Quotes from Susan B. Anthony

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.

Woman must have a purse of her own, and how can this be so long as the law denies to the wife all right to both the individual and the joint earnings?

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.

We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.

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 have given my life and all I am to it, and now I want my last act to be to give it all I have, to the last cent.

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

For every betrayed woman, there is always the betrayer, man.

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

No one can doubt that the sufferings of the sober, virtuous woman, in legal subjection to the mastership of a drunken, immoral husband and father over herself and children, not only from physical abuse, but from spiritual shame and humiliation, must be such as the man himself can not possibly comprehend.

Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people? We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance and bigotry.

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. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men.

It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government: the ballot.

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

If women will not accept marriage with subjection, nor men proffer it without, there is, there can be, no alternative. The women who will not be ruled must live without marriage. And during this transition period... single women make comfortable and attractive homes for themselves.

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.

I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.

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.

If I could only live another century!

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.

Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities.

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

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.

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit.