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If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him.

— Jane Addams Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

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Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.

Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.

Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole ...

Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it.

Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse.

Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jane Addams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.