Jane Addams Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Jane Addams with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics.”
Meaning & context
Addams argues that ethical ideas become meaningful as social morality only when they are tested through concrete choices and conduct rather than remaining abstract commentary.
Source details
Democracy and Social Ethics, chapter “Political Reform,” Project Gutenberg #15487. Addams immediately contrasts moral action with merely speculating about morality, placing the sentence inside her Progressive Era social-ethics argument.
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“Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.”
Meaning & context
Addams argues that patriotism must adapt to the needs of an increasingly diverse society instead of remaining fixed in older clan, territorial or militarized forms.
Source details
Newer Ideals of Peace, Chapter VIII, ‘Passing of the War Virtues,’ around printed page 216 in the represented 1907 text, Project Gutenberg #69879. Addams argues that patriotism must change with the conditions of a large cosmopolitan nation and criticizes a patriotism founded primarily on military prowess and defence. The sentence remains Progressive-era political and peace argument rather than a neutral modern definition of patriotism.
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“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”
Meaning & context
Addams argues that private advantages remain fragile when they are disconnected from the shared conditions of the wider community.
Source details
Twenty Years at Hull-House, Project Gutenberg #1325. Addams is describing the democratic and social motives that drew young reformers toward settlement work; the sentence belongs to a historical argument for common civic life rather than a neutral empirical law.