Margaret Sanger Eugenics Quotations

Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes.

We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates ... that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable traits.

Organized charity itself is. . . the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents

Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying . . . demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism,

Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. . . as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.

On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.

Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception... Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding.

[N]o one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions.

Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.

Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.

The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.

Birth control is nothing more or less than...weeding out the unfit.

The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.

No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood.

I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan.

Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.

Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.