Top 180 Kate Moore Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You fight and you fall and you get up and fight some more. But there will always come a day when you cannot fight another minute more.”

— Kate Moore

2. “And, united, they triumphed. Through their friendships, through their refusal to give up and through their sheer spirit, the radium girls left us all an extraordinary legacy. They did not die in vain. They made every second count.”

— Kate Moore

3. “Radium had been known to be harmful since 1901. Every death since was unnecessary.”

— Kate Moore

4. “Grace Fryer: the girl who fought on when all hope seemed gone; the woman who stood up for what was right, even as her world fell apart. Grace Fryer, who inspired so many to stand up for themselves.”

— Kate Moore

5. “The cynical would say there was only one reason a high-profile specialist finally took up the cause. On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died.”

— Kate Moore

6. “As Elizabeth put it, “I have neglected no duties, have injured no one, have always tried to do unto others as I would wish to be done by; and yet, here in America, I am imprisoned because I could not say I believed what I did not believe.”

— Kate Moore

7. “Unruly women are always witches, no matter what century we’re in. – Roxane Gay, 20152.”

— Kate Moore

8. “Not long now. They are words of excitement. Expectation. And reassurance – to those in pain. Not long now.”

— Kate Moore

9. “We’ve got humane societies for dogs and cats, but they won’t do anything for human beings,” he spat out. “These women have souls.”

— Kate Moore

10. “Essentially, radium had masked itself as calcium and, fooled, the girls’ bodies had deposited it inside their bones. Radium was a silent stalker, hiding behind that mask, using its disguise to burrow deep into the women’s jaws and teeth.”

— Kate Moore

11. “The residue from radium extraction looked like seaside sand, and the company had offloaded this industrial waste by selling it to schools and playgrounds to use in their children’s sandboxes;.”

— Kate Moore

12. “What was the first case that you heard of?” asked Berry. “I don’t remember the name,” replied Roeder coldly. The dial-painters weren’t important enough for him to recall such insignificant details.”

— Kate Moore

13. “Incessant talking.” “Unusual zealousness.” “Strong will.” These were, in fact, textbook examples of female insanity in the nineteenth century. Doctors frequently saw pathology in female personality.”

— Kate Moore

14. “The decay in Irene’s jaw was eating her alive, bit by bit.”

— Kate Moore

15. “Sarah wasn’t even in her grave before her former company was denying it was to blame.”

— Kate Moore

16. “In a spookily prophetic letter, Pearl Payne had once written, “My history is unusual and may be of interest to medical men of the future.”14 She could never.”

— Kate Moore

17. “My body means nothing but pain to me,” Grace revealed, “and it might mean longer life or relief to the others, if science had it. It’s all I have to give.”

— Kate Moore

18. “Radium, they noted, had a “similar chemical nature” to calcium. Thus radium “if absorbed, might have a preference for bone as a final point of fixation.”

— Kate Moore

19. “We put the brushes in our mouths,”16 Katherine said, quite simply. It was a technique called lip-pointing, inherited from the first girls who had worked in the industry, who came from china-painting factories.”

— Kate Moore

20. “The lab workers acknowledged that radium was a dangerous material to handle “unless proper safeguards are provided.”9 Consequently, the men in Radium Dial’s laboratories were provided with them: Kjaer noted that operators were “well-protected by lead screens” and also given vacations from work to limit their exposure.”

— Kate Moore

21. “The women had been vindicated. The dial-painters had won. And it was Catherine Wolfe Donohue, in the end, who had led them to victory. “If there are saints on earth,” one commentator said, “and you believe in that, I think Catherine Wolfe Donohue was one of them. I really do.”38 She was buried in St. Columba Cemetery. She has a simple, flat gravestone, as unobtrusive, and as neat and tidy, as she herself had been in life.”

— Kate Moore

22. “Christmas Day was a sober, solemn occasion after her gruesome experience – but at least they were all together. Given the absences in other New Jersey homes that winter, that was something to be grateful for.”

— Kate Moore

23. “Wars are hungry machines – and the more you feed them, the more they consume.”

— Kate Moore

24. “Safety standards only keep you safe if the companies you work for use them.”

