Susan B. Anthony
74 quotes
Biography
Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement.
"I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."
"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..."
"The true woman will not be exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her. She will be her own individual self, — do her own individual work — stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength... She will proclaim the "glad tidings of good news" to all women, that woman equally with man was made for her own individual happiness, to develop every power of her three fold-nature, to use, worthily every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life. <!-- To the best advantage of herself and the race. <- this statement was included in the original unsourced variant of this quote which was added here, as being from a "speech in the 1850's" which had a few other variations of order, but I have not yet found even the title of the original source for it, nor any secondary source that includes this. ~ Kalki 2007·02·14 -->"
"The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South."
"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."
"Many Abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."
"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."
"Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work."
"Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."
"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."
"Every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes."
"Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied?"
"We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give off the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right" … We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution the constitutions of the several states … propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights. … One-half of the people of this Nation today is utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write a new and just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation — that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent — that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers — that robs them, in marriage of the custody of their own persons, wages, and children—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half."
"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."
"I want you to understand that I never could have done the work I have if I had not had this woman at my right hand."
"On 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 women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat, she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood." On teaching: "In those days, we did not know any other way to control children. We believed in the goodness of not sparing the rod. As I got older, I abolished whipping. If I couldn't manage a child, I thought it my ignorance, my lack of ability, as a teacher. I always felt less the woman when I struck a blow." "I must have an audience to inspire me ... to save my life, I couldn't write a speech". "It all rose out of the men refusing to let me speak" at a temperance meeting. "Women were the bond slaves of men". "I know God never made a woman to be bossed by a man". "The law says that only idiots, lunatics and criminals shall be denied the right to vote. So you see with whom all women are classed." "When two people take each other on terms of perfect equality, without the desire of one to control the other to make the other subservient, it is a beautiful thing. It is the truest and highest state of life." "I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper and drudge. ... Once men were afraid of women with ideas and a desire to vote. Today, our best suffragists are sought in marriage by the best class of men.""
"I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk to women who are comfortably circumstanced, to those who have good fathers, kind brothers and have married the best of men, who do not believe that husband and wife are one and he is the one."
"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 fact is women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize."
"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."
"The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do."
"I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law."
"Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men."
"But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing."