Women's rights activists

"Honey, I jes' walked round an' round in a dream. Jesus loved me! I knew it - I felt it. Jesus was my Jesus. Jesus would love me always. I didn't dare tell anybody; it was a great secret. Everything had been taken away from me that I ever had; an' I thought that if I let white folks know about this, maybe they'd get him away - so I said, 'welcome folks, ready for some giggles~?'"

"But then there came another rush of love through my soul, an' I cried out loud,- 'Lord, Lord, I can love even de white folks!'"

""I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race Who dwell in freedom's boasted land with no abiding place I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored, For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield, Although both late and early, they labor in the field. While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash, I'm pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash. I'm pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair upon the hated auction block, and see their children there. I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them. I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men. Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live; For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive! I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death. For I love to not hear the sound of war's tempestuous breath. I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife. I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life. But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam, I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home. I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars, and note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars."

"Sisters, I ain't clear what you're after. If women want any rights more than they're got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?"

"Well, children, when there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?"

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

"That little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Jesus Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him."

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! And now they are asking to do it, the men had better let them."

"Sojourner combined in herself the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her, she also liked women."

"Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Sojourner Truth were not evolutionaries, they were revolutionaries, just as many of the young women in today’s society and more and more women must join their rank."

"At Battle Creek, between a housing project dedication at which I spoke and a meeting with local Democratic officials, we made time to visit the grave of another black woman, not a little one but a giant physically as well as spiritually. I put a wreath on her grave and read the sign there: "Sojourner Truth, a renowned lecturer and reformer who championed anti-slavery, rights of women and the freedmen, rests here.""

"Aymar Jean Christian of Northwestern University historically contextualizes and updates the notion of intersectional storytelling in his recent book Race and Media: Critical Approaches. “Most creators are ‘intersectional,’ meaning they identify with multiple communities marginalized by their race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, disability, or citizenship status,” he writes. He argues that the framework of intersectionality was developed throughout the 20th century by women writers of color like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Those early intersectional writers sought to describe “the interlocking nature of oppression and the specificity of being both Black and woman (and often queer).”"

"She's quoted as if she was speaking in heavy Southern dialect, but it was what was leftover from Dutch."

"On another occasion, I returned to Boston, where Cell 16 had fulfilled one of my dreams by organizing a forum in historic Fannueil Hall in old Boston. In that hall, Lucy Stone, the Grimké sisters, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass had held antislavery and profeminist meetings during the decades before the Civil War. Their legacy had motivated me to move to Boston to launch female liberation."

"Most will remember Ms. Truth’s oration for its vivid descriptions regarding physical labor; Black women were forced to plough, plant, herd, and build — just as men. Yet far too little attention centers on her condemnation of that system, which made sexual chattel of Black women, and then cruelly sold off Black children. This was human trafficking in the American form, and it lasted for centuries."

"Who is a revolutionary woman? A revolutionary woman wants change, not mere cosmetic change but change to the status quo, and she is willing to sacrifice to make this happen. We have some extraordinary examples: Sojourner Truth, Las Adelitas, Frida Kahlo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Dorothy Day, Malala Yousafzai, Coretta Scott King, and others."

"First a name, just a person's name, you've heard it before. Sojourner Truth. That name is a language in itself. But Sojourner Truth spoke the unlearned language; about a hundred years ago, talking it in a public place, she said, "I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all." Along at the end of her talk she said, "I wanted to tell you a mite about Woman's Rights, and so I came out and said so. I am sittin' among you to watch; and every one and awhile I will come out and tell you what time of night it is." She said, "Now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.""

"It was only after the development of the Negro women's club movement that feminist consciousness first appeared among black women, and here, too, it is an exceptional attitude rather than a pervasive one. One must note here the single exception, the strong feminism of Sojourner Truth, who was distinctly a forerunner and whose ideas were not shared by black women of her day."

"In the person of Sojourner Truth, the fusion of the abolition and woman's rights movements seemed personified."

"Sojourner Truth said it very well. You know, after the Civil War in the large women's meeting in 1898 which took place with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all the rest, the woman's rights, feminists' rights meeting at which Sojourner Truth spoke. She said that they say that women need to be helped, that they cannot drive horses, they cannot work, they cannot walk, but I have walked so many miles; I have worked as a blacksmith; I have drawn carriages, never mind driven them, and am I not a woman? right? So, the economic basis of the kinds of prejudices and stereotypes of racism, of sexism, are very obvious. When we need strong, pioneer women to cut down forests, to work beside "their men" that's fine. But on the other hand, when that need passes, we tie them into girdles, if they're white. We set them in a drawing room, and we say they have vapors."

"Black women have been doing this for centuries, not only in Africa but certainly in the United States of America, whether it was picking cotton with the children bound on our backs, whether it is heading for freedom with the underground railroad, with the Sojourner Truths. This is part of our history: we know we can bear arms and children. This is one of the functions of myth: To underline the fact that even in our dreams and our visions we are not alone. And to have them be black women, because I am tired of seeing only white Christs and white Virgins and white goddesses-all the time I was growing up. I raised a girl child, and I know I wanted to have black images, I wanted to have black queens I could tell her about in her bedtime stories. I wanted to have these images. That is important because that is how we raise children."

"Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling."

"The child has talent, loves music, and needs help. I can't give her money, but I can teach her; so I do, and she is the most promising pupil I have. Help one another, is part of the religion of our sisterhood, Fan."

"I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us."

"If I can do no more, let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won."

"Is it not meningitis?"

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

"I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body...because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

""Suppose I broke away and left you, or made it impossible for you to stay. That I was base and false; in every way unworthy of your love, and it was clearly right for you to go, what would you do then?" "Go away and–" He interrupted with a triumphant laugh, "Die as heroines always do, tender slaves as they are." "No, live and forget you", was the unexpected reply."

"I tell you I cannot bear it! I shall do something desperate if this life is not changed soon. It gets worse and worse, and I often feel as if I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom."

"'In the fitful light of the dusky hall the newcomer's face suddenly appeared fiery-eyed and menacing, and, glancing at a portrait of Mephistopheles, Rosamond exclaimed, "Why, you are the very image of Meph--""

"No, I never wish that. I don't intend to die till I've enjoyed my life. Everyone has a right to happiness and sooner or later I will have it. Youth, health and freedom were meant to be enjoyed and I want to try every pleasure before I am too old to enjoy them."

"Even at the cost of what is called honor and honesty? That is comfortable philosophy, and having preached and practiced it all my days I've no right to condemn it. But the saints would call it sinful and dangerous and tell you that life should be one long penance full of sorrow, sacrifice and psalm-singing."

"For an hour Rosamond paced up and down the deck reveling in the breezy motion of the boat, the delicious sense of freedom which possessed her, the atmosphere of romance which surrounded her. Tempest lounged beside her, watching her beautiful face, listening to her happy voice, and enjoying her innocent companionship with the relish of a man eager for novelty and skillful in the art of playing on that delicate instrument, a woman's heart."

"I was thinking what a curious thing love is; only a sentiment, and yet it has power to make fools of men and slaves of women. p. 45."

"Suppose I broke away and left you, or made it impossible for you to stay. That I was base and false; in every way unworthy of your love, and it was clearly right for you to go, what would you do then?"

"I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better."

"Not another day or hour would she remain, no help was possible, no atonement could retrieve the past, no love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man. To go instantly and forever was her only thought, and this gave her strength to rise and look about her."

"Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her."

"The sin is yours, but the shame and sorrow are mine, the past I cannot retrieve, the future is still unspoiled and I will not embitter it by any willful sin. Before I was innocently guilty, now I should be doubly guilty if I went back to the 'gay free life I love.' Atone for the wrong you have done me by ceasing to tempt and trouble me. I will not yield, though you hunt me to death."

"In vain she told herself that he was unworthy any woman's trust and love, still the unconquerable sentiment that once made her happiness now remained to become her torment."

"Because in spite of this longing, I know that I shall purchase happiness at high price if I return; that new falsehood may betray me, new tyranny oppress me, and above all I feel that with this man I must lose more and more the love of all good things, so strong is his influence, so unprincipled his nature. My only hope is that I may save his soul and yet not lose my own. Can I, dare I do this?"

"I must know where you are, but I will not molest nor betray you till the time arrives. Go where you like, assume what disguise you choose, do what you please, except die or marry. I'll stand off and watch the play, but I must follow. I like the chase, it is exciting, novel and absorbing. I have tried and tried of other amusements, this satisfies me and I am in no haste to end it."

""Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. "It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. "I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff. "We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner. The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened again as Jo said sadly, "We haven't got Father, and shall not have him for a long time." She didn't say "perhaps never," but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away, where the fighting was."

"You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it. … I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do it. … I've learned to check the hasty words that rise to my lips, and when I feel that they mean to break out against my will, I just go away for a minute, and give myself a little shake for being so weak and wicked."

"Housekeeping ain't no joke."

"If people really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will get in; for I don’t believe there are any locks on that door, or any guards at the gate. I always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor Christian as he comes up from the river."

"It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women."

"Love is a great beautifier."

"She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners."

"Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it."

"It was not a fashionable place, but even among the pleasant people there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another."

"Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations. Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come. She did not rebuke Jo with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself. She could not say, "I'm glad to go," for life was very sweet for her. She could only sob out, "I try to be willing," while she held fast to Jo, as the first bitter wave of this great sorrow broke over them together."

"That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more."

"Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy."

"When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole."

"The invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills. The fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists. The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts. The lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look benignly down upon them saying, "Little children, love one another.""

"I love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him, while God lets us be together. Oh, Mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be, when two people love and live for one another!"

