30 Quotes by Clara Barton
Clara Barton was a pioneering public servant and humanitarian, best known for her instrumental role in founding the American Red Cross. Born in 1821, Barton's life was marked by a strong sense of compassion and a dedication to helping others. During the American Civil War, she earned the nickname "Angel of the Battlefield" for her tireless efforts in providing aid and medical assistance to wounded soldiers on the frontlines.
After the war, Barton traveled to Europe, where she became acquainted with the Red Cross movement, inspiring her to establish the American Red Cross in 1881. As its first president, she led the organization in providing disaster relief, emergency assistance, and support for military families. Barton's visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to alleviating suffering earned her international recognition and transformed the landscape of humanitarian work. Her legacy continues to inspire countless individuals and organizations to uphold the values of compassion, volunteerism, and service to humanity.
Clara Barton Quotes
I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.
You must never so much think as whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.
It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I cannot afford the luxury of a closed mind.
The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me.
I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.
I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay.
Offering a hand up is not a hand-out.
This conflict is one thing I've been waiting for. I'm well and strong and young - young enough to go to the front. If I can't be a soldier, I'll help soldiers.
Although its growth may seem to have been slow, it is to be remembered that it is not a shrub, or plant, to shoot up in the summerand wither in the frosts. The Red Cross is a part of us--it has come to stay--and like the sturdy oak, its spreading branches shall yet encompass and shelter the relief of the nation.
Everybody's business is nobody's business, and nobody's business is my business.
While soldiers can stand and fight. I can fight and feed them
People should not say that this or that is not worth learning, giving as their reason that it will not be put to use. They can no more know what information they will need in the future than they will know the weather two hundred years from today.
A ball had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through the sleeve and passing through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hole in my sleeve.
The surest test of discipline is its absence.
If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women's subordination], if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker.
The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.
An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.
What could I do but go with them Civil War soldiers, or work for them and my country? The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.
My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel--not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.
I founded the American Red Cross.
Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.
What armies and how much of war I have seen, what thousands of marching troops, what fields of slain, what prisons, what hospitals, what ruins, what cities in ashes, what hunger and nakedness, what orphanages, what widowhood, what wrongs and what vengeance.
I went to the Senate, accomplished nothing as usual.
It is wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war.
I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?
Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!
"Oh northern mothers wives and sisters, all unconscious of the hour, would to Heaven that I could bear for you the concentrated woe which is so soon to follow, would that Christ would teach
my soul a prayer that would plead to the Father for grace sufficient for you, God pity and strengthen you every one."
― Clara Barton Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
