“Each of us is responsible for our own actions and our own reactions. We are not responsible for someone else’s actions and reactions. This is very important for women especially because most women have been taught that they are responsible for the happiness of everyone in their family. They are taught that all family unhappiness and discord is their fault. But responsibility rests within each individual.”
“In Friends’ meetings also, from the fact that everyone is free to speak, one hears harmonies and correspondences between very various utterances such as are scarcely to be met elsewhere. It is sometimes as part-singing compared with unison. The free admission of the ministry of women, of course, greatly enriches this harmony. I have often wondered whether some of the motherly counsels I have listened to in our meeting would not reach some hearts that might be closed to the masculine preacher.”
“As we grow in solidarity with one another, enriched by how we express our faith, we will all be enabled to surmount the cultural, economic, and political barriers that prevent us from discerning and following the ways in which God leads us. We honour the lives of our Quaker foremothers as patterns which help us recognise our own leadings. Their commitment, dedication, and courage remain as worthy standards. May our lives be used as theirs were to give leadership to women everywhere to be vehicles of the love of God.”
“There is much work to be done which is not paid, but which is vital, desperately undervalued and undertaken to a large extent by women. I refer, of course, to caring for children and/or elderly disabled relatives and homemaking. The work itself is often hard, stressful, mundane and repetitive, unseen and unacknowledged, with low status. We need a transformation of our attitudes to this work, giving it all the esteem it deserves.”
“Mother love is one of the greatest powers, and it’s universal. Mothers of all creeds and colours, religions and no religions, whatever government they are under, desire the best for their children. I thought we might use that great link between mothers to help break down a little fear and mistrust.”
Imagine Mary’s breasts, / warm brown as the earth / pale gold as the moon, / the breasts of a young girl / ripe as perfect plums.
“Quaker women in history have a reputation for being bolder and more publicly visible than their contemporaries, being involved with preaching and publishing from the very beginning of the movement. Until the end of the 19th century, however, the members of the main Quaker decision-making groups were men. Female Friends were considered spiritually equal, but there was vocal opposition to giving them any earthly authority.”
“Decisions about nuclear weapons and about military things in general, they’re all taken by men. It seems right that it should be women [protesting].
I began to have visions of women walking down the road with our banners and our placards. We walked from Cardiff, the capital of Wales, to Greenham Common. The press were not interested. We had to do something more dramatic, and we decided to chain ourselves up to the gates of Greenham when we got there. We had to stay a night, and another night, a week two weeks… gradually, the support did come in.
It was the biggest women’s demonstration ever, I think, in this country.”
“As Friends we seek to do away with violence both in seed and branch, in language and in deed. Should it be our goal then to do away with every vestige of master-submission patterns among ourselves, and consistently oppose them in the world at large? Unfortunately this seems not to be possible. A notable example can be found in adult-child relations [….]”
“Credit not the old fashioned absurdity, that woman’s is a secondary lot, ministering to the necessities of her lord and master! It is a higher destiny I would award you [….]
I would charge you to water the undying bud, and give it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun—and then you may hope, that when your life is bound up with another, you will go on equally, and in a fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest.”
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