If we once admit that our life is here for the purpose of race-improvement, then we question any religion which does not improve the race, or the main force of which evaporates, as it were, directing our best efforts toward the sky.... Improvement in the human race is not accomplished by extracting any number of souls and placing them in heaven, or elsewhere. It must be established on earth, either through achievement in social service, or through better children.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanEternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanThe religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power-in the improvement of the world.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanIts time we woke up,โ pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. โWomen are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but whoโs to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and whatโs more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?
Charlotte Perkins GilmanThe soaring, imaginative minds of men, constructing lofty, shimmering piles of abstract thought, and taking as their postulate a revelation from God, gaveus relgions which coule not possible maintained without belief and obedience: ... we find them most permanent and changeless among people who make the least effort to swquare their beliefs with the laws of life.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman