Nellie L. McClung Quotes

I am a believer in women, in their ability to do things and in their influence and power. Women set the standards for the world, and it is for us, women in Canada, to set the standards high.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Men alone are not capable of making laws for men and women.

Never underestimate the power of a woman.

People must know the past to understand the present, and to face the future.

I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place.

Women had first to convince the world that they had souls and then that they had minds and then it came on to this matter of political entity and the end is not yet.

That seems to be the haunting fear of mankind - that the advancement of women will sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man's comfort.

No nation ever rises higher than its women.

Why are pencils equipped with erasers if not to correct mistakes?

Have we not the brains to think? Hands to work? Hearts to feel? And lives to live?

We may yet live to see the day when women will be no longer news! And it cannot come too soon. I want to be a peaceful, happy, normal human being, pursuing my unimpeded way through life, never having to stop to explain, defend or apologize for my sex.

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

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.

Disturbers are never popular - nobody ever really loved an alarm clock in action, no matter how grateful he may have been afterwards for its kind services!

Women who set a low value of themselves make life hard for all women.

I saw what could be done with words, for I had a vision of a new world as I talked.

Children are great idealists, until the stupidity of their elders puts out the fires of the aspirations.

The greatest insult came at the marriage ceremony when the minister asked 'who giveth this woman,' and some brother, or father or other man, unblushingly said he did, as though it were entirely a commercial transaction between men.

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

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.

I think this is the greatest and best country in all the world, with its great sunlit spaces and its long long roads, and best of all the roads that are not made yet, and the stories that no one has told because they are too busy living them.

War proves nothing. To kill a man does not prove that he was in the wrong. Bloodletting cannot change men's spirits, neither can the evil of men's thoughts be driven out by blows. If I go to my neighbor's house, and break her furniture, and smash her pictures, and bind her children captive, it does not prove that I am fitter to live than she - yet according to ethics of nations it does. I have conquered her and she must pay me for my trouble; and her house and all that is left in it belongs to my heirs and successors, forever. That is war!

A wound in a young heart is like a wound in a young tree. It does not grow out. It grows in.

Literature may be light as a cobweb, but it must be fastened down to life at the four corners.