Victoria Woodhull Quotes

I and others of my sex find ourselves controlled by a form of government in the inauguration of which we had no voice.

You are all aware that my private life has been pictured to the public by the press of the country with the intent to make people believe me to be a very bad woman.

By what right do you refuse to accept the vote of a citizen of the United States?

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

There is something wrong with a government that makes women the legal property of their husbands. The whole system needs changing, but men will never make the changes. They have too much to lose.

I believe in Spiritualism; I advocate free love in the highest, purest sense, as the only cure for the damnation by which men corrupt God's most holy institution of sexual relations.

I was divorced from Dr. Woodhull for reasons which to me were sufficient, but I was never his enemy.

It is extremely unfortunate that an editor's own life and practice should be notoriously at variance with his written principles.

Hundreds, thousands, aye, millions of human beings, men, women and children, wander the streets of our cities and the highways of our country, hungry, ragged and cold, vainly seeking in this land of plenty, where physical want should be unknown.

There are none so ignorant but they may be taught. So, too, are there none so unfortunate in their understanding of the true and high relation of the sexes as not to be amenable to the right kind of instruction.

I supposed that to marry was to be transported to a heaven not only of happiness but of purity and perfection.

There are scores of thousands of women who are denominated prostitutes, and who are supported by hundreds of thousands of men who should, for like reasons, also be denominated prostitutes, since what will change a woman into a prostitute must also necessarily change a man into the same.

I know that my companions from the moment of birth were heaven's choicest souls. I grew side by side with them, in fact all the education and inspiration came over them.

I ask the rights to pursue happiness by having a voice in that government to which I am accountable.

Woman, no less than man, can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life.

I went with my husband and an innocent child to California. I went to a theatrical manager and asked him to allow me to earn money enough on the stage to buy our tickets home. He did.

While others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it.

I do not shake hands from a sanitary standpoint.

I boldly entered the arena of business and exercised the rights I already possessed.

I offer you the remedy of Free Love as an antidote for enforced lust, and the world will have to take it before the disease can be cured.

Political matters are developing so fast that we must not let a single thing slip without use.

Woman's ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote.

I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question.

Strike as much and as hard as you please, only don't do it in the dark so that I cannot know who is my enemy.

All that is good and commendable now existing would continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow ...

Suffrage is a common right of citizenship. Women have the right of suffrage. Logically it cannot be escaped.

Is it fair to treat a woman worse than a man, and then revile her because she is a woman?

Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child nor think of murdering one before its birth.

No man who respects his mother or loves his sister, can speak disparagingly of any woman; however low she may seem to have sunk, she is still a woman. I want every man to remember this. Every woman is, or, at some time, has been a sister or daughter ...

Women have every right; they just have to excercise them.

The wife who submits to sexual intercourse against her wishes or desires, virtually commits suicide; while the husband who compels it, commits murder.

I endeavor to make the most of everything.

I shall make it my business to take my chances in the matter of libel suits.

A new educational system in which all children born shall have the same advantage of physical, industrial, mental and moral culture, and thus be equally prepared at maturity to enter upon active, responsible and useful lives ... In so doing, it strikes a fatal blow at ... the most demoralizing of all monopolies ... educational superiority.

I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please.

One of the charges made against me is that I lived in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woodhull, and my present husband, Col. Blood. The fact is a fact.

All talk of women's rights is moonshine. Women have every right. They have only to exercise them.

Denounce me for advocating freedom if you can, and I will bear your curse with a better resignation.

My opinions and principles are subjects of just criticism. I put myself before the public voluntarily.

The spirits are coming back to tear your damned system of sexual slavery into tatters and consign its blackened remnants to the depth of everlasting hell.

Good care is taken that each state shall have its prisons ... and other asylums; but not one building is erected nor one law enforced that would teach the people how not to contribute to these over-crowded receptacles of human misery ... All of our politicians are ready to deal with the effects, but not one of them is brave enough to penetrate the substratum of society and deal with the cause.

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted ... and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are.