Dire poverty drives this mother back again to the factory (no intelligent person will say she goes willingly).

Meaning of the quote

This quote is talking about a mother who is forced to work in a factory because she is very poor. No one who is smart would say that she chooses to work there - she has to do it because she has no other choice. Poverty is making her return to the factory, even though she doesn't want to.

About Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She popularized the term “birth control”, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger’s efforts contributed to legalizing contraception in the US, but she has also been criticized for her support of eugenics.

More about the author

More quotes from Margaret Sanger

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she gives no response, it should not take place.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman’s finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers – and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Dire poverty drives this mother back again to the factory (no intelligent person will say she goes willingly).

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist, educator and nurse (1879-1966)