Extended excerpt:[Essay, derived from an Addams lecture series under the same title. Chapter VII/Political Reform] “Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.” (pp. 273-274)

Source note: Per Addams’ “Prefatory Note,” the content of Democracy and Social Ethics presents “the substance” of a course of twelve lectures under the same topic heading “delivered at various colleges and university extension centers”. No specific lecture dates were noted in the text.

Source link: Democracy and Social Ethics (1902|1905 Macmillan ‘Citizen’s Library’ edition) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=zY9G_i8ULMwC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=Perhaps+the+last+and+greatest+difficulty+in+the+paths+of+those+who+are+attempting+to+define+and+attain+a+social+morality

Re-quote notes [Addams, reflecting on her participation in the First Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference, held in Honolulu Hawaii in 1928.]:

“As the Congress at Honolulu proceeded, we felt that Oriental women had unique opportunities to stand free from the tyranny of mechanization and to act upon the assumptions that civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men. The cultural outlook on life must become as aggressive as the commercial, if it hopes to be effective.” (p. 303)

[Re-quote source: Jane Addams, “Reflections on the First Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference” (c. 1930) Aspects of the Woman’s Movement; cited in Women of the Pacific: Proceedings of the First Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii: Pan-Pacific Union, 1930; reprint in Jane Addams’ Essays and Speeches on Peace, eds. Marilyn Fischer and Judy D. Whipps, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 303]

Extended excerpt [Newspaper editorial essay]:

“We cannot afford to let our minds drift at a time like this. If we ever mean to love mercy and do justly, now is the time to make the effort, when all our training and the current event pull us toward loving success and doing commercially. We even forget that civilization is an idea, a method of living, an attitude of respect toward all men. We actually come to believe in our confusion, that it is the opening of gold mines, the establishment of garrisons, the controlling of weaker men by brute force.” (p. 26)

Source [Featured source]: “Commercialism Disguised as Patriotism and Duty” (11 February 1900) The Philadelphia Times; online via Newspapers.com [subscription service]: https://www.newspapers.com/image/52570587/?terms=%22we%2Beven%2Bforget%2Bthat%2Bcivilization%2Bis%2Ban%2Bidea%2C%2Ba%2Bmethod%2Bof%2Bliving%22

Source [Addams Re-quote]: Library – Writings on Peace: Jane Addams’ Essays and Speeches (2005 Continuum edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 1-8437-1044-7

Extended excerpt: [Addams, on recovering from “spinal difficulty” which had plagued her since childhood. Quote appears in chapter IV: ‘The Snare of Preparation’]

“The long illness left me in a state of nervous exhaustion with which I struggled for years, traces of it remaining long after Hull-House was opened in 1889. At the best it allowed me but a limited amount of energy, so that doubtless there was much nervous depression at the foundation of the spiritual struggles which this chapter is forced to record. However, it could not have been all due to my health, for as my wise little notebook sententiously remarked, “In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life.” (p. 66)

Source link: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910|July 1911 Macmillan) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/twentyyearsathul00addauoft#page/66/mode/2up/search/in+his+own+way+each+man+must+struggle

Misquote note: Addams’ quote was correctly repeated in a number of publications after it first appeared in 1899, but in more recent years it has been misquoted and paraphrased by a number of sources.

Misquote versions include:

“People did not want to hear about simple things. They wanted to hear about great things – simply told.”

“People do not want to hear about simple things. They want to hear about great things – simply told.”

“It is not that people like to hear about little things; they want to hear about great things, simply told.”

Some folks have also misattributed the misquote to Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull-House. Neither the original quote nor the misquotes appear in the early editions of Hull-House, however, and to date we have not been able to find it in any of the later printings or special editions of the book.

Extended excerpt: [Article in political & social science journal.] “A settlement might bring the same charge against university extension as against the public schools, that it is bookish and remote. Simple people want the large and vital – they are still in the tribal stage of knowledge, so to speak. It is not that simple people like to hear about little things; they want to hear about great things, simply told.” (pp. 47-48 issue/337-338 volume)

Source link: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XIII (Jan. 1899-June 1899) via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=uWA5AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA338&dq=Annals+of+the+American+Academy+of+Political+and+Social+Science+%2B+People+did+not+want+to+hear+about+simple+things

Extended excerpt: [Article title for National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) “The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women.” The work also appears in Addams’ 1906 book Newer Ideals for Peace as chapter VII: “Utilization of Women in City Government.”]

“Are we going to lose ourselves in the old circle of convention, and add to that sum of wrong-doing which is continually committed in the world, because we do not look at things as they really are? Old-fashioned ways, which no longer apply to changed conditions, are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.”

(p. 6 NAWSA – or p. 186, New Ideas in Peace)

Source link [NAWSA Article]: “The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women” (1906) online via Jane Addams Digital Collection: https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/2996

Source link [Book]: Newer Ideals for Peace (1906|1907 Macmillan edition) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/neweridealsofpea00addauoft#page/186/mode/2up/search/old-fashioned+ways

Extended excerpt: [Chapter XV: ‘The Value of Social Clubs’]

“We are slowly learning that social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty, and of this one could cite many illustrations.” (p. 357)

Source link: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910|July 1911) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/twentyyearsathul00inadda#page/356/mode/2up/search/social+advance+depends+quite+as+much+upon

Misquote note: Some sources have used the abbreviated Addams quote without indicating that some of the text is missing:

Original sentence: “These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that 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.”

Misquote: “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Repeat right: Use a bracket & ellipsis to indicate that you are abbreviating Addams’ original sentence:

“[T]he good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain…until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Extended excerpt: [Essay delivered before the School of Applied Ethics in Plymouth, MA. One of two Addams essays that appear in the Philanthropy and Social Progress lecture collection.]

“These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that 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.” (p. 7)

Source note: Addams also included “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements” as a chapter in her 1910 book Twenty Years at Hull-House. (Macmillan Co., 1911 ed., p. 116) Please see the ‘Source Link’ tab if you wish to view the quote as it appears in this book.

Source link [Earliest print source]: Philanthropy and Social Progress (1893) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/philanthropyand00addagoog#page/n25/mode/2up/search/the+good+we+secure+for+ourselves+is+precarious

Source link [Addams reprint]: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910|July 1911) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/twentyyearsathul00inadda#page/116/mode/2up/search/the+good+we+secure+for+ourselves+is+precarious+and+uncertain