Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Nellie McClung

Canadian Feminist, Politician and Social Activist

"Women who set low value on themselves make life hard for all women."

"Never complain, never explain, get the thing done and let them howl."

"Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl."

"The economic dependence of women is perhaps the greatest injustice that has been done to us, and has worked the greatest injury to the race."

"Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known."

"For generations women have been thinking, and thought without expression is dynamic and gathers volume by repression. evolution when blocked and suppressed becomes revolution."

"I believe in the human race, in spite of its shortcomings, as the expression of divinity upon earth, and leading onward and upward to something brighter and better. I believe that there is nothing too good to be true."

"By nice women . . . you probably mean selfish women who have no more thought for the underprivileged, overworked women than a pussycat in a sunny window for the starving kitten in the street. Now in that sense I am not a nice woman, for I do care."

"Canada is destined to be one of the great nations of the world and Canadian women must be ready for citizenship."

"Chivalry is a poor substitute for justice, if one cannot have both. Chivalry is something like the icing on cake, sweet, but not nourishing."

"The Woman Movement, which has been scoffed and jeered at and misunderstood most of all by the people whom it is designed to help, is a spiritual revival of the best instincts of womanhood--the instinct to serve and help the race."

"The world has taunted women into marrying."

"Let us tell the people we meet, that there are girls working in our cities for six to seven dollars a week. Let us spend a little time figuring out what a girl can live on in decency--we will find it more than double that sum."

"The reason we have the spectacle of nations settling the disputes of the world in the old barbaric way is because the world is suffering from too much masculinity."

"The whole race is suffering from masculinity and man and woman are alike to blame for tolerating it."

"Never retract, never explain, never apologize - get the thing done and let them howl."

"This proves what a purifying effect women would have on politics."