Susan B. Anthony Quotes

. . . 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.

When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she bcame a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I think it a much wiser thing to secure for the thousands of mothers in this State the legal control of the children they now have, than to bring others into the world who would not belong to me after they were born.

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 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!

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.

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.

... 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.

Suffrage is the pivotal right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.

... 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.

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.

Every woman should have a purse of her own.

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

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

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

... 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.

Better lose me than lose a state.

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.

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 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.

Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conviction comes: Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

... even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat from the hands of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O, Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of conscience!

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.