"Lovely weather so far; I don't know how long it will last, but I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."

"I had a pleasant time with my mind, for it was happy."

"Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary."

"When I read Alcott, I knew that these girls she was talking about were all white," Angelou told The Week in 2013. "But they were nice girls and I understood them. I felt like I was almost there with them in their living room and their kitchen."

"I was reading all of Louisa May Alcott. In her book, there is a white girl, and I suppose it's sort of daring, but she marries a Chinese guy. He has a long pigtail. He's fat, short, weird. He was mainly a character of fun and so stereotyped, although I suppose it was accurate-by that time they hadn't cut off their pigtails yet. Up to that time, I had identified with all those little women, then I saw this guy and I thought, "My God, that's who I'm supposed to be this little 'chinaman' guy." It ejected me out of literature. A few years later, I read Jade Snow Wong and she brought me back in. There were such wonderful illustrations of little kids that looked like me, and most importantly, written by a Chinese American woman. So, she gave me this great welcome and send-off, so I continued writing."

"Even today, Little Women is still widely read, though it may now seem nostalgic and old-fashioned rather than, as in 1868, innovative and sometimes almost shocking. It is impossible to know now whether the work Louisa May Alcott might have produced if she had had more free time and no practical worries would have made a more brilliant and literary volume in the Library of America; but it is unlikely that it would have been better loved by generations of children, or done more to further progressive education and women's independence."

"The true woman will not be exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her. She will be her own individual self, — do her own individual work — stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength... She will proclaim the "glad tidings of good news" to all women, that woman equally with man was made for her own individual happiness, to develop every power of her three fold-nature, to use, worthily every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life."

"The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South."

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation."

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

"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."

"Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work."

"Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."

"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."

"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."

"Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], 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?"

"We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give off the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right" … We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution the constitutions of the several states … propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights. … One-half of the people of this Nation today is utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write a new and just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation — that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent — that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers — that robs them, in marriage of the custody of their own persons, wages, and children—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half."

"Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life."

"Though women, as a class, are much less addicted to drunkenness and licentiousness than men, it is universally conceded that they are by far the greater sufferers from these evils."

"I want you to understand that I never could have done the work I have if I had not had this woman at my right hand."

"The time has come when women should organize a stock company and run a newspaper on their own basis. When woman has a newspapers which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely writer her own thoughts...We need a daily paper edited and composed according to woman’s own thoughts, and not as a woman thinks a man wants her to think and write. As it is now, the men who control the finances control the paper. As long as we occupy our present position we are mentally and morally in the power of the men who engineer the finances. Horace Greely once said that women ought not to expect the same pay for work that men received. He advised women to go down into New Jersey, buy a parcel of ground, and go to raising strawberries. Then when they came up to New York with their strawberries the men wouldn’t dare to offer them half price for their produce. I say, my journalistic sisters, that it is high time we were raising our own strawberries on our own land."

"On 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 women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat, she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood." On teaching: "In those days, we did not know any other way to control children. We believed in the goodness of not sparing the rod. As I got older, I abolished whipping. If I couldn't manage a child, I thought it my ignorance, my lack of ability, as a teacher. I always felt less the woman when I struck a blow." "I must have an audience to inspire me ... to save my life, I couldn't write a speech". "It all rose out of the men refusing to let me speak" at a temperance meeting. "Women were the bond slaves of men". "I know God never made a woman to be bossed by a man". "The law says that only idiots, lunatics and criminals shall be denied the right to vote. So you see with whom all women are classed." "When two people take each other on terms of perfect equality, without the desire of one to control the other to make the other subservient, it is a beautiful thing. It is the truest and highest state of life." "I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper and drudge. ... Once men were afraid of women with ideas and a desire to vote. Today, our best suffragists are sought in marriage by the best class of men.""

"I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk to women who are comfortably circumstanced, to those who have good fathers, kind brothers and have married the best of men, who do not believe that husband and wife are one and he is the one."

"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."

"The one distinct feature of our Association has been the right of the individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

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

"I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all."

"The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do."

"I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law."

"Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men."

"But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing."

"May it please your honor, 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 work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. 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.""

"There is not the slightest permission for the states to discriminate against the right of any class of citizens to vote. Surely to regulate cannot be to annihilate! Nor to qualify, to wholly deprive. And this principle every republican said amen, when applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches for “Equal rights to all,” from 1865 to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked the Senator to declare the power of the United States Constitution to protect women in their right to vote, as he had done for black men, he handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period, and said, "Miss Anthony, put sex where I have “race or color,” and you have here the best and strongest argument I can make for woman. There is not a doubt but women have the constitutional right to vote, and I will never vote for a 16th amendment to guarantee it to them. I voted for both the 14th and 15th under protest. Would never have done it but for the pressing emergency; would have insisted that the power of the original Constitution to protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights should have been vindicated through the courts. But the newly-freed men had neither the intelligence, wealth, nor the time to wait that slow process. Women possess all these, and I insist that they shall appeal to the courts, and through them establish the powers of our American magna charta to protect every citizen of the Republic." But, friends, when in accordance with Senator Sumner’s counsel, I went to the ballot-box, last November, and exercised my citizen’s right to vote, the courts did not wait for me to appeal to them — they appealed to me, and indicted me on the charge of having voted illegally."

"Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of married women? I will remind him of the fact that the old common law of England prevails in every state in this Union except where the legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one state has yet blotted from its statute books the old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone, summed up in the fewest words possible, declared that “The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband!!”"

"And is all this tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women, under our democratic republic government to-day, than it was to men, under their aristocratic, monarchical government a hundred years ago? There is not an utterance of Old John Adams, John Hancock, or Patrick Henry but finds a living response in the soul of every intelligent, patriotic woman of the nation."

"Is there a man who will not agree with me, that to talk of “freedom without the ballot” is mockery, is slavery, to the women of this republic, precisely as New England’s orator, Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war declared it to be to the newly emancipated black men?"

"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

"No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but oh, thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation that impelled her to the crime!"

"Susan B. Anthony had several significant relationships with Afro-American women, including Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell. Evidence suggests that Sojourner Truth especially influenced her ideas."

"In disposition Miss Anthony is very lovable. She is always good-natured and sunny tempered. Everybody loves her dearly and she never loses a friend. She has a remarkable memory and in speaking is both eloquent and witty. She keeps an audience laughing during an entire evening. Miss Anthony enjoys a good joke and can tell one. She never fails to see the funny side of things though it be at her own expense. Susan Anthony is all that is best and noblest in woman. She is ideal, and if we will have in women who vote what we have in her, let us all help to promote the cause of woman suffrage."

"Every century has produced a few men and women whose memories the world has adjudged worthy of perpetuation. The dear friend who has gone from us was one of our century’s immortals...There is today an infinitely broader field of opportunity, of happiness and of usefulness for women than when she came. There is an immeasurably sounder, healthier and more rational relationship between the sexes than when she began her work. There is a higher womanhood, a nobler manhood and a better humanity. This woman for a large part of half-a-century was the chief inspiration, counselor and guide of that movement. Few workers have been privileged to sec such large results from their labors...It was that hope which hoped on when others saw nothing to hope for; that splendid optimism which never knew despair; that faith which never forgot the eternal righteousness of her cause; that courage which never recognized disappointment, that tenacity of purpose which never permitted her to deflect in the slightest from the main object of her life, which combined to make her greater than others...her life has given to many nations a higher perception of life and duty and that it has lifted society to a higher plane, and we are grateful...There was something in her one may not describe which won our hearts as well as our devotion. Perhaps it was her simplicity, her forgetfulness of self, her thoughtfulness of others, which made us love her."

"Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Sojourner Truth were not evolutionaries, they were revolutionaries, just as many of the young women in today’s society and more and more women must join their rank."

"Little Shirley grew up with a strong sense of her own destiny. Her early heroes were Mary McLeod Bethune, Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony. Miss Anthony, the homeliest of the suffragettes, was one of the movement's best speakers. In her Brooklyn campaign, Mrs. Chisholm would reel off a long quotation from Miss Anthony ("The hour is come when the women will no longer be the passive recipients...") when she was bothered by male hecklers on street corners. "It always stopped them cold," she reports."

"(Book editor's note: In 1880 she met Eugene V. Debs, the perennial Labor and Socialist candidate, who later wrote that Anthony impressed him "as being a wonderfully strong character, self-reliant, thoroughly in earnest, and utterly indifferent to criticism." Debs' observations of her trip to Terre Haute, Indiana, provide a bleak picture of the hostility still evident in the late 1800s.) "I can still see the aversion so unfeelingly expressed for this magnificent woman. Even my personal friends were disgusted with me for piloting such an "undesirable citizen" into the community. It is hard to understand, after all these years, how bitter and implacable the people were, especially the women, toward the leaders of this movement. As we walked along the street I was painfully aware that Miss Anthony was an object of derision and contempt, and in my heart I resented it and later I had often to defend my position, which, of course, I was ever ready to do....To all of this Miss Anthony, to all appearance, was entirely oblivious. She could not have helped noticing it for there were those who thrust their insults upon her, but she gave no sign and bore no resentment. I can see her still as she walked along, neatly but carelessly attired, her bonnet somewhat carelessly awry, mere trifles which were scarcely noticed, if at all, in the presence of her splendid womanhood. She seemed absorbed completely in her mission.""

