Category: eugenics quote of the day

Eugenic Quote of the Day: Compulsory Vaccination and Compulsory Sterilization? Justified on the Same Principle

Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1927 Buck vs. Bell decision upholding the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, ‘feeble-minded.’  [Reference] An Act of Virginia, approved March 20, 1924, recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, &c.; …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: ‘Defective (ie, ‘disabled’) people should not be allowed to reproduce for the good of the state.’ RZ Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI

R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and obligations to these unfortunate classes.  At …

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DH Lawrence pines for the lethal chamber for the sick and maimed (1908)

DH Lawrence in a letter to Blanche Jennings, October 9, 1908.  [Reference] If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I’d go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, …

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Joseph Fletcher, A Right to Die; Down Syndrome people are not persons and OUGHT to be killed

[People] have no reason to feel guilty about putting a Down’s syndrome baby away, whether it’s “put away” in the sense of hidden in a sanitarium or in a more responsible lethal sense. It is sad; yes. Dreadful. But it carries no guilt. True guilt arises only from an offense against a person, and a Down’s is not a person.

Frederick Osborn: “birth control and abortion are turning out to be great eugenic advances”

In March 1973, two months after Roe was handed down, Frederick Osborn, a former head of the American Eugenics Society and the president of the Rockefeller funded Population Council, changed its name to the “Society for the Study of Social Biology.” The announcement said: “The change of name of the Society does not coincide with any change of …

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Virginia Woolf: Defective idiots and imbeciles “should certainly be killed.” (1915)

Author Virginia Woolf, in a 1915 diary entry describing some people she saw while on a walk: we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles.  the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one …

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Clarence Gamble–the problem is that people WANT many children!

“Family Planning” is often advocated for on the grounds that many people do not want many children, but the truth is the opposite–at least, until the propaganda is brought to bear on them.  The need for this propaganda was recognized early, as this quote illustrates. Richard B. Gamble writes in the foreword (1977) of the …

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Josef Mengele and creating a human super-race, as though you were breeding horses

As quoted in Mengele: The Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner and John Ware (1986) on page 43: … [Josef] Mengele’s main aim, as interpreted by Dr. Puzyna, the inmate anthropologist, was wholly unscientific: I found Mengele a picture of what can only be described as a maniac.  He turned the truth on its head.  …

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Letter by Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Davenport: Society should not permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.

From The Outlook, January 3rd letter of 1913 [Source] My dear Mr. Davenport: I am greatly interested in the two memoirs you have sent me.  They are very instructive, and, from the standpoint of our country, very ominous.  You say that  those people are not themselves responsible, that it is “society” that is responsible.  I …

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Eugenics Quote of the Day: Not likely there will be an Eugenic Inquisition

Herbert E Walter in an essay called “Human Conservation” found on page 483 of Readings in Evolution, compiled by Horatio Hackett Newman.  First published in 1921. One needs only to recall the days of the Spanish Inquisition or of the Salem witchcraft persecution to realize what fearful blunders human judgment is capable of, but it …

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