To be successful a person must attempt but one reform. By urging two, both are injured, as the average mind can grasp and assimilate but one idea at a time.
Failure is impossible.
Now, Mr. President, we don't intend to trouble you during the campaign but after you are elected, then look out for us!
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.
What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns!
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.
Better lose me than lose a state.
This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago. They threw things at me then but they were not roses.
When society is rightly organized, the wife and mother will have time, wish and will to grow intellectually, and will know that the limits of her sphere, the extent of her duties, are prescribed only by the measure of her ability.
Our Job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make the ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody
I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
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.
White men have always controlled their wives' wages. Colored men were not able to do so until they themselves became free. Then they owned both their wives and their wages.
To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!
Every woman should have a purse of her own.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform.
Marriage, to woman as to man, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.
Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.
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.
Gentlemen, no one objects to the husband being the head of the wife as Christ was the head of the church--to crucify himself; whatwe object to is his crucifying his wife.
There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.
I expect to do more work for woman suffrage in the next decade than ever before.
There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence.
It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who. . .drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.
... 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.
Just as long as newspapers and magazines are controlled by men, every woman upon them must write articles which are reflections of men's ideas. As long as that continues, women's ideas and deepest convictions will never get before the public.
Wherever women gather together failure is impossible.
Every generation of converts threshes over the same old straw.
When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she bcame a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll.
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.
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 poverty, she became a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. Had I married at twenty-one, I would have been either a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years. Think of it!
There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is awar to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.
Why should we not pray to our mother who are in heaven, as well as to our father?
We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.
Liberty, Humanity, Justice, Equality
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 shall work for the Republican party and call on all women to join me, precisely... for what that party has done and promises to do for women, nothing more, nothing less.
Governments never do any great good things from mere principle, from mere love of justice ... You expect too much of human nature when you expect that.
Cyling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world
For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive.
To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom.
Gentlemen ... Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman?
Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.
it is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better.
Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.
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
I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.
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.
I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go.
No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.
I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.
I do not assume that woman is better than man. I do assume that she has a different way of looking at things.
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.
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.
Many abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights.
The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God.
No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence.
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.
Independence is happiness.
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 worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.
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.
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.
In your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.
I deplore the horrible crime as child murder....no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed...but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime.
What words can express her [the white woman’s] humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question.
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.
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.
It is cruel for you to leave your daughter, so full of hope and resolve, to suffer the humiliations of disfranchisement she already feels so keenly, and which she will find more and more galling as she grows into the stronger and grander woman she is sure to be. If it were your son who for any cause was denied his right to have his opinion counted, you would compass sea and land to lift the ban from him.
. . . this oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every house of the nation.
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.
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.
There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.
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.
[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.
Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his sexand take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
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.
Sentiment never was and never can be a guarantee for justice.
I have known nothing the last thirty years save the struggle for human rights on this continent. If it had been a class of men whowere disfranchised and denied their legal rights, I believe I should have devoted my life precisely as I have done in behalf of my own sex.
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.
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.
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.
You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry.
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.
Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.
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.
Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.
... 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.
A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people
To be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.
Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.
I can not imagine a God ... made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great'.
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.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
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.
It is perfectly right for a gentleman to say "ladies and gentlemen," but a lady should say, "gentlemen and ladies." You mention your friend's name before you do your own. I always feel like rebuking any woman who says, "ladies and gentlemen." It is a lack of good manners.
To grant woman an equality with man in the affairs of life is contrary to every tradition, every precedent, every inheritance, every instinct and every teaching. The acceptance of this idea is possible only to those of especially progressive tendencies and a strong sense of justice, and it is yet too soon to expect these from the majority.
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.
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!
It is urged that the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government and from penalties for the violation of laws. There is no she or her or hers in the tax laws, and this is equally true of all the criminal laws.
There never seems to be any difficulty in stretching the laws and the constitution to fit any kind of a political deal, but when it is proposed to make some concession to women they loom up like an unscalable wall.
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.
Nothing is hopeless that is right.
It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.
The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.
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.
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!
Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
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.
[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.
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.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?
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.
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
Suffrage is the pivotal right.
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.
Inconsistency is the jewel of the American people.
It's too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.