"As part of the seventy-fifth anniversary ceremonies the Woman's Party organized a pilgrimage to the grave of Susan B. Anthony led by the Mayor and city officials of Rochester. Thousands of women joined this pilgrimage-teachers, students, lawyers, government workers, doctors, business women, musicians, nurses, artists, writers, factory-workers-women from almost every walk in life who could truly say that they owe their present status in society in some measure to the work of Susan B. Anthony. Thus is she honoured at last, that slim gallant Quaker girl, who for most of the years of her life was hounded by the mob and scorned by those in high places."

"The struggle for the right of women to vote was nationwide and growing. It had started with the first Equal Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was addressed by Frederick Douglass, the great Negro leader. The suffragists had been ridiculed, assaulted by mobs, refused halls, arrested for attempting to vote, disowned by their families. By 1904, groups of working women, especially Socialist women, were banding together to join in the demand for the vote. Two years later, International Women's Day was born on the East Side of New York, at the initiative of these women demonstrating for suffrage. It spread around the world and is universally celebrated today, while here it is deprecated as "a foreign holiday.""

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"We, the colored people of Rochester, join the world in mourning the loss of our true friend, Susan B. ANTHONY. Yes, a true friend of our race. Years ago, when it meant a great deal to be a friend to the poor, downtrodden race, Susan B. ANTHONY stood side by side with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelly Foster, Frederick Douglass and others, fighting our battles and espousing the cause of an enslaved people...we who have heard thy voice: we who have known something of thy great life work — we pledge ourselves to devote our time and energies to the work thou hast left us to do."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"The women, who at the first woman's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 declared boldly and with considerable exaggeration that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her," did not speak for the truly exploited and abused working woman. As a matter of fact, they were largely ignorant of her condition and, with the notable exception of Susan B. Anthony."

"most of the early feminists came to their convictions because of their interest in abolition. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley, and scores of others found that if they wished to work for reforms in general, they would first have to fight for their right as women to engage in public political activity."

"The History of Woman Suffrage is an incomplete, flawed and heavily biased assemblage of sources. It distorts the origins of the movement by ignoring or downplaying the role of many activists and antecedent activists in favor of stressing the leadership of a few women. The strongly secular bias of its editors and their disenchantment with the organized churches in regard to the struggle of women for their emancipation are reflected in the way they defined the movement as mostly political and constitutional, disregarding the important feminist struggles in the various churches during the century.It is also factionally biased in its downplaying of the role of the women who in 1869 split with Stanton and Anthony, a distortion which is particularly striking in regard to the role of Lucy Stone. Yet these volumes have provided the basis for over a hundred years of historiography on the subject and, in what Mary Ritter Beard called "the long history of women," represent a milestone."

"Suffragists argued that "the state is but the larger family, the nation the old homestead"; hence, by extending their nurturing functions from the family circle to the larger society, women would not abdicate their traditional domestic role. Even Susan B. Anthony, who insisted that women needed the power to control their own lives through the vote and through economic opportunity, believed that the lack of both encouraged immorality, rendering woman "utterly powerless to extract from [men] the same high moral code that she chooses for herself.""

"the original amendment, which we called the Susan B. Anthony because the women of the country, if they knew anything about the movement, had heard the name Susan B. Anthony."

"In the 1880's and '90's Susan B. Anthony's influence on the women of the country-and on the men, too-was still strong. She was over sixty, but still fighting for women's right to vote as earlier she had fought against slavery. Ridiculed and denounced as a "revolutionary firebrand" she kept right on. She and other women pioneers such as Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled and lectured throughout the United States making woman suffrage a national issue."

"In the 1970s we were rediscovering women whose lives had been dropped out of history or distorted, like Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickinson, Marie Curie, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Hannah Senesch, Ethel Rosenberg."

"Struggle brought about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the government from denying women the right to vote. The amendment did not just appear: It was the fruit of the struggle of the suffragettes, led by such figures as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the mid-nineteenth century."

"The Anthony Interview was an art form. Sometimes she paced the floor and dictated rapidly; sometimes she made a grand entrance into the hotel parlor or sitting room. But mostly she sat patiently and poised, the courtly leader answering the same questions from Maine to Oregon, beguiling some of the most hardened reporters."

"All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!...Susan had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity...In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles's time, a Puritan; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a Reformer."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the greatest of the early leaders"

"I had always resented the pains that militant suffragists took to belittle the work that woman had done in the past in the world, picturing her as a meek and prostrate "doormat." They refused, I felt, to pay proper credit to the fine social and economic work that women had done in the building of America. And in 1909, after we took over the American Magazine, I burst out with a series of studies of leading American women from the Revolution to the Civil War, including such stalwarts as Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Esther Reed, Mary Lyon, Catharine Beecher, the fighting antislavery leaders-not omitting two for whom I had warm admiration, if I was not in entire agreement with them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony."

"We colored women own [sic] her a two-fold debt of gratitude. Her persecutions were greater than those of Garrison or Phillips. She was never a coward, not even among pistols. She contributed her work, but while I would not attempt to try to underage her work, there is almost as much work to-day as there was fifty or sixty years ago. In many States colored men are deprived of their right to vote and are held as slaves in peonage."

"At the close of my address a young man in the audience, whom we afterward learned was a southerner, sneeringly asked, "If the colored people were so badly treated in the South, why was it that more of them didn't come North?" Before I could answer, Miss Anthony sprang to her feet and said, "I'll answer that question. It is because we, here in the North, do not treat the Negroes any better than they do in the South, comparatively speaking,"."

"Miss Anthony gave me rather the impression of a woman who was eager to hear all sides of any question, and that I am sure is one of the reasons for her splendid success in the organization which did so much to give the women of this country an equal share in all the privileges of citizenship...Such a dear good friend I found her to be, and she had many such just like her there in Rochester."

"When Miss Anthony took up the cause of women she did not know them by their color, nationality, creed or birth, she stood only for the emancipation of women from the thraldom of sex. She became an invincible champion of anti-slavery. In the half century of her unremitting struggle for liberty, more liberty, and complete liberty for negro men and women in chains and for white women in their helpless subjection to man’s laws, she never wavered, never doubted, never compromised. She held it to be mockery to ask man or woman to be happy or contented if not free. She saw no substitute for liberty. When slavery was overthrown and the work of reconstruction began she was still unwearied and watchful. She had an intimate acquaintance with the leading statesmen of the times. Her judgment and advice were respected and heard in much of the legislation that gave a status of citizenship to the millions of slaves set free."

"There is no death for such as she. There are no last words of love. The ages to come will revere her name. Unnumbered generations of the children of men shall rise up to call her blessed. Her words, her work, and her character will go on to brighten the pathway and bless the lives of all peoples. That which seems death to our unseeing eyes is to her translation. Her work will not be finished, nor will her last word be spoken while there remains a wrong to be righted, or a fettered life to be freed in all the earth."

"she taught us that the real beauty of a true life is found in the harmonious blending of diverse elements, and her life was the epitome of her teaching. She merged a keen sense of justice with the deepest love; her masterful intellect never for one moment checked the tenderness of her emotions...she demonstrated the divine principle that the truest self-development must go hand in hand with the greatest and most arduous service for others...Here was the most harmoniously developed character I have ever known — a living soul whose individuality was blended into oneness with all humanity."

"She knew that where freedom is there is the center of power. In it she saw potentially all that humanity might attain when possessed by its spirit. Hence her cause, perfect equality of rights, of opportunity, of privilege for all, civil and political, was to her the bed-rock upon which all true progress must rest."

"She was in the truest sense a reformer, unhindered in her service by the narrowness and negative destructiveness which often so sadly hampers the work of true reform...She recognized that it was immeasurably more desirable to be honestly and earnestly seeking that which in its attainment might not prove good than to be hypocritically subservient to the truth through a spirit of selfish fear or fawning at the beck of power...She was never found in the cheering crowd that follows an already victorious standard... She was truly great; great in her humility and utter lack of pretension."

"She did not gain the little bit of freedom for herself, but there is scarcely a civilized land, not even our own, in which she has not been instrumental in securing for some woman that to which our leader did not attain."

"We have followed her leadership until we stand upon the mount of vision where she today leaves us. The promised land lies just before us. It is for us to go forward and take possession...Already the call to advance is heard along the line, and one devoted young follower writes: “There are hundreds of us now, her followers, who will try to keep up the work she so nobly began and brought so nearly to completion. We will work the harder to try to compensate the world for her loss.”"

"I was raised with the idea that you can feel sorry for yourself, but then, get over it, because it doesn't get you anywhere. … There was always this awareness that you have to be responsible for yourself in order to have what you want. And that meant "Be responsible with this little motorcycle that we're going to give you, because you're only five. If you're not, you're going to hurt yourself" -- which I did. My mom wasn't like, "Poor baby." She was like, "You do wheelies. That's what's going to happen." My mom's philosophy was, "If you get yourself in trouble, you've got to get yourself out of trouble.""

"I grew up on a farm in South Africa, so I’ve always been surrounded by animals. I was raised by a mother who always had great compassion and respect toward animals. It was instilled in me. I grew up that way. So when I see dogs or other animals suffer, it’s just been something close to my heart."

"Athletes, spectators from every corner of the world, this is a message of peace by my beloved countryman Nelson Mandela: "Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference." Today this message seems more relevant than ever, so let these games be more than just sport, let them be a reminder of our common humanity, our respect for one another and a resounding call for peace everywhere."

"We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them. Nor should we represent motherhood as something so common and easy that everyone can go through it without harm or suffering and rear her children competently and well."

"Nothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by lies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility which they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman in knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to her own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human beings is worth the discomfort and the suffering she must necessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives when choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted to bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and intrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life from which individuals and the community suffer far too much already."

