser causes to meet immediate vital needs that I believe to be worth fighting for, and birth control is such a cause.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t look at the one who has somehow chanced to survive but look down into the pit where the millions struggle weakly, and where millions have succumbed.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalist society has not succeeded in making me bitter, but it has succeeded in making me unafraid.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be the penalty what it may, I here frankly offer to give out these slips with the forbidden information to those needy wives and mothers who will frankly come and take them.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely there is not a capitalist or a well-informed person in the world today who believes that this war is being fought to make the world safe for democracy. It is being fought to make the world safe for capital, so that those who control the industrial machinery of England, France, America, Germany, Russia and Italy can dispose of the overproduction of the workers of those countries in lands less highly organized or not organized at all.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If America had entered the war for the ideal of democracy our armies would have gone to Europe when Belgium was ravished, or at least when the Lusitania went down. But no, we did not start to fight until our dollars were in danger. We had to fight or revise our top heavy industrial system.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When Russia deposed its czar we heard from a great deal of handclapping from the world but what did you hear when the real revolution took place? Not commendation at least. Russia is the threat against industrial serfdom and I have no doubt that there is a gentlemen’s agreement to bleed her to death and then, the capitalistic gentlemen, of, shall we say, any countries, sit around the green table and parcel Russia and the rest of the world into economic spheres, which our workers must slave to maintain.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The masses, lovers of song, inspirers of all the great music that has ever been written--it is for them that the great artists of the Moscow Opera vie with one another to give their best.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tzars and Empresses, drainers of the people's life-blood are no more! and no more do they "grace" the "royal" box. All space is the people's. They grace the house from pit to gallery. The sparkle of diamonds and precious stones, symbol of tears and slavery, have given place to sparkle of happy eyes, new-lit with the fires of liberty.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Industry, agriculture, yes. Bread, security, yes. But Roses, Roses, yes, a thousand times yes! Are we workers hungry for joy and beauty for art and culture? Today, Russia answers for us until the day when we shall answer for ourselves. The worker, starved through the centuries amidst the very plenty he created, is satisfying his hunger at last--in Russia.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we workers are invited, by every subtle blandishment, to join with our capitalist Governments in a war of extermination against our fellow workers of Russia.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We may not do the shooting ourselves, but we are no less guilty if their freedom is lost through the guns we make. Longshoremen load the guns on ships, railroad men bring them to the piers, sailors, workers too; carry them over seas, and soldiers, (also workers) receive them and use them to shoot down Bolshevist workers, (but what workers!) fighting in the front trenches of the world in the cause of the Social Revolution that will set the world's workers free!”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stand by Russia, Workers of America. Stand by your own cause. The issue is joined; the fight is on. Unite; use your power. For Russia--for ourselves--For Bread and Roses!”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see no hope of functioning 100 percent in the interest of the common people except through the Socialist Party, and hereby apply for readmission to membership. I left the party because I considered dangerous the party’s attitude toward America’s participation in the war; but the crisis created by the St. Louis resolution is past, and the present immediate danger is an imperialistic peace which, I believe, only a uniﬁed and strengthened international Socialist movement can prevent. I thrill to think how rapidly the world would move forward if, for instance, the German Social Democracy were to unite — if the party of the right were to unite with the party of the left — and sweep the Hohenzollerns out of power, or if the several parties of the Social Revolution in Russia were to sink their differences and go to the heart of their common purpose; or if in Italy, France, and England there were but one uniﬁed expression of the Socialist movement; and because my heart cries out to them, “Comrades, unite!” I am brought to a keen realization of my own remissness. If I see and deplore the results of disruption and desire unity for my Comrades abroad, I must surely strive for unity here, where 90 percent of the American people, whose hearts beat warm as any in the world for humanity, need to stand as unitedly against their own and the world’s anti-humanitarian 10 percent, as the 90 percent of any other country. President Wilson’s last message; the British and French government’s failure to meet fully and in a spirit of frankness the democratic implications of it; the imprisonment in Germany of 300 of her left wing Socialists; the counterrevolutionary attempts in Russia, where an unseen hand not Russia’s seems to be playing fast and loose — these four signiﬁcant events are among the foremost impelling me to rejoin the Socialist Party. I beg, dear Comrades, that you admit me again to your ranks.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter The Eye Opener (Chicago), v. 9, no. 26 (Jan. 19, 1918), pg. 4.
