Nellie Bly Quotes

Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.

I said I could and I would. And I did.

It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

In 1896 the newspaperwoman Nellie Bly asked Susan B. Anthony if she’d ever been in love. Her answer: “Bless you, Nellie, I’ve been in love a thousand times! But I never loved any one so much that I thought it would last. In fact, I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper.

I always liked fog, it lends such a soft, beautifying light to things that otherwise in the broad glare of day would be rude and commonplace.

As I always say: If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is: Do you want to do it? ―Nellie Bly

While I live I hope.

To have a good brain the stomach must be cared for.

I've always had the feeling that nothing is impossible is one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. If you want to do it, you can do it.

Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?

A stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out.

When Jules Verne was on everyone’s nightstand, Pulitzer ordered daredevil reporter Nellie Bly to travel around the world in eighty days; she accomplished it in seventy-two.

The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.

Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape?

I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent. Later

A free American girl can accommodate herself to circumstances without the aid of a man.” -Nellie Bly

I write the truth because I love it and because there is no living creature whose anger I fear or whose praise I court." ~ Nellie Bly, The Evening World, 1895

I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A. M. until 8 P. M. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

If one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling,” Bly liked to say, “and not for the purpose of impressing fellow travelers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one.

A pretty young Hebrew woman spoke so little English I could not get her story except as told by the nurses. They said her name is Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for other men than himself.

That was the greatest night of my existence. For a few hours I stood face to face with “self!” I

CHAPTER V. PRONOUNCED INSANE

The attendants seemed to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst.

Dress is a great weapon in the hands of a woman if rightly applied. It is a weapon men lack, so women should make the most of it.

Unlike Nellie Bly and others before and after, David Rosenhan’s data was, at last, unimpeachable

As Anthony would tell the journalist Nellie Bly, “I’ve been in love a thousand times! . . . But I never loved any one so much that I thought it would last. . . . I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth, she became a pet and a doll. Just think, had I married at twenty, I would have been a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years.”3 Of

After this, I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors than I ever had before, and a greater one for myself. I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. When I want things done, which is always at the last moment, and I am met with such an answer: "It's too late. I hardly think it can be done;" I simply say: "Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?

In 1899, when American writer Nellie Bly set out on her record-breaking journey around the world in seventy-two days, she carried British gold coins and Bank of England notes with her.11 It was possible to circumnavigate the globe and use one form of money everywhere Nellie went.

VERY EARLY THE OTHER MORNING I started out, not with the pleasure-seekers, but with those who toil the day long that they may live.

Determine Right. Decide Fast. Apply Energy. Act with Conviction. Fight to the Finish. Accept the Consequences. Move on.

What is this place?” I asked of the man, who had his fingers sunk into the flesh of my arm. “Blackwell’s Island, an insane place, where you’ll never get out of”.

Quando si vivono certe esperienze e ci si scontra con problemi mai concepiti, si realizza quanto il mondo pecchi in simpatia e gentilezza.

The turned-down pages of my life were turned up, and the past was present.

It will be seen that if one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling and not for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one.

I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell.

But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape?

I said I believed I could. I had some faith in my own ability as an actress and thought I could assume insanity long enough to accomplish any mission intrusted to me. Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, “While I live I hope”. The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, “He who enters here leaveth hope behind”.

But here let me say one thing: From the moment, I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

Another thing quite as noticeable, I had more men try to get up a flirtation with me while I was a box-factory girl than I ever had before. The girls were nice in their manners and as polite as ones reared at home. They never forgot to thank one another for the slightest service, and there was quite a little air of "good form" in many of their actions. I have seen many worse girls in much higher positions than the white slaves of New York.

SINCE my experiences in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum were published in the World I have received hundreds of letters in regard to it. The edition containing my story long since ran out, and I have been prevailed upon to allow it to be published in book form, to satisfy the hundreds who are yet asking for copies. I am happy to be able to state as a result of my visit to the asylum and the exposures consequent thereon, that the City of New York has appropriated $1,000,000 more per annum than ever before for the care of the insane. So, I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the poor unfortunates will be the better cared for because of my work.

A fire is not improbable, but one of the most likely occurrences. Should the building burn, the jailers or nurses would never think of releasing their crazy patients. This I can prove to you later when I come to tell of their cruel treatment of the poor things intrusted to their care. As I say, in case of fire, not a dozen women could escape. Everyone would be left to roast to death. Even if the nurses were kind, which they are not, it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess to risk the flames and their own lives while they unlocked the hundred doors for the insane prisoners. Unless there is a change there will someday be a tale of horror never equaled.

After the period of sex-attraction has passed, women have no power in America.” -Elizabeth Bisland

Travel, she had discovered, was a delightful means of gratifying the intelligent curiosity that Dr. Johnson had called the root of all wisdom and culture. “I go to bed exhaustedly happy,” she wrote in her notebook, “and wake up expectantly smiling.

The state of Illinois contained twenty-seven different time zones, Wisconsin thirty-eight. In Pittsburgh the train station had six clocks, and each one showed a different time. When a clock struck noon in Washington, D.C., the time was 12:08 in Philadelphia, 12:12 in New York, and 12:24 in Boston.

Her official name was Liberty Enlightening the World, but she was most often referred to simply as “Bartholdi’s statue.” The Alsatian sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi had originally meant for her to stand at the entrance to the Suez Canal, where, in the veil and dress of an Egyptian peasant woman, she would have held up a lantern that symbolized the light of Egypt bringing progress to Asia. That plan, however, had been rejected by Egypt’s ruler Khedive Isma’il Pasha as too expensive, and so Bartholdi went back to the drawing board, where he converted progress into liberty.

The one who tried to beat Jules Verne’s around-the-world-in-eighty-days record?” “The same. Verne’s Phileas Fogg did it in eighty days in fiction. Nellie Bly did it in fact in 1889 and 1890. She went around the world in seventy-two days. Anyway, before that, while just starting out as a cub reporter on the New York World, Nellie Bly undertook a story about insane people who had been committed to Blackwell’s Island and how they were being treated. But instead of doing the story in an orthodox way, Nellie disguised herself in ragged clothes, gave herself a deranged look, feigned insanity, and got herself committed to Blackwell’s Island. As a patient, she saw the miserable conditions and the cruelty to the other patients firsthand. When she got out, she wrote two front-page stories about the experience. This exposé made her famous overnight.

Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,

AFTER seeing Hong Kong with its wharfs crowded with dirty boats manned by still dirtier people, and its streets packed with a filthy crowd, Yokohama has a cleaned-up Sunday appearance.

The Japanese are the direct opposite to the Chinese. The Japanese are the cleanliest people on earth, the Chinese are the filthiest; the Japanese are always happy and cheerful, the Chinese are always grumpy and morose; the Japanese are the most graceful of people, the Chinese the most awkward; the Japanese have few vices, the Chinese have all the vices in the world; in short, the Japanese are the most delightful of people, the Chinese the most disagreeable.

Well, I don’t care about that”, she said. “You are in a public institution now, and you can’t expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get”. “But the city pays to keep these places up”, I urged, “and pays people to be kind to the unfortunates brought here”.

I was to chronicle faithfully the experiences I underwent, and when once within the walls of the asylum to find out and describe its inside workings, which are always, so effectually hidden by white-capped nurses, as well as by bolts and bars, from the knowledge of the public.

The many stories I had read of abuses in such institutions I had regarded as wildly exaggerated or else romances, yet there was a latent desire to know positively.

If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?

ON Thursday, November 14, 1889, at 9.40.30 o'clock, I started on my tour around the world.

impertinent

What can I do?” he replied. “I offer suggestions until my brain is tired, but what good does it do? What would you do?” he asked, turning to me, the proclaimed insane girl. “Well, I should insist on them having locks put in, as I have seen in some places, that by turning a crank at the end of the hall you can lock or unlock every door on the one side. Then there would be some chance of escape. Now, every door being locked separately, there is absolutely none”.

I asked for unbuttered bread and was given it. I cannot tell you of anything which is the same dirty, black color. It was hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough. I found a spider in my slice, so I did not eat it. I tried the oatmeal and molasses, but it was wretched, and so I endeavored, but without much show of success, to choke down the tea.

How are you today?” here and there among the patients. His voice was as cold as the hall, and the patients made no movement to tell him of their sufferings. I asked some of them to tell how they were suffering from the cold and insufficiency of clothing, but they replied that the nurse would beat them if they told.

was never so tired as I grew sitting on those benches. Several of the patients would sit on one foot or sideways to make a change, but they were always reproved and told to sit up straight. If they talked they were scolded and told to shut up; if they wanted to walk around in order to take the stiffness out of them, they were told to sit down and be still. What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 A. M. until 8 P. M. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

This made the poor creature cry the more, and so they choked her. Yes, actually choked her. Then they dragged her out to the closet, and I heard her terrified cries hush into smothered ones. After several hours’ absence, she returned to the sitting-room, and I plainly saw the marks of their fingers on her throat for the entire day.

On bathing day, the tub is filled with water, and the patients are washed, one after the other, without a change of water. This is done until the water is really thick, and then it is allowed to run out and the tub is refilled without being washed. The same towels are used on all the women, those with eruptions as well as those without. The healthy patients fight for a change of water, but they are compelled to submit to the dictates of the lazy, tyrannical nurses.

Between times, practicing before the mirror and picturing my future as a lunatic, I read snatches of improbable and impossible ghost stories, so that when the dawn came to chase away the night, I felt that I was in a fit mood for my mission, yet hungry enough to feel keenly that I wanted my breakfast.

mused, for who could tell but that the strain of playing crazy, and being shut up with a crowd of mad people, might turn my own brain, and I would never get back. But not once did I think of shirking my mission.

After dinner, I went up-stairs and resumed my former place in the back parlor. I was quite cold and uncomfortable, and had fully made up my mind that I could not endure that sort of business long, so the sooner I assumed my insane points the sooner I would be released from enforced idleness. Ah! that was indeed the longest day I had ever lived. I listlessly watched the women in the front parlor, where all sat except myself.

Another woman always kept going to sleep and waking herself up with her own snoring

I wondered if I should be able to pass over the river to the goal of my strange ambition, to become eventually an inmate of the halls inhabited by my mentally wrecked sisters. And then, once in, what would be my experience? And after? How to get out? Bah! I said, they will get me out.

When they entered, I pretended not to see them? “I want you to take her quietly”, said Mrs. Stanard. “If she doesn’t come along quietly”, responded one of the men, “I will drag her through the streets”. I still took no notice of them, but certainly wished to avoid raising a scandal outside.

Judge Duffy sat behind the high desk, wearing a look which seemed to indicate that he was dealing out the milk of human kindness by wholesale. I rather feared I would not get the fate I sought, because of the kindness I saw on every line of his face, and it was with rather a sinking heart that I followed Mrs. Stanard as she answered the summons to go up to the desk, where Tom Bockert had just given an account of the affair.

There was a hush for a moment after this announcement, and the officers glanced at me more kindly, while I silently blessed the kind-hearted judge, and hoped that any poor creatures who might be afflicted as I pretended to be should have as kindly a man to deal with as Judge Duffy.

An old Irishwoman was maid-of-all-work. I heard her called Mary, and I am glad to know that there is such a good-hearted woman in that place. I experienced only kindness and the utmost consideration from her. There were only three patients, as they are called. I made the fourth.

Do you know that only insane people are sent to this pavilion?” I asked. “Yes, I know; but I am unable to do anything. The doctors refuse to listen to me, and it is useless to say anything to the nurses”.

Although fully aware of that fact, her unvarnished words gave me a shock. “I did not want to come here; I am not sick or insane, and I will not stay”, I said. “It will be a long time before you get out if you don’t do as you are told”, answered Miss Scott. “You might as well take off your hat, or I shall use force, and if I am not able to do it, I have but to touch a bell and I shall get assistance. Will you take it off?

As the doctor was about to leave the pavilion Miss Tillie Mayard discovered that she was in an insane ward. She went to Dr. Field and asked him why she had been sent there. “Have you just found out you are in an insane asylum?” asked the doctor. “Yes; my friends said they were sending me to a convalescent ward to be treated for nervous debility, from which I am suffering since my illness. I want to get out of this place immediately”. “Well, you won’t get out in a hurry”, he said, with a quick laugh. “If you know anything at all”, she responded, “you should be able to tell that I am perfectly sane. Why don’t you test me?” “We know all we want to on that score”, said the doctor, and he left the poor girl condemned to an insane asylum, probably for life, without giving her one feeble chance to prove her sanity.

This nurse, Miss Grupe, by the way, had a nice German face, and if I had not detected certain hard lines about the mouth I might have expected, as did my companions, to receive but kindness from her.

it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess

Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.

Only seventy-five days! Yes, but it seemed an age and the world lost its roundness and seemed a long distance with no end, and-well, I never turn back.

But here let me say one thing: From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly—a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God’s creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.

I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.

is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

We know all we want to on that score,” said the doctor, and he left the poor girl condemned to an insane asylum, probably for life, without giving her one feeble chance to prove her sanity.

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, “While I live I hope.” The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, “He who enters here leaveth hope behind.

I am assistant matron.

My instructions were simply to go on with my work as soon as I felt that I was ready. I was to chronicle faithfully the experiences I underwent, and when once within the walls of the asylum to find out and describe its inside workings, which are always, so effectually hidden by white-capped nurses, as well as by bolts and bars, from the knowledge of the public.

ON THE 22ND OF SEPTEMBER I was asked by the World if I could have myself committed to one of the asylums for the insane in New York, with a view to writing a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of the patients therein and the methods of management, etc.

the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

Bly’s reporting divides neatly into four periods: her time at the Pittsburg Dispatch (1885-1887), her first explosive stint at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (1887-1890), her return to the World (1893-1896), and her last hurrah in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal (1914-1922).

Thomas Scott, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Jay Gould, one of America’s great robber barons, owned the paper for a time. But by 1883, when Gould sold it, the World was losing $40,000 a year.

like. Electricity was relatively new, and magnetism was all the rage. Bicycles were new, replacing roller-skates as the latest fad. Bustles were on the way out. The American Civil War was only a generation past. Photographic cameras were on the cusp of being made commercially affordable to the general public, but were still too expensive to print in newspapers. Horses, trains, and streetcars were the three standard forms of transportation.

in 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane—better known today by her nom-de-plume—had an astonishing career as a reporter, spanning thirty-seven years. In that time she entirely redefined the role of women in newspapers, helped to invent undercover

instrumental in starting (and later rejecting) “stunt” journalism. She showed that a woman reporter need not be confined to the “women’s pages” of a newspaper, but rather deserved headlines all her own. She was the inspiration for countless women to enter the field. She was also the basis for the comic book character Lois Lane. The real Lois Lane, however, never needed a Superman. Today she is best remembered for the stunts, beginning with her ten days undercover as a “bogus lunatic” to expose the inhumane conditions

also had a natural instinct for what makes a good story. Most of all, she had a unique point of view. She told stories about the inconvenient people in Victorian New York society: the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. She was interested in orphans and women—especially women. Bly was forever telling stories of prominent or remarkable women. She was also relentless in ferreting out schemes meant to swindle poor women of their hard-earned pay. Having been cheated of her inheritance after her father’s death, having had to earn a living before accidentally discovering her calling as a reporter,

I am removing myself from enemy territory to take up my best weapon. A free press.

Remember, he is in the newspaper business, and that consists of doing just two things: informing the public and selling papers. Always aim for the first, never forget the second.

The wretchedness of the condition was perhaps best conveyed by the old saying that those suffering from seasickness believe they will die on the first day, are sure they will on the second, and hope they will on the third.