Dorothea Dix Quotes

• Every evil has its good, and every ill an antidote.

  Dorothea Dix

  Evil, Ill, Antidote

  129 Copy quote

• I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror.

  Dorothea Dix

  Strong, Real, Men

  "Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts". Book by Dorothea L. Dix, 1843.

  158 Copy quote
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  Man is not made better by being degraded.

  Dorothea Dix

  Men, Made

  Dorothea Lynde Dix (1845). “Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States”, p.25

  100 Copy quote

• I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

  Dorothea Dix

  Insane Person, Gentleman, Cages

  Dorothea Lynde Dix (1843). “Memorial: To the Legislature of Massachusetts [protesting Against the Confinement of Insane Persons and Idiots in Almshouses and Prisons]”, p.4

  126 Copy quote
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  I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.

  Dorothea Dix

  Worry, Each Day, Tomorrow

  106 Copy quote

• Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. ... All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

  Dorothea Dix

  Insanity, Humanity, Fever

  118 Copy quote

• Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women's superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.

  Dorothea Dix

  Running, Intelligent, Men

  95 Copy quote

• Be of good cheer, for sadness cannot heal the national wounds.

  Dorothea Dix

  Cheer, Sadness, Heal

  62 Copy quote
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  I have no particular love for my species, but own to an exhaustless fund of compassion

  Dorothea Dix

  Compassion, Fund, Species

  54 Copy quote

• I think even lying on my bed I can still do something.

  Dorothea Dix

  Lying, Thinking, Bed

  45 Copy quote

• Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

  Dorothea Dix

  Character, Men, Principles

  Dorothea Lynde Dix (1845). “Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States”, p.25

  51 Copy quote

• in proportion as my own discomfort has increased, my conviction of necessity to search into the wants of the friendless and afflicted has deepened. If I am cold, they too are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned.

  Dorothea Dix

  Compassion, Want, Cold

  64 Copy quote

• Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?

  Dorothea Dix

  Hands, Order, Years

  59 Copy quote

• The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible.

  Dorothea Dix

  Cutting, Design, Society

  34 Copy quote

• But the truth is the highest consideration.

  Dorothea Dix

  Truth Is, Consideration, Highest

  31 Copy quote

• [To a woman who claimed she'd rather be dead than unconfined and unfashionable:] My dear, if you continue to lace as tightly as you do now, you will not long have the privilege of choice. You will be both dead and out of fashion.

  Dorothea Dix

  Fashion, Long, Choices

  30 Copy quote

• A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.

  Dorothea Dix

  Men, Use, Hours

  Dorothea Lynde Dix (1845). “Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States”, p.11

  22 Copy quote

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