“We have met here in protest against the law which operates to keep the knowledge of contraception from the mothers of the poor and blinks the fact that the comfortable classes obtain that knowledge from their highly-paid physicians and from one another. We demand that the law which is a dead letter for the rich also become a dead letter for the poor, and declare that we shall continue in ever-increasing numbers to honor this law by breaking it. The poor and they physicians of the [poor], and those who realize the immediate necessity of spreading contraceptive knowledge, will not continue to respect a law that is negatively responsible for so much misery among the masses of the people.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Recently an editor commented on this birth control movement. The climax of his editorial was that the distribution of contraceptive literature is not only against the law of man but of the Almighty. The old cry of superstition against science. Do these men who claim to be so intimately acquainted with God ever announce what the will of God is with regard to crushing little children in the mills, the mines, the factories? One does not hear much concerning God’s decision in this respect. Yet when they do speak up, it is usually to impress upon us the thought that in child labor there may be hidden some divine purpose. In their hearts they must know that it exists to fill the pocket of greedy mill and mine and factor owners and stockholders.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For twenty-three years, Capitalist Society had done its worst to me. It gave me an underfed childhood, hemmed me in on all sides by the stone walls of No Opportunity, and, when I was hardly old enough to bear the burden, it began to turn my very heart’s blood into gold for others — sometimes for people I never saw and who never saw me. Whole seasons at a time worked me not only the long day but also far into the night, giving me in return semi-starvation, a starved body upon it, a few indecent rags, no schooling, frequently the hard floor for a bd, and the weight of an unnamable nightmare as each succeeding year added another moth to feed, then eliminated the father of those six little ones, in the unequal struggle for bread.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wear a red flower, tonight." And when Grigory Gershuni stood before his vast audience in the evening, and saw Nature flaunting her scarlet beneath the multitude of pale faces raised eagerly for his message; he said: "I wanted you to wear this symbol of the joy and the beauty of life because we demand not only bread, but roses." Yes, Bread and Roses! When the Revolution was successful, did our fellow workers think only of bread? No. Great and terrible as the need was, they lost no time securing to themselves: in the fullest measure possible--Roses! Roses! The flowers of Song, the Dance, the Opera, Drama, the flowers of Science--of Knowledge.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The king and queen of Belgium visited the United States. There is a great stir of interest in the ranks of the exploiters. The Opera House here makes a gala night of their visit to that temple of music. The Workers take control of Russia. Their Opera becomes the Soviet Opera. There is a great stir among the common folk. The workers fill the Opera House. It is a gala night. Just as it is natural for Capitalist America to give a special performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in honor of the king and queen--charging incredible prices for seats; so it is natural for Soviet Russia to give Opera daily for the Russian worker--where he is entitled to a seat by virtue of his useful labor.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But this surely will not be! Everywhere the workers are awaking to consciousness In Italy the workers forced their Capitalist Government to recall their troops from Russia. The transport workers refused to load the ships with goods or guns for use against Soviet Russia. In France and in England there is an awakening: here too, though less thorough, the protest is being made effective. There are workers everywhere who are refusing to destroy their own Hope of emancipation by destroying the freedom of the Russian Working Class. We are learning that if we rise to power, we rise by Russia, even as Capitalism has learned that it falls if Soviet Russia stands! The Associated Press and the Associated Powers may combine to lie about the Soviet-Government until they make old Annanias sound as truthful by comparison as a wireless message from Moscow. It will help them not one iota. If the Allies' workers stand by Russia, Russia stands--lied about or not. If Russia stands, Capitalism falls and the workers everywhere rise to power.”
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source