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Margaret Brown Quotes
Margaret reflecting on her life:
“I am a daughter of adventure. This means I never experience a dull moment and must be prepared for any eventuality. I never know when I may go up in an airplane and come down with a crash, or go motoring and climb a pole, or go off for a walk in the twilight and return all mussed up in an ambulance. That’s my arc, as the astrologers would say. It’s a good one, too, for a person who had rather make a snap-out than a fade-out of life.” [Denver Post, August 9, 1923]
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Margaret reflecting on her life:
“Money can’t make man or woman…It isn’t who you are, nor what you have, but what you are that counts.” [Denver Post, April 27, 1912; page 5]
Margaret reflecting on her life:
“I was born under a lucky star, I suppose. They told me a long time ago that I was born under ‘fire and water,’ that is to say, in July, and that I need have no fear of either of those elements.” [Denver Post, April 30, 1912]
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In an interview about her plans to run for Senate:
“Why should a woman be mildewed at forty? That is the best time to start a real career. Assuming she is a mother, her children are launched by that time; if a childless wife, she has probably mothered her husband’s activities to the point of success; if wage-earning and responsibility occupied her early years, she has won success, and can afford to take a breath and look around a little.”
-[Scrapbook of Helen Tobin Kosure]
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Margaret on her charity work in Denver after the coal mine massacres in April of 1914:
“It makes no difference to me where I go. I am ready to go anywhere I am needed.”
-[Rocky Mountain News, May 1, 1914]
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Margaret on her charity work in Denver after the coal mine massacres in April of 1914 and her refusal to align with either mine owners or miners:
“I am not taking sides and am here to help all who need aid. I am interested in humanity and will do my duty impartially and conscientiously.”
-[Rocky Mountain News, May 1, 1914]
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Margaret on her family’s history with labor issues:
“In the mines of my family we had our troubles, but we met the just demands of our workmen and today we find them raising and educating intelligent and high types of families that will be a credit to any land. The recognition of the union is a mere thing for any capitalist. I have had the same thing brought forcibly home to me. I personally joined the union, got my card, and went back to the men. I told them that I was one of them and that we must pull together.” -[Denver Post, July 9, 1914]
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In an interview about her plans to run for Senate:
“If I go into this fight I am going to win. There will be no mincing matters-no pink tea policies. It will be a regular man’s kind of campaign-stump speaking, spreadeagle and all. That I should be mentioned as a possible candidate for United States Representative from my home state-Colorado-is glory enough for any one woman. There is only one greater glory-to be that representative.”
-[New York Times, July, 1914]
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In an interview about her plans to run for Senate and her opposition:
“Here I am, a woman who has traveled all over the world, who has eaten with chop sticks, sat tailor fashion, taught her son to dive and ride. I have even put on the [boxing] gloves with him. And I suppose there are some persons who would like me to sit down to devote the rest of my life to bridge. Times have changed, and there’s no reason why I should, like my mother at forty, put on glasses and do little but read.”
-[New York City Mail, July 23, 1914]
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On her belief in Colorado’s progressive community:
“Our men out in Colorado do not question our right to vote. They have faith in our ability to maintain our mental and moral balance at the polls as well as at home. They realize our right to have a speaking part in the affairs of the country in which we, as well as they, must live. They have seen the results of such faith, and they are willing to give us a partnership in affairs of government. In other words, our men believe in us.” -[“Man’s Fight, No Pink Tea”]
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On her belief in Colorado’s progressive community:
“It is a mistake to think that Western women are crude and provincial. There are hundreds, thousands, of wonderfully brilliant women in Colorado. They are largely the flower of womanhood from the East, the North, the South-women who have dared leave their native homes to come out where they might expand, found new homes, enlarge their horizon.”
-[“Man’s Fight, No Pink Tea”]
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On the opposition from male stock-holders towards her development plans for Ibex Mining Company:
“Why should the face that we are women preclude our activities as mine managers? To the north of us a woman is a candidate for governor and in Texas Mrs. Ferguson is running for the same office. Why shouldn’t I rule over the domain created at Leadville by my husband and the Messrs. Hunter and Campion?” -[Reprinted in Leadville’s Herald Democrat, January 29, 1971]
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On her interest in politics:
“I’ll wager there isn’t a woman in this country who keeps posted on politics more closely than I do. When I am abroad, and mostly I am abroad, somewhere or other, I hire readers to read the daily papers to me. In Deauville instead of flirting or guzzling, or becoming a lounge lizard, what did I do? When the papers came from Paris and Berlin and London I went apart with my reader and when the hour was over I knew what was going on in the world. Shouldn’t a passion for knowledge count for something in one’s own development?” [Denver Post, November 12, 1922]
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On her acting work with the roles of Sarah Bernhardt:
“Some people find it strange that an American woman should aspire to play the roles of Bernhardt. I recall, too, that some people smirked when I brought home ancient statuary from Egypt and decorated up a few acres of the Rocky Mountains for my home, but I am sure that those who know the place will agree that culture knows no boundaries and that fine arts are international.”
[Denver Post, November 12, 1922]
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On Lifeboat 6, directed at Quartermaster Robert Hichens:
“Keep it to yourself if you feel that way. For the sake of these women and children, be a man. We have a smooth sea and a fighting chance.” -[Logan Marshall, The Sinking of the Titanic, page 112]
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Margaret’s writing on her experience with the surviving women and children of the Titanic:
“Sprinkled among the affluent were our sisters of the second class, and for a time there was that social leveling caused only by the close proximity of death.” -[Article ca. 1917, scrapbook of Helen Tobin Kosure]
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Margaret as quoted by the Denver Post regarding her reception after the Titanic:
“I think I have been misrepresented to my Denver friends. I simply did my duty as I saw it. I knew that I was healthy and strong and was able to nurse the suffering. I am sure that there was nothing I did throughout the whole affair that anyone else wouldn’t have done. That I did help some, I am thankful and my only regret is that I could not have assisted more.” -[Everett, Marshall, ed. Story of the Wreck of the Titanic, The Ocean’s Greatest Disaster, page 67]
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On the sinking of the Titanic:
“The Titanic disaster was a tragedy that was as unnecessary as running the Brown Palace Hotel into Pikes Peak.” -[Denver Post article, scrapbook of Helen Tobin Kosure]
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Statement in an interview regarding the separation of men from families during the loading of the lifeboats:
“’Women first’ is a principle as deep rooted in man’s being as the sea. It is world-old and irrevocable. But to me it is all wrong. Women demand equal rights on land-why not on sea?” -[Kristen Iversen, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, page 43]
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Margaret’s description of the situation among the men of the Titanic:
“Aristocracy and class distinction were there even in the dread face of death. That mighty leveler of human destinies did not bring the rich man to the poor man’s level-they met death together, but the barrier of class was ever there.” -[Brown, “Sailing of the Ill-Fated Steamship Titanic”]
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In an interview about her role in the Titanic:
“As I went on the deck [when] the boats were being lowered, I found many opportunities to be useful and I was glad to be. The less you think of yourself as such times, the better off you are.” -[Denver Post, April 27, 1912; page 5]
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In an interview about her role in the Titanic:
“I cannot say that I regret having been in it, for I think I did do a little good to some unhappy soul[s], but when I think it all over-think of the suffering some of those poor people went through, the homes which have been broken up, and the hearts broken- I think I would rather have missed it.” -[Scrapbook of Helen Tobin Kosure]
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The above quotes, and their sources, were cited by Kristen Iversen in Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth Images from Molly Brown House Museum