Susan B. Anthony Quotes

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

When a man says to me, 'Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired any other woman,' then I shall say, 'I am yours truly'; but he must ask me to be his equal, not his slave.

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.

God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, andthe tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch.

You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry.

[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.

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. (on women's suffrage)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel ... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

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.

The day may be approaching when the whole world will recognize woman as the equal of man.

Had I represented twenty thousand voters in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or whether my bonnet came from the Ark or from Worth's.

Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.

I expect to do more work for woman suffrage in the next decade than ever before.

We need a daily paper edited and composed according to woman's own thoughts, and not as woman thinks a man wants her to think and write.

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.

Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!

Even if the right to vote brought to women no better work, no better pay, no better conditions in any way, she should have itfor her own self-respect and to compel man's respect for her.

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.

I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.

For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive.

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

So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised.

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.

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

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?

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!

It is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better.

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.

There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence.

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!

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.

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

A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people

Every generation of converts threshes over the same old straw.

No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature.

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.

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.

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.

I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman.

[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.

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!

Every woman should have a purse of her own.

I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have giventhemselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.

Now, Mr. President, we don't intend to trouble you during the campaign but after you are elected, then look out for us!

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.

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.

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.

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

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.

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

When woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her own thoughts.

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

Better lose me than lose a state.

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

Not one of our national officers ever has had a dollar of salary. I retire on full pay!

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

What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sentiment never was and never can be a guarantee for justice.

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.

All we demand are the same rights as men, and slightly more stalls per restroom. And tampon machines. And those little things in the stalls so we can put our used tampons in them. And, okay, just go ahead and make the bathrooms out of tampons.

Failure is Impossible

An oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household ... carries discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Whoever controls work and wages, controls morals.

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

Marriage, to woman as to man, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.

The anti-suffragist talk of sheltering women from the fierce storms of life is a lot of cant. I have no patience with it. These storms beat on woman just as fiercely as they do on man, and she is not trained to defend herself against them.

Independent bread gives independent morals: - while pecuniary dependence makes moral subserviency; - So get money - get wealth

We are told it will be of no use for us to ask this measure of justice
that the ballot be given to the women of our new possessions upon the same terms as to the men
because we shall not get it. It is not our business whether we are going to get it; our business is to make the demand ... Ask for the whole loaf and take what you can get.

We shall never become an immense power in the world until we concentrate all our money and editorial forces upon one great national daily newspaper, so we can sauce back our opponents every day in the year; once a month or once a week is not enough.

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

For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded.

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.

Why should we not pray to our mother who are in heaven, as well as to our father?

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.

Resistance to tyranny ius obedience to God

Cyling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world

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.

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.

If I could only live another century!

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.

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

Those of you who have the talent to do honor to poor womanhood, have all given yourself over to baby-making ...

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.

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.

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.

There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.