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Who really said it

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open

Not Emma Goldman — actually Margaret C. Anderson Margaret C. Anderson 1886–1973 · founder, editor and publisher of The Little Review
Disputed Free to reuse

The sentence is a description of Emma Goldman, not a sentence by her. It first turns up as an unsigned footnote — keyed [1] to the poem “White Mists,” signed “M. C. A.” — on page 16 of The Little Review, May 1916 ↗ — the magazine Margaret C. Anderson founded, edited and copyrighted — introducing Goldman’s own “Letters from Prison”: “In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail for advocating that ‘women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.’” Goldman’s biographer Alix Kates Shulman quotes it as Anderson’s observation ↗, and the line appears nowhere in Goldman’s own published writing.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open” not Emma Goldman. The line is an editorial note about her, printed in The Little Review, Vol. III, No. 3 (May 1916), the magazine founded and edited by Margaret C. Anderson, introducing Goldman's "Letters from Prison." Verified via Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Emma Goldman. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

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In context

Evoking the world of Margaret C. Anderson — American editor, founder of The Little Review. Theme: "Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The Little Review, May 1916

Work
The Little Review, Vol. III, No. 3
Published
May 1916, Chicago
Editor & publisher
Margaret C. Anderson (the issue is copyrighted in her name)
Appears as
Unsigned footnote to the poem “White Mists” (signed M. C. A.), p. 16, introducing Emma Goldman’s “Letters from Prison” (pp. 17–18)

In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail for advocating that “women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.” Some extracts from letters written during her fifteen-day sentence appear on the next page. Editorial note, p. 16

The note is set in italics at the foot of the page, printed as footnote [1] and keyed to the title of the poem “White Mists,” which is signed “M. C. A.” It sits immediately above Goldman’s letters, which are datelined “Queen’s County Jail, Long Island City, New York. April, 1916.” The famous sentence sits inside a subordinate clause describing what Goldman was jailed for — it is not printed as a quotation from any Goldman speech or essay.

Magazine issue, 1916
Read the scanned 1916 volume at the Internet Archive
The Little Review, May 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 3) at Project Gutenberg

How we traced it

Public domain

The sentence first appears in The Little Review, Vol. III, No. 3 (May 1916), published in the United States long before 1931, so the issue and its editorial note are in the public domain — Project Gutenberg ↗ distributes the full issue freely. Later reprintings that quote the line, such as the 1970 Times Change Press pamphlet, hold copyright only in their own new text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How Goldman came to own a line about her

This is the rare misattribution where the credited person is genuinely the subject of the sentence — just not its author. Anderson wrote a one-line gloss on why Goldman went to jail; a half-century later the gloss was reprinted, printed onto protest posters that circulated widely, and finally uploaded to quote sites as though Goldman had said it herself.

Emma Goldman Wrong speaker

The line is embedded in a subordinate clause about Goldman in her editor’s note — “sent to jail for advocating that …” — and it does not appear in her books or anywhere in Mother Earth ↗, the magazine she edited from 1906 to 1917.

Monica Sjöö’s protest posters

Moderna Museet records that the anarcho-feminist artist Monica Sjöö “would often cite Goldman’s words” — this line among them — on posters that were widely spread ↗ in campaigns for abortion rights and sexual freedom.

Margaret C. Anderson The actual writer

Anderson founded, edited and published The Little Review, and the 1916 issue carries her copyright; Alix Kates Shulman names her as the source of the observation in her 1970 biographical essay on Goldman ↗.

Goldman went to jail for the argument; Anderson wrote the sentence. The wording belongs to The Little Review of May 1916 ↗, not to Emma Goldman.

Context

An editor’s one-line verdict

Goldman was in the Queen’s County Jail in Long Island City in April 1916, serving fifteen days for publicly explaining contraception. She sent out letters, and The Little Review printed extracts from them in its May issue. To set them up, the editor wrote forty-odd words at the foot of the previous page — and one clause of that note turned out to be the most quotable thing anyone would ever write about her.

Margaret C. Anderson was an open Goldman partisan running an avant-garde magazine out of Chicago’s Fine Arts Building, one that would later be prosecuted for serialising Ulysses. The compression — mouths shut, wombs open — is the work of a professional editor summarising a case, which is exactly why it travels better than the paragraphs Goldman actually wrote.

Goldman went to jail for the argument. Her editor wrote the sentence.

Read the full story

The note carries no byline, which is normal for editorial matter in a magazine that small; Anderson was founder, editor, publisher and copyright holder, and the note is keyed as footnote [1] to the title of the poem printed directly above it, which is signed with her initials, “M. C. A.” Alix Kates Shulman, writing in 1970, attributes the remark to “Margaret Anderson of The Little Review” without qualification.

One honest caveat: the note does put the phrase inside quotation marks, so it is possible Anderson was condensing a formulation Goldman used from the platform rather than coining it herself. Nothing in Goldman’s printed work — her books, her essays, or eleven years of Mother Earth — contains it, so on the available evidence the wording is Anderson’s.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Justice Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Little Review, May 1916 (Vol. 3, No. 3)gutenberg.org

Full public-domain text of the issue, including the editorial note and Goldman’s “Letters from Prison.”
The Little Review, volume 3 (scanned)archive.org

Facsimile of the bound 1916–17 volume, showing the note in place on page 16.
The Traffic in Women and Other Essays on Feminismarchive.org

Times Change Press, 1970, with Alix Kates Shulman’s biography crediting the line to Margaret Anderson.
Mother Earth, complete run 1906–1917archive.org

Goldman’s own magazine, searched end to end — the sentence does not occur in it.
Emma Goldman on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced and disputed Goldman quotations; this line is not among them.
Monica Sjöö: works in the exhibitionmodernamuseet.se

Moderna Museet on Sjöö’s Goldman portrait and the posters that carried this line.

The writer behind the line

Who actually wrote it

Margaret C. Anderson

1886–1973 · American editor, founder of The Little Review

Margaret Caroline Anderson founded The Little Review in Chicago in 1914 and ran it as editor and publisher until 1929, printing Sherwood Anderson, Amy Lowell, Ben Hecht, Ezra Pound — and Emma Goldman, whom she had championed since first hearing her lecture. Jane Heap joined as co-editor in 1916. Anderson is best remembered for serialising James Joyce’s Ulysses, a decision that got the magazine prosecuted for obscenity; the sentence about mouths and wombs was a throwaway editorial note she wrote to introduce Goldman’s prison letters.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

[Margaret C. Anderson], unsigned footnote to "White Mists" (signed M. C. A.), The Little Review 3, no. 3 (May 1916): 16, introducing Emma Goldman, "Letters from Prison," 17–18. Earliest located printing of the wording; attributed to Anderson in Alix Kates Shulman, "The Most Dangerous Woman in the World," in Emma Goldman, The Traffic in Women and Other Essays on Feminism (Times Change Press, 1970).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/women-need-not-always-keep-their-mouths-shut-and-their/

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