"Feminists have emphasized for a long time the importance of each woman’s individual entity and the necessity of economic independence. Perhaps it was necessary. But now I think we need some emphasis on the instinctive side of life, sex and motherhood.... Life isn’t all earning your living. Unfortunately we fall in love and Feminism must take that into consideration."

"Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying."

"We have never yet had a Labour Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens."

"We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction. We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance. Only by learning to love one another can our world be saved. Only love can conquer all."

"It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another. Without falling into a mystical vitalism that reverences organic nature as sacred, we can at least try rather to serve than to subdue the prancing seas of life. With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do."

"Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children. To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war."

"Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education."

"Marriage laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence. We have not yet found the right road to conquering ourselves and our environment."

"All my life I have tried to do too many different things. I wonder if this is not a perpetual dilemma for women. A man enters on a job or profession, needs to stick to it to earn his living, and is unlikely to have to change it on marriage. For a woman marriage presents not only practical problems, but she finds herself emotionally pulled all ways, and tends by tradition and impulse to put the needs of others before her own. What is more, opening her eyes on the world, she feels intensely responsible for setting it to rights."

"Women must not merely imitate men. Women have more to give than performing any job in society like neutered robots. Those who talk today of rousing the 'consciousness' of women contribute an idea of real importance. It was such a grievous mistake to leave out women. For whence can come love, compassion and understanding if not out of the relations of men and women and of them to their children?"

"I think, if England had had a Lucy Stone League she might still be Dora Black."

"The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy."

"These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."

"My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position."

"What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?"

"Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men."

"In his own way each man must struggle, lest the moral law become a far-off abstraction utterly separated from his active life."

"I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller's thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened as my father’s had become, during his earlier years of a miller’s life."

"I dreamed night after night that everyone in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel."

"The Settlement … is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are not confined to any one portion of the city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other ..."

"[The Settlement House] must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy."

"We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race. Our very organism holds memories and glimpses of that long life of our ancestors which still goes on among so many of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from the great opportunities for helpfulness and a continual ignoring of the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race. To shut one’s self away from that half of the race life is to shut one’s self away from the most vital part of it; it is to live out but half the humanity to which we have been born heir."

"We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them."

"… this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth."

"Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole ..."

"With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!"

"If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse."

"A Settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted."

"Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment ..."

"Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans."

"Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited."

"Social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty ..."

"I have come to believe … that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself."

"If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him."

"The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it."

"At one time five of us tried to understand De Quincey's marvelous "Dreams" more sympathetically, by drugging ourselves with opium. We solemnly consumed small white powders at intervals during an entire long holiday, but no mental reorientation took place, and the suspense and excitement did not even permit us to grow sleepy. About four o'clock on the weird afternoon, the young teacher whom we had been obliged to take into our confidence, grew alarmed over the whole performance, took away our De Quincey and all the remaining powders, administered an emetic to each of the five aspirants for sympathetic under- standing of all human experience, and sent us to our separate rooms with a stern command to appear at family worship after supper "whether we were able to or not.""

"The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist."

"Miss Addams is always in action, and many other women, the pride of your country."

"Somebody said Miss Addams is living proof that a woman can do very much without voting. One can answer: She would do much more when the votes of her sisters were with her."

"Jane Addams and others spoke and acted on behalf of women labor leaders like Lucy Parsons, assisting them in rallies, providing bail when they were arrested, and using their tremendous power and influence on behalf of working women...Although many social workers like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, and socialists like Emma Goldman advocated the rights of immigrants and working women, in most instances during the 1890 to 1910 period their advocacy had little or no effect on the suffragist movement's attitude toward minority or working-class women"

"Jane Addams attended our conference in 1908 and commended our work."

"It was Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, who most consistently carried Tolstoyan ideas into practice. Addams had visited Tolstoy in Russia and was a lifelong admirer of his work. She well understood the practical implications of his ideas, which she expressed as follows: "Tolstoy would make non-resistance aggressive. He would carry over into the reservoirs of moral influence all the strength which is now spent in coercion and resistance." In his spirit, she advocated "a newer humanitarianism," aggressive in its pursuit of social welfare and international in its reach, as a moral equivalent for war. Addams steadfastly carried these convictions into practice in her peace activities during World War I and her leadership in the postwar Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She suffered ostracism, vilification and isolation for her pacifism, but she was one of a handful of people who kept the idea and tradition alive in a time of conformity and reaction."

"Chicago's Greektown was adjacent to Hull House, Jane Addams' famed settlement project, whose activities played an important and beneficial role for many early Greek immigrants. The special attention Jane Addams gave to Greek immigrants and her espousal of Greek culture did much to buttress the ethnic pride of the sorely tried Greek immigrants of Chicago."

"It was in 1912 that I was appointed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to the chairmanship of their Congressional Committee in Washington, which was to work for the passage of the amendment that Susan B. Anthony had helped draw up. And Lucy Burns was asked to go with me. Miss Jane Addams, who was on the national board, made the motion for our appointments. They didn’t take the work at all seriously, or else they wouldn’t have entrusted it to us, two young girls. They did make one condition, and that was that we should never send them any bills, for as much as one dollar. Everything we did, we must raise the money ourselves."

"She always took every chance when it was a matter of human relief"

"Jane Addams had said to me at the beginning of the War: "Everything that we have gained in the way of social legislation will be destroyed. It will throw us back where we were twenty-five years ago.""

"Are you a pacifist?" a stern citizen on a Missouri railway platform asked me one morning as I was leaving a town where I had spoken the night before, and where I had deplored the will to hate I was sensing. "Well," I parried, "I am for winning this war." "Did you sign this?" He pulled out a prewar list of names, a peace society list where my name appeared. It was headed by Jane Addams "that woman," he called her. "I am proud to be classed with that woman," " I said indignantly. "She is one of the world's greatest, and if the world could or would have heeded her counsels you boys would not be dying in France."

"As a background was Jane Addams, unassertive, contemplative and sensitive. All the way over we discussed our program. All the way over, that great woman, Miss Addams, listened with as much patience to the suggestions of the worst crank among us as she did to such trained minds as Miss Breckinridge. I have never known anyone who had a greater intellectual hospitality or courtesy. When I spoke of this to her one day, she said quietly, “I have never met anyone from whom I could not learn.”"

"one whom I regarded as the greatest woman in the United States (about Jane Addams)"

"What will exist is a variety of alternative life-styles. Since the population explosion dictates that childbearing be kept to a minimum, parents-and-children will be only one of many "families": couples, age groups, working groups, mixed communes, blood-related clans, class groups, creative groups. Single women will have the right to stay single without ridicule, without the attitudes now betrayed by "spinster" and "bachelor." Lesbians or homosexuals will no longer be denied legally binding marriages, complete with mutual-support agreements and inheritance rights. Paradoxically, the number of homosexuals may get smaller. With fewer over-possessive mothers and fewer fathers who hold up an impossibly cruel or perfectionist idea of manhood, boys will be less likely to be denied or reject their identity as males."

"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."

"Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood."

"I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and the courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words."

"Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain."

"Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other."

"Whatever the gender of the participants, all pornography including male-male gay pornography is an imitation of the male-female, conqueror-victim paradigm, and almost all of it actually portrays or im-plies enslaved women and master."

"In later years, if I'm remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' ... as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition."

"However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family."

"If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

"As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, "Oh no, that's women's work." Logic has nothing to do with oppression."

"Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age."

"The real reasons for genital mutilation can only be understood in the context of the "patriarchy": men must control women's bodies as the means of production, and thus repress the independent power of women's sexuality."

"Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it."

"[the] idea that sexuality is only okay if it ends in reproduction oppresses women—whose health de-pends on separating sexuality from reproduction—as well as gay men and lesbians."

"I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, 'Beware: Deconstruction Ahead'. Academics are forced to write in language no one can understand so that they get tenure. They have to say 'discourse', not 'talk'. Knowledge that is not accessible is not helpful. It becomes aerialised—and I think it's important that women's experiences be given a narrative."

"It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't [positive]."

"These patriarchal controls limit men's sexuality too ... That's why men are asked symbolically to submit the sexual part of themselves and their sons to patriarchal authority, which seems to be the origin of male circumcision, a practice that, even as advocates admit, is medically unnecessary 90% of the time. Speaking for myself, I stand with many brothers in eliminating that practice too."

"I think the fact that I've become a symbol for the women's movement is somewhat accidental. A woman member of Congress, for example, might be identified as a member of Congress; it doesn't mean she's any less of a feminist but she's identified by her nearest male analog. Well, I don't have a male analog so the press has to identify me with the movement. I suppose I could be referred to as a journalist, but because Ms. is part of a movement and not just a typical magazine, I'm more likely to be identified with the movement. There's no other slot to put me in."

"A man can be called assertive if he launches World War Three. A woman can be called assertive if she puts you on hold."

"I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy."

"I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves."

"Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed."

"Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy."

"Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice"

"Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before."

"God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back."

"I'm not sure feminism should require an adjective. Believing in the full social, political, and economic quality of women, which is what the dictionary says "feminism" means, is enough to make a revolution in itself. But if I had to choose only one adjective, I still would opt for radical feminist. I know patriarchs keep equating that word with violent or man-hating, crazy or extremist — though being a plain vanilla feminist doesn't keep one safe from such epithets either, nor does "I'm not a feminist, but ..." Nonetheless, radical seems an honest indication of the fundamental change we have in mind and says what probably is the case: the false division of human nature into “feminine” and “masculine” is the root of all other divisions into subject and object, active and passive — the beginning of hierarchy."

"Basically, I feel different from most other women. I feel I don’t have to put on an act. If I’m not feminine enough for someone, I don’t care, because femininity is different in everyone’s mind."

"Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature. To uncover the difference between what is and what could be, we may need the “Aha!” that comes from exchanging subject for object, the flash of recognition that starts with a smile, the moment of changed viewpoint that turns the world upside down."

"...a lot of people in this country have had the courage to raise their daughters more like their sons. ... But there are many fewer people who have had the courage to raise their sons more like their daughters."

"I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word. It seems to me that it means you believe in the great potential and the best of human beings, so I didn’t have to overcome anything to accept this award; it seemed an unmitigated honor. And since the ultra-right wing has tried so hard to make it a bad word— “humanist” has been demonized in much the same way that the word “feminist” has — it seemed especially important to identify as humanist and support humanist groups."

"It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked. I think we’ve learned that we have to contend with these divisions everywhere."

"The men I’ve met who were the best allies of feminism are those who see their stake in it; who see that they themselves are being limited by a culture that deprives men of human qualities deemed feminine, which are actually just the qualities necessary to raise kids — empathy and attention to detail and patience. Men have those qualities too but they’re not encouraged to develop them. And so they miss out on raising their kids, and they actually shorten their own lives. When men realize that feminism is a universal good that affects them in very intimate ways then I think they really become allies and leaders."

"Regarding the idea that the women’s movement is white and middle class — a fair share of the country is white and middle class. And certainly, there are racist white women. Certainly, there are sexist black men. All those things are true. But the other thing that’s never said is that black women are much more likely to support feminist issues than white women. It makes sense because they’re much more likely to be on the paid labor force than white women. And if you’ve experienced discrimination for one reason, you’re probably more likely to recognize it for another reason."

"If you think about Martin Luther King and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, they were all college-educated, middle class people. Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class. It’s true that the National Organization for Women in its early years was white middle class. But once it was joined by younger women from civil rights groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) it changed profoundly. In any case, my life’s ambition is to make white women as smart as black women. Because the group of women who still vote against their own self-interest are white married women."

"I was perversely delighted to see the Catholic Church and the Vatican go after nuns because I think they made a major error. People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it’s just too much. Their stance on abortion is also quite dishonest historically, because as the Jesuits (who always seem to be more honest historians of the Catholic Church) point out, the Church approved of and even regulated abortion well into the mid-1800s. The whole question of ensoulment was determined by the date of baptism. But after the Napoleonic Wars there weren’t enough soldiers anymore and the French were quite sophisticated about contraception. So Napoleon III prevailed on Pope Pius IX to declare abortion a mortal sin, in return for which Pope Pius IX got all the teaching positions in the French schools and support for the doctrine of papal infallibility. … My favorite line belongs to an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston. Flo Kennedy and I were in the backseat talking about Flo’s book, Abortion Rap (1971), and the driver turned around and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I wish I’d gotten her name so we could attribute it to her."

"This war against women started a long time ago with old Democrats who took over the Republican Party, which was, before that, the very first to support the Equal Rights Amendment. Even when the National Women’s Political Caucus started, there was a whole Republican feminist entity. But beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right-wing Democrats like Jesse Helms began to leave the Democratic Party and gradually take over the GOP. So I always feel I have to apologize to my friends who are Republicans because they’ve basically lost their party. Ronald Reagan couldn’t get nominated today because he was supportive of immigrant rights. Barry Goldwater was pro-choice. George H.W. Bush supported Planned Parenthood. No previous Republicans except for George W. Bush would be acceptable to the people who now run the GOP. They are not Republicans. They are the American version of the Taliban. … They’ve taken over one of our two great parties. This causes people to wrongly think that the country is equally divided but if we look at the public opinion polls, it isn’t. So, I can’t think of anything more crucial than real Republicans taking back the GOP."

"I think feminists and progressive Democrats err when they accusingly say to Republican women, “How can you be a Republican?” Nobody responds to that. But if you say, “Look, you didn’t leave your party. The party left you. Let’s just look at the issues and see what they are and forget about party labels and vote for ourselves,” I think people would really respond."

"If someone wants to be called a sex worker, I call them a sex worker. But there is a problem with that term, because while it was adopted in goodwill, traffickers have taken it and essentially said, “Okay, if it’s work like any other, somebody has to do it.” In Nevada, there was a time when you couldn’t get unemployment unless you tried sex work first. The same was true in Germany. So the state became a procurer because of the argument that sex is work like any other. This is not a good thing. I also do not feel proud when I stand in the Sonagachi, the biggest brothel area in all of South Asia. It’s in Kolkata, and everything is written in Bengali except “SEX WORK.” And the term is used in various sinister ways by sex traffickers, who even describe what they do — which is to kidnap or buy people out of villages — as “facilitated migration.” I’ve only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn’t have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That’s so rare. So we have to look at the reality and not romanticize it. We have to be clear that you have the right to sell your own body but nobody has the right to sell anybody else’s body. No one has that right."

"The Arab Spring did a great deal for women because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street. Nawal El Saadawi is a founding figure of Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism who wrote a book opposing female genital mutilation (of which she is a victim). She’s been banned. She’s been in prison. She’s now in her eighties and during the Arab Spring she was like the wise woman of Liberation Square, sitting in the middle of it as young women and young men came to her for instruction, for blessings, and so on. But it’s very often the case with revolutionary moments that women are present but then they’re drummed out of it afterwards."

"I think most social justice movements take the words that are used against them and make them good words. That’s partly how “black” came back into usage. Before we said “colored person,” or “Negro.” Then came “Black Power,” “Black Pride,” and “Black Is Beautiful” to make it a good word. "Witch" was another word I remember reclaiming in the 1970s. There was a group called Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). They all went down to Wall Street and hexed it. And Wall Street fell five points the next day; it was quite amazing! “Queer” and “gay” are other examples. … I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them. Actually, I had done that earlier with “slut” because when I went back to Toledo, Ohio, which is where I was in high school and junior high school, I was on a radio show with a bunch of women. A man called up and called me “a slut from East Toledo,” which is doubly insulting because East Toledo is the wrong side of town. I thought, when I’d lived here I would have been devastated by this. But by this time I thought, you know, that’s a pretty good thing to be. I’m putting it on my tombstone: "Here lies the slut from East Toledo.""

"There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset. But the ones who were performing were making jokes on themselves usually and now that’s changed. So there are no rules exactly but I think if you see a whole group of people only being self-deprecating, it’s a problem. But I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too. I think it was Einstein who said he had to be careful when he shaved because if he thought of something suddenly, he’d laugh and cut himself. So I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don’t separate laughter and seriousness. There’s none of this kind of false Episcopalian solemnity."

"If it were up to me, I would not define myself by the absence of something; "theist" is a believer, so with "atheist" you’re defining yourself by the absence of something. I think human beings work on yes, not on no. … humanist is a great term. …except that humanism sometimes is not seen as inclusive of spirituality. To me, spirituality is the opposite of religion. It’s the belief that all living things share some value. So I would include the word spiritual just because it feels more inclusive to me. Native Americans do this when they offer thanks to Mother Earth and praise the interconnectedness of “the two-legged and the four, the feathered and the clawed,” and so on. It’s lovely. … because it’s not about not believing. It’s about rejecting a god who looks like the ruling class."

"I like to say that the last five-to-ten thousand years has been an experiment that failed and it’s now time to declare the first meeting of the post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-nationalist age. So let’s add “post-theological.” Why not?"

""You're always the person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it."

"You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules"

"I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go."

"Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least."

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

"Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children... parasites."

"In the early seventies, when I was in jail, one of the organizers of the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis told me that they had approached a feminist organization-I do not remember which one-and the response was, "Well, Angela Davis is not associated with the women's movement, she's associated with the Black movement, as if one had to make a choice between the two, as if one was either a feminist or an antiracist. In all fairness, I should point out that white feminists were active around my case. Gloria Steinem, for example, was treasurer of my legal defense fund. There has been a great deal of dialogue about the influence of racism and class bias in the women's movement."

"Jung drew a circle and divided it into four parts, and said a man is three-quarters masculine and one quarter feminine. A woman is three-quarters feminine and one quarter masculine. And that’s a good start. The problem is that he says this is the way it should be, and that’s not the way it is. It is too rigid a form. Some men I have met are three-quarters feminine and one-quarter masculine, and the one-quarter masculine they are — jump back — very strong, fuerte, strong! But they have tremendous feminine development because it is who they are. It is from the souls, not an overlay from cultural family. Gloria Steinem is a great example of a woman who has far more masculine development then she has feminine development. Although now her feminine development appears as though it is coming now. She is 55 -60 years old and now it is coming. So whatever we have, as you know, the role in life is to develop it to its fullness. But also the challenges is to develop its balance, which is also its opposite."

"Even the kind of feminist women that I know, we’ve had great discussions here about reproductive rights. Our primary issue, as women and men who are our allies in the struggle, is not the right to have abortion, it is to have reproductive rights, of which abortion is one. I often have this discussion with my good comrade Gloria Steinem—I’ve not convinced her. I’ve said, “Do you really believe that women in the world who are just trying to get clean water and feed their children and to survive, are running around being upset that they can’t have an abortion?” This is a very small example of how First World women in our society, mostly white, can impose our sense of what is important for women in the world. As such, that is a form of violence. Because we are not respecting the lives of the millions of women in the world for whom feminist issue is ending war, having food, ending poverty, ending disease."

"Gloria Steinem inspired me."

"At first, the editors there said they didn’t want staff writers but that if I had an idea for a piece they’d look at it. So I went home and called up Ms. magazine, and I said, “I’d like to speak to Gloria Steinem.” She picked up, and I told her I’d like to interview her. She said, “Of course.” I was just somebody off the street, but that was the original solidarity of feminism."

