It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman's brain!

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931) was an American minister, social reformer, and prominent writer on women’s rights and social ethics. The quip reflects the late‑19th/early‑20th‑century feminist critique of how women’s intellectual labor was routinely absorbed into men’s reputations—through uncredited collaboration, editorial “assistance,” or outright appropriation in print and public life. Spencer’s phrasing plays on the literal practice of marking borrowed words with quotation marks to highlight a broader cultural habit: men benefiting from women’s ideas while erasing their authorship. The remark fits Spencer’s public role as a lecturer and essayist addressing gender inequality in education, work, and civic recognition.

Spencer’s sentence is a pointed epigram about intellectual credit. By calling it an “old error,” she frames the problem as longstanding and systemic rather than a series of isolated incidents. The “quotation marks” metaphor widens plagiarism beyond text: it indicts social conventions that treat women’s insights as communal property or as raw material for male achievement. The line also reverses a common assumption of her era—that men are the primary originators of ideas—by asserting women’s “brain” as a source from which others borrow. Its sting comes from making a scholarly norm (citation) into a moral demand for recognition and justice.