Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.
Read & copy the quotation
“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Source
We Are All Bound Up Together
Date
1866
Meaning

Meaning of “We are all bound up together in one…”

Harper argues that injustice against a vulnerable group damages the moral and civic life of the whole society rather than remaining isolated to its immediate victims.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Speech to the National Woman’s Rights Convention, New York, May 1866, represented by the National Constitution Center historical document. Harper links racial injustice, women’s inequality, civil liberty and shared social responsibility in a Reconstruction-era argument for universal rights.

External source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

CommunityCompassionEqualityHumanityThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionDignityPoliticsRights
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
Society in equality is its normal state.
Image design Coastal
Read & copy

“Society in equality is its normal state.”

John Stuart Mill · The Subjection of Women · 1869
Meaning & context

Mill contrasts relations organized around command and obedience with equal association, presenting equality as the normal direction of an improving society.

Source details

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill contrasts command-and-obedience relations with equal association and states that society in equality is the normal state toward which improving social relations should move.

Source identified
Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
Image design Golden Hour
Read & copy

“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”

Thomas Paine · Rights of Man · 1791–1792
Meaning & context

Paine makes rights reciprocal: claiming a right for oneself entails recognizing and defending the same right in others.

Source details

Rights of Man, Part I; represented through Moncure Daniel Conway’s public-domain Project Gutenberg collection.

Source identified
Man is naturally a political animal.
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“Man is naturally a political animal.”

Aristotle · Politics: A Treatise on Government · 4th century BCE
Meaning & context

Human beings naturally form communities in which speech, judgment, cooperation, law, and shared ideas of justice shape common life.

Source details

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book I, Chapter II, William Ellis translation; represented through the Dent edition first issued in 1912 and Project Gutenberg #6762. Aristotle argues that the city is a natural association and says that man is naturally a political animal; this remains ancient political philosophy in translation, not a modern empirical classification.

Source identified
The problem of the children is the problem of the State.
Image design Lavender
Read & copy

“The problem of the children is the problem of the State.”

Jacob A. Riis · The Children of the Poor · 1892
Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Jacob A. Riis
Meaning & context

Riis frames the treatment and prospects of children as a public responsibility rather than merely a private household concern.

Source details

The Children of the Poor, opening chapter, represented by Project Gutenberg #32609. The sentence is Riis’s Progressive-era social-reform argument; surrounding observations and statistics belong to their historical setting and are not presented as current policy data.

Source identified
Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.
Image design Botanical Sage
Read & copy

“Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them.”

Emma Lazarus · By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose · 1887
Voice: Poetic speaker · Prose-poem narrator
Meaning & context

Lazarus’s prose-poem narrator personifies America as receiving Jewish refugees, making national hospitality part of the work’s meditation on exile and migration.

Source details

By the Waters of Babylon: Little Poems in Prose, V. “Currents,” first published in March 1887 and represented by Project Gutenberg #3473. The line follows the image of Jewish exiles fleeing oppression toward America. It expresses a literary and historical ideal of welcome; it is not presented as evidence that immigrants in practice were universally welcomed.

Source identified
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Image design Coastal
Read & copy

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”

Emma Lazarus · The New Colossus · 1883
Meaning & context

Lazarus reimagines the Statue of Liberty as a welcoming “Mother of Exiles” whose symbolic greatness rests on receiving displaced and struggling people rather than displaying imperial power.

Source details

“The New Colossus,” written November 2, 1883 for the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund and represented by the U.S. National Park Service. The quoted invitation is spoken by Lazarus’s personified statue within a sonnet about immigration and refuge.