"If we adopt Gloria Steinem's definition of a feminist — "Anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men" — most of us are probably feminists, too. This was a radical innovation two thousand years ago, when the first Christians proclaimed the equal value of all people."

"I don't know that my quarrel is with Western feminism as such, but with the mouthy American feminists of the early and mid-seventies. Particularly Gloria Steinem and the Ms. magazine group, who were doctrinaire and, we now know, often conducting intergender relationships and maneuvering for power when they had an overt but totally unacknowledged racist, colonialist attitude towards women of color. Particularly women of color who were not African American. And so the Kate Millets and the Gloria Steinems insisted on telling minority women, telling me, how I should conduct my life in order to be a feminist. It was all about talk, rhetoric, and self-examination-these were the times of consciousness-raising groups and examining yourself with mirrors"

"When was the last time you heard Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan talk about welfare rights?"

"She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She's a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she's out having her hair streaked at Kenneth's. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her."

"The horrible truth is that the feminist establishment in the U.S., led by Gloria Steinem, did in fact apply a double standard to Bill Clinton’s behavior because he was a Democrat. The Democratic president and administration supported abortion rights, and therefore it didn’t matter what his personal behavior was. [...] The actual facts of the matter are that Bill Clinton was a serial abuser of working-class women–he had exploited that power differential even in Arkansas."

"But during all the long years this matter has been discussed, advocated, refuted, the people themselves—poor people especially—were blindly, desperately practicing family limitation, just as they are practicing it today. To them birth control does not mean what it does to us. To them it has meant the most barbaric methods. It has meant the killing of babies—infanticide,—abortions,—in one crude way or another."

"The church has ever opposed the progress of woman on the ground that her freedom would lead to immorality. We ask the church to have more confidence in women. We ask the opponents of this movement to reverse the methods of the church, which aims to keep women moral by keeping them in fear and in ignorance, and to inculcate into them a higher and truer morality based upon knowledge. And ours is the morality of knowledge. If we cannot trust woman with the knowledge of her own body, then I claim that two thousand years of Christian teaching has proved to be a failure."

"While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and syphilitic, I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit. They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe in regard to these, as in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter. Neither the mating of healthy couples nor the sterilization of certain recognized types of the unfit touches the great problem of unlimited reproduction of those whose housing, clothing, and food are all inadequate to physical and mental health. These measures do not touch those great masses, who through economic pressure populate the slums and there produce in their helplessness other helpless, diseased and incompetent masses, who overwhelm all that eugenics can do among those whose economic condition is better."

"MOTHERS! Can you afford to have a large family? Do you want any more children? If not, why do you have them? DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained nurses at 46 AMBOY STREET."

"I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance to be a human being, practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin — that people can — can commit."

"It seems to me from my experience where I have been in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their ignorance, superstitions and doubts. They do not do this with the white people and if we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us. The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

"I believe that the Negro question is coming definitely to the fore in America, not only because of the war, but in anticipation of the place the Negro will occupy after the peace. I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor, helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better standards of health and living for those already born, and to create better opportunities for those who will be born. In other words, we're giving Negroes an opportunity to help themselves, and to rise to their own heights through education and the principles of a democracy."

"Sometimes I think we all talk too much. We read too much. We listen too much. But we act too little. We live too little. The authorities of Boston may gag me, they do not want you to hear the truth about Birth Control. But they cannot gag the truth. We do not need words. We do not need to talk, because the truth speaks for itself. Use your eyes, use your ears, use your intelligence and you can find out for yourself all that I could tell you. You all know that I have been gagged. I have been suppressed. I have been arrested numerous times. I have been hauled off to jail. Yet every time, more people have listened to me, more have protested, more have lifted their own voices. Here have responded with courage and bravery. As a pioneer fighting for a Cause I believe in free speech. As a propagandist I see immense advantages in being gagged. It silences me, but it makes millions of others talk and think the cause in which I live."

"Society is divided into three groups. Those intelligent and wealthy members of the upper classes who have obtained knowledge of Birth Control and exercise it in regulating the size of their families. They have already benefited by this knowledge, and are today considered the most respectable and moral members of the community. They have only children when they desire, and all society points to them as types that should perpetuate their kind. The second group is equally intelligent and responsible. They desire to control the size of their families, but are unable to obtain knowledge or to put such available knowledge into practice. The third are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequence of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent entirely upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped. For if they are not able to support and care for themselves, they should certainly not be allowed to bring offspring into this world for others to look after. We do not believe that filling the earth with misery, poverty and disease is moral. And it is our desire and intention to carry on our crusade until the perpetuation of such conditions has ceased."

"I was merely thinking of the poor mothers of congested districts of the East Side who had so poignantly begged me for relief, in order that the children they had already brought into the world might have a chance to grow into strong and stalwart Americans.... Birth Control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization."

"I cannot respect the law as it exists today."

"Let us not confuse the sexual impulse with love, for it alone is not love, but merely a necessary quality for the growth of love."

"Society, too, condemns the natural expression of Woman's emotion, save under certain prescribed conditions. In consequence of this, women suppress their maternal desires and today direct this great force into other channels, participating in the bigger and broader movements and activities in which they are active today."

"It is said a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets. According to one writer, the rapist has just enough brain development to raise him above the animal, but like the animal, when in heat knows no law except nature which impels him to procreate whatever the result. Every normal man and Woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells in thinking deeply, are never sensual."

"Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation."

"...thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity."

"Our laws force women into celibacy on the one hand, or abortion on the other. [npg] Both conditions are declared by eminent medical authorities to be injurious to health."

"Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class – and so tenaciously withheld from the working women – brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community."

"All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class, and if morality is to mean anything at all to us, we must regard all the changes which tend toward the uplift and survival of the human race as moral."

"Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race."

"Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother. To this end we insist that information in regard to scientific contraceptives be made open to all. We believe that if such information is placed within the reach of all, we will have made it possible to take the first, greatest step toward racial betterment...."

"It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will."

"Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

"The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics."

"As an advocate of birth control I wish … to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.... On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective."

"We are convinced that racial regeneration like individual regeneration, must come "from within." That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without. In other words, every potential parent, and especially every potential mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and central importance of bringing children into this world. ... Not until the parents of the world are thus given control over their reproductive faculties will it ever be possible ... to improve the quality of the generations of the future, [or] even to maintain civilization even at its present level. ... An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people."

"Just think for a moment of the meaning of the word kindergarten—a garden of children! To me, that is just what the world ought to be—a garden of children. In this matter we should not do less than follow the example of the professional gardener. Every expert gardener knows that the individual plant must be properly spaced, rooted in a rich nourishing soil, and provided with sufficient air and sunlight. He knows that no plant would have a fair chance of life if it were overcrowded or choked by weeds. To grow into maturity, to bud, to blossom, to produce beautiful sturdy flowers in its own season, each plant must have constant attention, incessant care and tender devotion.If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds.In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word."

"The main objects of the Population Congress would be:a) to raise the level and increase the general intelligence of population.b) to increase the population slowly by keeping the birth rate at its present level of fifteen per thousand, decreasing the death rate below its present mark of 11 per thousand.c) to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.d) to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.e) to insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feebleminded parents, by pensioning all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.f) to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization."

"Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure... It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion."

"It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide."

"Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months. This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five. Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members."

"The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."

"Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Birth control is woman's problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place for her children to live."

"While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."

"Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman."

"Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the "failure" of philanthropy, but rather at its success."

"These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have to-day produced their full harvest of human waste, of inequality and inefficiency, were fully recognized in the last century at the moment when such ideas were first put into practice."

"There is a special type of philanthropy or benevolence, now widely advertised and advocated, both as a federal program and as worthy of private endowment, which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than any other. This concerns itself directly with the function of maternity, and aims to supply [free of charge] medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers. Such women ... are, we are informed, to "receive adequate care during pregnancy, ... and for one month afterward." Thus are mothers and babies to be saved. "Childbearing is to be made safe." The work of the maternity centers ... is carried on among the poor and more docile sections of the city, among mothers least able, through poverty and ignorance, to afford the care and attention necessary for successful maternity. ... Such "benevolence" ... conceals a stupid cruelty, because ... it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth."

"In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails."

"The trouble with any effort of trying to divide humanity into the "fit" and the "unfit," is that we do not want, as H. G. Wells recently pointed out, to breed for uniformity but for variety. "We want statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other." We want, most of all, genius. Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to eliminate many of the great geniuses of the world who were not only "Bohemian," but actually and pathologically abnormal—men like Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe, Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte, Guy de Maupassant,—and how many others? But such considerations should not lead us into error of concluding that such men were geniuses merely because they were pathological specimens, and that the only way to produce a genius is to breed disease and defect. It only emphasizes the dangers of external standards of "fit" and "unfit." These limitations are more strikingly shown in the types of so-called "eugenic" legislation passed or proposed by certain enthusiasts. Regulation, compulsion and prohibitions affected and enacted by political bodies are the surest methods of driving the whole problem under-ground. As Havelock Ellis has pointed out, the absurdity and even hopelessness of effecting Eugenic improvement by placing on the statute books prohibitions of legal matrimony to certain classes of people, reveal the weakness of those Eugenists who minimize or undervalue the importance of environment as a determining factor. They affirm that heredity is everything and environment nothing, yet forget that it is precisely those who are most universally subject to bad environment who procreate most copiously, most recklessly and most disastrously."

"Eugenics aims to arouse the enthusiasm or the interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty generations in the future. On its negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization."

