Selected Quotes By Susan B Anthony
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Sex
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Society
"The day may be approaching when the whole world will recognize woman as the equal of man."
Susan B Anthony, Sex
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"The principle of self-government cannot be violated with impunity. The individual's right to it is sacred - regardless of class, caste, race, color, sex or any other accident or incident of birth."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!"
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Power
"I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice, Freedom
"Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Work
"No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex."
Susan B Anthony, Sex
"Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it."
Susan B Anthony, Sex, Life
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform."
Susan B Anthony, Society
"Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"Here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, 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?"
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"Suffrage is the pivotal right."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother."
Susan B Anthony, Technology
"The work of woman is not to lessen the severity or the certainty of the penalty for the violation of the moral law, but to prevent this violation by the removal of the causes which lead to it."
Susan B Anthony, Goals
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Goals
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Life
"I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry."
Susan B Anthony, Goals
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Goals
"There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"To think, I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Society
"I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go."
Susan B Anthony, Work, Death
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Government, Freedom
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"Whoever controls work and wages, controls morals."
Susan B Anthony, Society
"Wherever, on the face of the globe or on the page of history, you show me a disfranchised class, I will show you a degraded class of labor."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"What you should do is to say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist."
Susan B Anthony, Belief
"Independence is happiness."
Susan B Anthony, Happiness, Freedom
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Freedom
"The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit."
Susan B Anthony, Belief
"Our Job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make the ungrateful so they keep going. Gratitude never radicalized anybody."
Susan B Anthony, Goals
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Belief, Work
"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?"
Susan B Anthony, Freedom, Wealth
"There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."
Susan B Anthony, Belief
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Justice
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Life
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
Susan B Anthony, Belief
"Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."
Susan B Anthony, Society
"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."
Susan B Anthony, Happiness, Freedom
"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these."