Top 180 Kate Moore Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “On September 2, 2011, the bronze statue for the dial-painters was unveiled by the governor in Ottawa, Illinois. It is a statue of a young woman from the 1920s, with a paintbrush in one hand and a tulip in the other, standing on a clock face. Her skirt swishes, as though at any moment she might step down from her time-ticking pedestal and come to life.”

— Kate Moore

152. “One couldn’t hear the tales of the other women on Seventh Ward and not know that an asylum was not so much a place to treat the sick as a pseudo factory for social control.”

— Kate Moore

153. “Why didn’t their basic humanity compel them to end the practice of lip-pointing?”

— Kate Moore

154. “Still, at least she could be honest with them: “As to my health,” she wrote bluntly, “I am still a cripple.”24.”

— Kate Moore

155. “In many instances it is not insanity, but individuality that caused women to be committed.”

— Kate Moore

156. “Ever since this thing had blown up in Roeder’s face, there seemed to be nothing but safety recommendations. He had recently instructed Viedt to put some of them into practice: “This is much more economical,” he’d told his deputy in a memo, “than paying $75,000 lawsuits.”25.”

— Kate Moore

157. “Why do you try to injure and destroy my character rather than my opinions?”

— Kate Moore

158. “If the prisoner could but know for how long a time he must suffer this incarceration,” one of Elizabeth’s friends wrote, “it would be a wonderful relief. Then the Superintendent could not perpetuate it at his own option, as he now can and does.”10.”

— Kate Moore

159. “So many doctors across New Jersey were confused that first month of 1924 – but they didn’t share notes, and so each case was viewed in isolation.”

— Kate Moore

160. “While other girls are going to dances and the theatres and courting and marrying for love,” Katherine said mournfully, “I have to remain here and watch painful death approach. I am so lonely.”5.”

— Kate Moore

161. “But here she learned that New Jersey law was set against the women.”

— Kate Moore

162. “There was just one condition. She would have to return to Theophilus – as his obedient wife. All she had to do to secure her freedom was submit.”

— Kate Moore

163. “Blum was worth his money. Later, he would try to find out the exact chemicals in the luminous paint, although to no avail.”

— Kate Moore

164. “Neither Peg nor any of her tested coworkers were told the results.”

— Kate Moore

165. “Don’t write all this stuff in the papers about our bearing up wonderfully,” Quinta said with a cheeky smile. “I am neither a martyr or a saint.”

— Kate Moore

166. “Her work now, in addition to weighing, was to scrape out the compound from the girls’ dishes, often simply using her fingernails. As was to be expected, her bare hands became ‘luminous bright’, and as it was her habit to run them through her hair her whole head glowed fiercely. If anything, she often thought, when she peered at herself in a mirror in a dark bathroom, the new job got her even more covered in radium than the old one had.”

— Kate Moore

167. “She vowed “that I should never be again found among the class who condemned dancing.”

— Kate Moore

168. “I instructed them,” she said, “to put the brush in their mouth.”12.”

— Kate Moore

169. “A lunatic asylum is a grand receptacle for all who are troublesome.”

— Kate Moore

170. “Sometimes less.” “Yes, sir.” “Sometimes you wouldn’t put the brush in your mouth at all, would you?” he exclaimed, spinning round to deliver the line. She must have hesitated. “You don’t know?” he said incredulously.”

— Kate Moore

171. “With the Civil War aflame, he’d recently started representing war widows struggling to get pensions, often acting without fees.”

— Kate Moore

172. “O, Dr. McFarland,” she said with patronizing clarity, “you cannot kill a spirit; it lives after all you have done to destroy its existence.”

— Kate Moore

173. “Theo Sr. had saved up money to buy a house for his old age, but he now offered some of his savings to his son for Hazel’s treatment.”

— Kate Moore

174. “The physicians moaned heartily about her behind her back:.”

— Kate Moore

175. “It is no uncommon thing to receive a blow for a kiss.”

— Kate Moore

176. “It seemed wealthy consumers were much more worthy of protection than working-class girls; after all, dial-painting was still going on, even in 1933.”

— Kate Moore

177. “As he’d noted in his letter to Theophilus, Elizabeth had a truly brilliant mind – and that made her dangerous.”

— Kate Moore

178. “I will not suffer humanity to be so abused, as you do here, without lifting my voice against it,” she wrote, “and it will be heard.”

— Kate Moore

179. “She claimed to be better than her husband,” Brown said hurriedly. To a doctor, this would genuinely have seemed insane, given the “scientific” belief of the era that white men were biologically superior to all.”

— Kate Moore

180. “Atomic energy remained part of the world; it is a part of our lives even today, when 56 countries operate 240 nuclear reactors, and more still are used to power nuclear ships and submarines. Yet thanks to the radium girls, whose experiences led directly to the regulation of radioactive industries, atomic power is able to be operated, on the whole, in safety.”

— Kate Moore

181. “While women had proven that they could study on an intellectual level, doctors lamented that the choice made them highly susceptible to “derangements of the nervous system.”6 The problem was that when “minds of limited capacity to comprehend subjects”7 tried to do so, it ultimately led to mental breakdown. That.”

— Kate Moore

182. “There was nothing hazardous in the paint, the doctors promised:.”

— Kate Moore