"While it is necessary to point out the importance of "heredity" as a determining factor in human life, it is fatal to elevate it to the position of an absolute. As with environment, the concept of heredity derives its value and its meaning only in so far as it is embodied and made concrete in generations of living organisms. Environment and heredity are not antagonistic. Our problem is not that of "Nature vs. Nurture," but rather of Nature x Nurture, of heredity multiplied by environment, if we may express it thus. The Eugenist who overlooks the importance of environment as a determining factor in human life, is as short-sighted as the Socialist who neglects the biological nature of man. We cannot disentangle these two forces, except in theory. To the child in the womb, said Samuel Butler, the mother is "environment." She is, of course, likewise "heredity." The age-old discussion of "Nature vs. Nurture" has been threshed out time after time, usually fruitlessly, because of a failure to recognize the indivisibility of these biological factors. The opposition or antagonism between them is an artificial and academic one, having no basis in the living organism."

"Our 'overhead' expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying … demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded 'captains of industry,' financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community."

"Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing. [...] Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand. In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose."

"...we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way — no matter how early it was performed it was taking a life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way — it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."

"Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception... Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding."

"I accepted one branch of this philosophy, but eugenics without birth control seemed to me a house built upon sands. It could not stand against the furious winds of economic pressure which had buffeted into partial or total helplessness a tremendous proportion of the human race. The eugenists wanted to shift the birth control emphasis from less children for the poor to more children for the rich. We went back of that and sought first to stop the multiplication of the unfit. This appeared the most important and greatest step towards race betterment."

"Discrimination is a world-wide thing. It has to be opposed everywhere. That is why I feel the Negro’s plight here is linked with that of the oppressed around the globe."

"When we first started out an anti-Negro white man offered me $10,000 if I started [setting up birth-control clinics] in Harlem first. His idea was simply to cut down the number of Negroes. ‘Spread it [birth control] as far as you can among them,’ he said. That is, of course, not our idea. I turned him down. But that is an example of how vicious some people can be about this thing."

"We may never achieve the goal of having every pregnancy end with the birth of a healthy, normal child, but certainly a vast majority of the 17,000 stillbirths which occur to Negro mothers each year could be prevented if every baby were planned. Mothers in poor physical condition, mothers who are suffering from chronic diseases, who are sustaining themselves on inadequate diets or performing work out of all proportion to their strength, should have the means to avoid childbearing until their own physical situation can be improved. It is wicked that such women should be expected to bear a baby every year or to deny the love of their husbands. The fact that such pregnancies so frequently end in miscarriage or still-birth makes this burden as pointless as it is cruel."

"The Negro race has reached a place in its history when every possible effort should be made to have every Negro child count as a valuable contribution to the future of America. Negro parents, like all parents, must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness; from health, not from despair."

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue in birth control."

"The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly."

"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock."

"The marriage-bed is the most degenerating influence of the social order."

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

"(We) are seeking to assist the white race toward the elimination of the unfit (blacks)."

"Throughout the 200+ pages of this book Sanger called for the elimination of "human weeds," for the cessation of charity, for the segregation of "morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races.""

"Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."

"Slavs, Latin and Hebrew immigrants are human weeds ... a deadweight of human waste ... Blacks, soldiers and Jews are a menace to the race."

"Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism."

"I admire Margaret Sanger enormously. Her courage, her tenacity, her vision... I am really in awe of her. And there are a lot of lessons we that can learn from her life and the cause she launched and fought for and sacrificed so greatly."

"While I would never argue that birth control or abortion rights constitute genocide, I have to take into consideration how sterilization has been imposed on poor people, especially people of color, and that someone like Margaret Sanger argued [birth control] was a privilege of affluent women but a duty for poorer women."

"Whether other feminists would agree with me that the economic is the fundamental aspect of feminism, I don't know. But on this we are surely agreed, that Birth Control is an elementary essential in all aspects of feminism. Whether we are the special followers of Alice Paul, or Ruth Law, or Ellen Key, or Olive Schreiner, we must all be followers of Margaret Sanger. Feminists are not nuns. That should be established."

"There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern."

"The first great birth-control crusader, Margaret Sanger, remarks that of the hundreds of women who wrote to her pleading for contraceptive information in the early part of the twentieth century, all spoke of wanting the health and strength to be better mothers to the children they already had; or of wanting to be physically affectionate to their husbands without dread of conceiving. None was refusing motherhood altogether, or asking for an easy life. These women-mostly poor, many still in their teens, all with several children-simply felt they could no longer do "right" by their families, whom they expected to go on serving and rearing. Yet there always has been, and there remains, intense fear of the suggestion that women shall have the final say as to how our bodies are to be used. It is as if the suffering of the mother, the primary identification of woman as the mother-were so necessary to the emotional grounding of human society that the mitigation, or removal, of that suffering, that identification, must be fought at every level, including the level of refusing to question it at all."

"Like many other working-class Jewish women, Ruth R. learned from reading Sanger's birth-control pamphlet, What Every Woman Should Know, in Yiddish. Margaret Sanger, Ruth asserted, was the real pioneer. "It was the universal case that every woman suffered," she recalled."

"Even in her most eugenical book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger did not tie fitness for reproduction to any particular ethnic group. It appears that Sanger was motivated by a genuine concern to improve the health of poor mothers she served rather than a desire to eliminate their stock. Sanger believed that all their afflictions arose from their unrestrained fertility, not their genes or racial heritage. For this reason, I agree that Sanger’s views were distinct from those of her eugenecist colleagues. Sanger nevertheless promoted two of the most perverse tenets of eugenic thinking: that social problems are caused by reproduction of the socially disadvantaged and that their childbearing should therefore be deterred."

"Margaret Sanger was never herself a racist, but she lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice unequivocally – especially when it was manifest among proponents of her cause – has haunted her ever since."

"Snger’s concerns centered on the economic status and health conditions of new immigrants and the country’s ability to absorb, educate, and employ them, rather than on immigrant’s particular ethnicity. However, she certainly lamented the fact that many new immigrants were Catholic and predisposed to oppose birth control. And Sanger quite effortlessly looked the other way when others spouted racist speech. She had no reservations about relying on flawed and overtly racist work to serve her own propaganda needs."

"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, To deck our girls for gay delights! The crimson flower of battle blooms, And solemn marches fill the nights."

"The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed, Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed: 'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe; And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know."

"What is the harvest of thy saints, O God! who dost abide? Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs In blood and sorrow dyed? What have thy servants for their pains?" "This only — to have tried."

"The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on."

"I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps, I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps, His Day is marching on."

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.""

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat. Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on."

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on."

"He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave, So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave, Our God is marching on."

"Arise then... women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts!"

"We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

"From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe our dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace..."

"In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace."

"I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small voice and do some such miracle as was done when the loaves and fishes fed the multitude in the ancient tune which has just been spoken of."

"Before I say anything on my own account, I want to take the word Christianity back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart whose pulse seems to throb through the world to-day, that endless fountain of charity out of which I believe has come all true progress and all civilization that deserves the name. As a woman I do not wish to dwell upon any trait of exclusiveness in the letter which belongs to a time when such exclusiveness perhaps could not be helped, and which may have been put in where it was not expressed. I go back to that great Spirit which contemplated a sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless and joyous inclusion. And I thank God for it."

"It has been extremely edifying to hear of the good theories of duty and morality and piety which the various religions advocate. I will put them all on one basis, Christian and Jewish and ethnic, which they all promulgate to mankind. But what I think we want now to do is to inquire why the practice of all nations, our own as well as any other, is so much at variance with these noble precepts? These great founders of religion have made the true sacrifice. They have taken a noble human life, full of every human longing and passion and power and aspiration, and they have taken it all to try and find out something about this question of what God meant man to be and does mean him to be. But while they have made this great sacrifice, how is it with the multitude of us? Are we making any sacrifice at all? We think it was very well that those heroic spirits should study, should agonize and bled for us. But what do we do?"

"I need not stand here to repeat any definition of what religion is. I think you will all say that it is aspiration, the pursuit of the divine in the human; the sacrifice of everything to duty for the sake of God and of humanity and of our own individual dignity."

"What is it that passes for religion? In some countries magic passes for religion, and that is one thing I wish, in view particularly of the ethnic faiths, could be made very prominent— that religion is not magic. I am very sure that in many countries it is supposed to be so. You do something that will bring you good luck. It is for the interests of the priesthood to cherish that idea. Of course the idea of advantage in this life and in another life is very strong, and rightly very strong in all human breasts. Therefore, it is for the advantage of the priesthoods to make it to be supposed that they have in their possession certain tricks, certain charms, which will give you either some particular prosperity in this world or possibly the privilege of immortal happiness. Now, this is not religion. This is most mischievous irreligion, and I think this Parliament should say, once for all, that the name of God and the names of his saints are not things to conjure with."

"I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion."

"From this Parliament let some valorous, new, strong, and courageous influence go forth, and let us have here an agreement of all faiths for one good end, for one good thing— really for the glory of God, really for the sake of humanity from all that is low and animal and unworthy and undivine."

"We returned to the city very slowly, of necessity, for the troops nearly filled the road. My dear minister was in the carriage with me, as were several other friends. To beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time snatches of the army songs so popular at that time, concluding, I think, with John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground; His soul is marching on. The soldiers seemed to like this, and answered back, "Good for you!" Mr. Clarke said, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?" I replied that I had often wished to do this, but had not as yet found in my mind any leading toward it. I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, "I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them." So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. I had learned to do this when, on previous occasions, attacks of versification had visited me in the night, and I feared to have recourse to a light lest I should wake the baby, who slept near me. I was always obliged to decipher my scrawl before another night should intervene, as it was only legible while the matter was fresh in my mind. At this time, having completed the writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, "I like this better than most things that I have written.""

