Jacob Riis

“A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.”

“The sea of a mighty population, held in galling fetters, heaves uneasily in the tenements.”

“It is through the children that the race is rebuilt.”

“The slum is the enemy of the home.”

“Every man's experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it.”

“The boss is the disenfranchisement of the people.”

“A man is not a man until he has a home of his own.”

“Charity in our day is a growing science, and we have a right to demand that it be practised by trained hands.”

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.”

“The slum is the measure of civilization.”

“Some defeats are only installments to victory.”

“Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care.”