— Kate Moore

25. “Von Sochocky’s breath, as it turned out, contained more radiation than anyone they had tested so far.”

— Kate Moore

26. “The firms that profited from radium medicine were the primary producers and publishers of the positive literature.”

— Kate Moore

27. “What the girls had achieved was astonishing: a ground-breaking, law-changing, and life-saving accomplishment.”

— Kate Moore

28. “I always stand up for the oppressed.”

— Kate Moore

29. “Insane asylum – a place where insanity is made.”

— Kate Moore

30. “That was the year Marguerite Carlough first filed suit in New Jersey and Martland devised his tests. The executives had read Kjaer’s studies, attended the radium conference and seen the Eben Byers story: they knew radium was dangerous.”

— Kate Moore

31. “He had been stunned when he read the covering letter Cecil K. Drinker had enclosed with the report. “We believe that the trouble which has occurred is due to radium,” Drinker had written almost a year ago, on June 3, 1924. “It would, in our opinion, be unjustifiable for you to deal with the situation through any other method of attack.”17.”

— Kate Moore

32. “Her whole head was rotting, but she was still alive.”

— Kate Moore

33. “The cynical would say there was only one reason a high-profile specialist finally took up the cause. On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died. “The first case that was called to my attention,” Martland later remarked, “was a Dr.”

— Kate Moore

34. “Are we in industry to help carry out some soft, silly, social plan? Are we in industry to buy the goodwill of the employees? No. We are in industry because it is good business.”

— Kate Moore

35. “It had taken four years, but Elizabeth Packard had finally been given the insanity trial she had always wanted.”

— Kate Moore

36. “Women’s occupational illnesses, which were often first attributed to female hysteria.”

— Kate Moore

37. “She was extremely conscientious and would even take dials home to paint, carefully tracing the numerals in that cramped house next to the railroad tracks that she shared with her large family.”

— Kate Moore

38. “Radium water was drunk by the rich and famous, not working-class girls from Newark.”

— Kate Moore

39. “The residue from radium extraction looked like seaside sand, and the company had offloaded this industrial waste by selling it to schools and playgrounds to use in their children’s sandboxes; kids’ shoes were reported to have turned white because of it, while one little boy complained to his mother of a burning sensation in his hands.”

— Kate Moore

40. “Within sixty hours, Sarah’s bones caused exposure on the film: white fog-like patches against the ebony black. Just as the girls’ glow had once done, as they walked home through the streets of Orange after work, her bones had made a picture: an eerie, shining light against the dark.”

— Kate Moore

41. “Every little ache or pain scares them.”5.”

— Kate Moore

42. “The dial-painters’ case ultimately led to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now works nationally in the United States to ensure safe working conditions.”

— Kate Moore

43. “Berry wanted them to get justice, but most of all he wanted them to be comfortable in their final.”

— Kate Moore

44. “Mr. Packard, I shall not,” Elizabeth said firmly. “It is your own chosen work you are doing. I shall not help you do it.”

— Kate Moore

45. “On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died.”

— Kate Moore

46. “I cannot keep my little home.”8 She explained: “I do what I can, but my husband does most of the work.”9.”

— Kate Moore

47. “The law did not apply to married women. They could be received at an asylum simply “by the request of the husband.”4 Because married women at that time in the eyes of the law were “civilly dead.”5.”

— Kate Moore

48. “Flinn, too, continued on with his work. He had come across a treasure trove of information, supplied to him unwittingly by Katherine Wiley. “I went to see Dr. Flinn,” Wiley later recalled, “and found him most interested. He said that he would be glad to have the names and addresses of all the sick girls that I knew.”8.”

— Kate Moore

49. “The nineteenth-century medical notes of supposed madwomen place particular emphasis on their appearance. An unbuttoned blouse, an undone bun, or even simple carelessness of dress was considered damning evidence a woman’s mind roamed free from its moorings.”

— Kate Moore

50. “Frances’s father also worked for the firm. Though he was “sure”4 that Frances’s job had killed her, he “did not dare make any kick about it”5 for fear of being sacked. Oh, for such obedient employees.”

— Kate Moore