Great Throughts Treasury

"The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?"

"No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence."

"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."

"Independence is happiness."

"Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."

"Every woman should have a purse of her own."

"Failure is Impossible"

"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."

"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."

"I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand."

"I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro, speak of her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation."

"How can you not be all on fire? ... I really believe I shall explode if some of you young women don't wake up --and raise your voice in protest against the impending crime of this nation upon the new islands it has clutched from other folks. Do come into the living present and work to save us from any more barbaric male governments. [On foreign policy]"

"I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

"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 shafes under a government that tolerates it."

"I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters."

"I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less."

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

"I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I cannot, I want to go."

"I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon."

"I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

"I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

"I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet."

"I pray every single moment of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me."

"It would be ridiculous to talk of male and female atmospheres, male and female springs or rains, male and female sunshine.... how much more ridiculous is it in relation to mind, to soul, to thought, where there is as undeniably no such thing as sex, to talk of male and female education and of male and female schools. [written with Elizabeth Cady Stanton]"

"Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work."

"Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother."

"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 less"

"If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals."

"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."

"Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done."

"Many abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."

"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."

"No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex."

"One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one."

"Oh, yes. I'd do it all again; the spirit is willing yet; I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It's too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever."

"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God"

"Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry."

"Our Job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make the ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody"

"Suffrage is the pivotal right."

"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."

"Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776."

"The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."

"The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball-the further I am rolled, the more I gain."

"The one distinct feature of our Association has been the right of the individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."

"The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less."

"The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God."

"The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes."

"The women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776."

"There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread if dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for anyone who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it."

"There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."