Mary Heaton Vorse

Mary Heaton Vorse or Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien (1874–1966) was an American journalist, labor activist, and novelist. Vorse was outspoken and active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism (specifically including opposition to World War I), socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable housing.

Read more about Mary Heaton Vorse:  Early Life, Career, Personal Life, Awards, Death and Legacy, Novels

Famous quotes containing the words mary heaton vorse, heaton vorse, mary, heaton and/or vorse:

    All our civilization had meant nothing. The same culture that had nurtured the kindly enlightened people among whom I had been brought up, carried around with it war. Why should I not have known this? I did know it, but I did not believe it. I believed it as we believe we are going to die. Something that is to happen in some remote time.
    Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)

    What if all the forces of society were bent upon developing [poor] children? What if society’s business were making people instead of profits? How much of their creative beauty of spirit would remain unquenched through the years? How much of this responsiveness would follow them through life?
    —Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)

    One can think of life after the fish is in the canoe.
    Hawaiian saying no. 23, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)

    This philosophy of hate, of religious and racial intolerance, with its passionate urge toward war, is loose in the world. It is the enemy of democracy; it is the enemy of all the fruitful and spiritual sides of life. It is our responsibility, as individuals and organizations, to resist this.
    —Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)

    English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.
    —Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)