Susan B. Anthony
What you should do is to say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist.
Woman must have a purse of her own, and how can this be so long as the law denies to the wife all right to both the individual and the joint earnings?
We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.
I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.
Wherever women gather together failure is impossible.Collection: Together
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing lessCollection: Strong Women
Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.Collection: Thinking
I look for the day...when the only criterion of excellence or position shall be the ability and character of the individual; and this time will come.Collection: Character
We shall some day be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.Collection: Believe
Nothing is hopeless that is right.Collection: Hopeless
I do not assume that woman is better than man. I do assume that she has a different way of looking at things.Collection: Men
There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.Collection: Men
Liberty, Humanity, Justice, EqualityCollection: Tombstone
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.Collection: Love
No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.Collection: Sex
Women should have equal pay for equal work and they should be considered equally eligible to the offices of principal and superintendent, professor and president. So you must insist that qualifications, not sex, shall govern appointments and salaries.Collection: Sex
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.Collection: Courage
The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.Collection: Inspiring
What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns!Collection: Intellectual
If a man's public record be a clear one, if he has kept his pledges before the world, I do not inquire what his private life may have been.Collection: Men
I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder...We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it.Collection: Children
What you should say to outsiders is that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself shall not stand upon it.Collection: Christian
A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion, having never blushed behind a Turkish mask, nor pressed her feet in Chinese shoes, cannot brook any disabilities based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it.Collection: Sex
I can see that "reap" and "deep," "prayers" and "bears," . . . do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily.Collection: Prayer
[Asked if American women would ever win full suffrage:] Assuredly. I firmly believed at one time that I should live to see that day. I have never for one moment lost faith. It will come but I shall not see itit is inevitable.Collection: Faith
... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freestcountry on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.Collection: Men
If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world.Collection: Girl
There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.Collection: Brother
It has always been thought perfectly womanly to be a scrub- woman in the Legislature and to take care of the spittoons; that is entirely within the charmed circle of woman's sphere; but for women to occupy any of those official seats would be degrading.Collection: Circles
The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.Collection: Men
Of all the old prejudices that cling to the hem of the woman's garments and persistently impede her progress, none holds faster than this. The idea that she owes service to a man instead of to herself, and that it is her highest duty to aid his development rather than her own, will be the last to die.Collection: Men
Of all my prosecutorsnot one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer.Collection: Men
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?Collection: Persons
It used to be said in antislavery days that a people who would tacitly consent to the enslavement of 4,000,000 human beings were incapable of being just to each other, and I believe this same rule holds with regard to the injustice practiced by men towards women. So long as all men conspire to rob women of the citizen's right to perfect equality in all the privileges and immunities of our so-called "free" government, we can not expect these same men to be capable of perfect justice to each other.Collection: Believe
Every generation of converts threshes over the same old straw.Collection: Generations
Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.Collection: Marriage
There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause--I wish I could name every one--but with such women consecratingtheir lives, failure is impossible!Collection: Failure
Disfranchisement means inability to make, shape, or control one's own circumstances... . That is exactly the position of women in the world of work today; they cannot choose.Collection: Mean
When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress infavor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!Collection: Congratulations
I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all.Collection: Political
Not one of our national officers ever has had a dollar of salary. I retire on full pay!Collection: Salary
Another writer asserts that the tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master.Collection: Women
... women of the North, I ask you to rise up with earnest, honest purpose, and go forward in the way of right, fearlessly, as independent human beings, responsible to God alone for the discharge of every duty, for the faithful use of every gift, the good Father has given you. Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world will say, whether you are in your place or out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.Collection: War
... we should be miserable but for the consciousness that we have done all in our power to help forward every measure for the freedom and equality of the races and the sexes.Collection: Sex
Marriage, to woman as to man, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.Collection: Men
I can not imagine a God ... made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great'.Collection: Religion
[Asked, upon the death of her fast friend and sister suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816-1902), which period of their association she had enjoyed the most:] The days when the struggle was the hardest and the fight the thickest; when the whole world was against us and we had to stand the closer to each other; when I would go to her home and help with the children and the housekeeping through the day and then we would sit up far into the night preparing our ammunition and getting ready to move on the enemy. The years since the rewards began to come have brought no enjoyment like that.Collection: Children
I can't say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she chafes under a government that tolerates it.Collection: College