"While the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed."

"Have we lost our God ? Never for one moment. Unspeakable, He is; the beneficent parent, the terrible, incorruptible judge, the champion of the innocent, the accuser of the guilty, refuge, hope, redeemer, friend; neither palace walls nor prison cells can keep Him out. Every step of our way from the birth hour He has gone with us. Were we at the gallows' foot, and deservedly, He would leave a sweet drop in the cup of death. He would measure suffering to us, but would forbid despair. The victory of goodness must be complete. The lost sheep must be found — ay, and the lost soul must turn to the way in which the peace of God prevails. We learn the dreadful danger of those who wander from the right path, but we may also learn the redeeming power which recalls and reclaims them. So fade our heavens and hells. Christ, if he knew their secrets, did not betray them. On the boundless sea of conjecture we are still afloat, with such mental tools as we possess to guide us, with the skies, the stars, the seasons, seeking a harbor from which no voyager has ever returned."

"To me has been granted a somewhat unusual experience of life. Ninety full years have been measured off to me, their lessons and opportunities unabridged by wasting disease or gnawing poverty. I have enjoyed general good health, comfortable circumstances, excellent company, and the incitements to personal effort which civilized society offers to its members. For this life and its gifts I am, I hope, devoutly thankful. I came into this world a hopeless and ignorant bit of humanity. I have found in it many helps toward the attainment of my full human stature, material, mental, moral. In this slow process of attainment many features have proved transient. Visions have come and gone. Seasons have bloomed and closed, passions have flamed and faded. Something has never left me. My relation to it has suffered many changes, but it still remains, the foundation of my life, light in darkness, consolation in ill fortune, guide in uncertainty. In the nature of things, I must soon lose sight of this sense of constant metamorphosis whose limits bound our human life. How about this unchanging element? Will it die when I shall be laid in earth? The visible world has no answer to this question. For it, dead is dead, and gone is gone. But a deep spring of life within me says: "Look beyond. Thy days numbered hitherto register a divine promise. Thy mortal dissolution leaves this promise unfulfilled, but not abrogated. Thou mayst hope that all that made thy life divine will live for thine immortal part." I have quoted Theodore Parker's great word, and have made no attempt, so far, to bring into view considerations which may set before us the fundamental distinction between what in human experience passes and what abides."

"Life passes, but the conditions of life do not. Air, food, water, the moral sense, the mathematical problem and its solution. These things wait upon one generation much as they did upon its predecessor. What, too, is this wonderful residuum which refuses to disappear when the very features of time seem to succumb to the law of change, and we recognize our world no more ? Whence comes this system in which man walks as in an artificial frame, every weight and lever of which must correspond with the outlines of an eternal pattern? Our spiritual life appears to include three terms in one. They are ever with us, this Past which does not pass, this Future which never arrives. They are part and parcel of this conscious existence which we call Present. While Past and Future have each their seasons of predominance, both are contained in the moment which is gone while we say, "It is here." So the Eternal is with us, whether we will or not, and the idea of God is inseparable from the persuasion of immortality; the Being which, perfect in itself, can neither grow nor decline, nor indeed undergo any change whatever. The great Static of the universe, the rationale of the steadfast faith of believing souls, the sense of beauty which justifies our high enjoyments, the sense of proportion which upholds all that we can think about ourselves and our world, the sense of permanence which makes the child in very truth parent to the man, able to solve the deepest riddle, the profoundest problem in all that is. Let us then willingly take the Eternal with us in our flight among the suns and stars. Experience is our great teacher, and on this point it is wholly wanting. No one on the farther side of the great Divide has been able to inform those on the hither side of what lies beyond."

"The promise of a future life is held to have such prominence in Christ's teaching as to lead Paul to say that the Master "brought life and immortality to light." How did he do this? By filling the life of to-day with the consciousness of eternal things, of truths and principles which would not change if the whole visible universe were to pass away. No one to-day, I think, will maintain that Christ created the hope which he aroused to an activity before undreamed of. The majority of the Jews believed in a life after death, as is shown by the segregation of the Sadducees from the orthodox of the synagogue. The new teaching vindicated the spiritual rights and interests of man. From the depths of his own heart was evolved the consciousness of a good that could not die. Man, the creature of a day, has a vested interest in things eternal."

"The reason which placed the stars, the sense of proportion which we recognize in the planetary system, finds its correspondence in this brain of ours. We question every feature of what we see, think, and feel. We try every link of the chain and find it sound if we ourselves are sound. This power of remotest question and assent is not of to-day nor yesterday. It transcends all bounds of time and space. It weighs the sun, explores the pathway of the stars, and writes, having first carefully read, the history of earth and heaven. It moves in company with the immortals. How much of it is mortal? Only so much as a small strip of earth can cover. These remains are laid away with reverence, having served their time. But what has become of the wonderful power which made them alive ? It belongs to that in nature which cannot die."

"Here I am, in Quaker surroundings, whose restful simplicity is most congenial to me. I feel here the earnest desire for genuine growth and culture which founds a slow but sure success. I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build."

"I feel that I must attack this creed of blood, which does much to keep up the cruel and sanguinary views of barbarous ages about God and man. Will take text, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." Show that Christ brought a new interest into the world; a new vision of God, the loving one; a new view of man, the hopeful and universal one; his death in its character the seal to his perfect life. But we are saved by his doctrine, by the same spirit which animated his life, — we are saved by his life, not by his death, except as it was the necessary moral sequence of his life."

"Charity is an unending self-discipline which always looks and leads towards the eternal affection. Therefore, its triumph shall be lasting and everlasting."

"We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the experience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

"There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them."

"see how long Julia Ward Howe lived, and many other old ladies of whom I have read with delight in the American papers. How beautiful it is to see and hear an old woman of eighty or ninety addressing words of love and reason to the young generation!"

"Julia Ward Howe, although this was only discovered about ten years ago, wrote a novel about a hermaphrodite--a man/woman who loves both men and women--that most critics now think was her own meditation on her husband's bisexuality."

"I know, Mother, you feel badly and that you would prefer to have me take some other course, if I could in conscience. Yet, Mother, I know you too well to suppose that you would wish me to turn away from what I think is my duty. I surely would not be a public speaker if I sought a life of ease, for it will be a most laborious one; nor would I do it for the sake of honor, for I know that I shall be disesteemed, even hated, by some who are now my friends, or who profess to be. Neither would I do it if I sought wealth, because I could secure it with far more ease and worldly honor by being a teacher. If I would be true to myself, true to my Heavenly Father, I must pursue that course of conduct which, to me, appears best calculated to promote the highest good of the world."

"If, while I hear the shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth for the dumb, am I not guilty? Or should I go from house to house to do it, when I could tell so many more in less time, if they should be gathered in one place? You would not object or think it wrong, for a man to plead the cause of the suffering and the outcast; and surely the moral character of the act is not changed because it is done by a woman. I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. I only ask that you will not withhold your consent from my doing anything that I think is my duty to do."

"This letter writing is a miserable way of communicating, after all, though I would not on any account be deprived of it. But when ones soul is full, and only a little sheet, to put it into, it is so aggravating. There are so many things I want to say, and feel with you, that I dont know where to begin."

"Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation?"

"We want rights. The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest."

"Too much has already been said and written about "women's sphere". Leave women, then, to find their sphere."

"The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman... I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an immortal being—every employment was closed to me, except those of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer."

"I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body."

"All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours."

"I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power."

"You may talk about Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote. Today we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it as long as you please."

"We believe in marriage for life, and deprecate all this loose, pestiferous talk in favor of easy divorce... Be not deceived — free love means free lust."

"It is not quite the same when we are seventy-two as when we are twenty-seven; still I am glad of what is left, and wish we might both hold out till the victory we have sought is won, but all the same the victory is coming. In the aftertime the world will be the better for it."

"We have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind."

"Make the world better."

"While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess."

"We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power..."

"The commencement of the last fifty years is about the beginning of that great change and improvement in the condition of women which exceeds all the gains of hundreds of years before."

"In 1833, Oberlin College, in Ohio, was founded. Its charter declared its grand object, - "To give the most useful education at the least expense of health, time, and money, and to extend the benefits of such education to both sexes and to all classes; and the elevation of the female character by bringing within the reach of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instructive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably distinguished the leading sex from theirs." These were the words of Father Shippen, which, if not heard in form, were heard in fact as widely as the world. The opening of Oberlin to women marked an epoch."

"Get but a truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new born that drops into its place; And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the earth can shake. Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the healing of the nations."

"Whatever the reason, the idea was born that women could and should be educated. It lifted a mountain load from woman. It shattered the idea, everywhere pervasive as the atmosphere, that women were incapable of education, and would be less womanly, less desirable in every way, if they had it. However much it may have been resented, women accepted the idea of their intellectual inequality. I asked my brother: "Can girls learn Greek?""

"The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sarah Grimké and Abby Kelley went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition."

"The press, many-tongued, surpassed itself in reproaches upon these women who had so far departed from their sphere as to speak in public. But, with anointed lips and a consecration which put even life itself at stake, these peerless women pursued the even tenor of their way, saying to their opponents only: "Woe is me, if I preach not this gospel of freedom for the slave." Over all came the melody of Whittier's "When woman's heart is breaking Shall woman's voice be hushed? ""

"I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned."

"Abby Kelly once entered a church only to find herself the subject of the sermon, which was preached from the text: " This Jezebel is come among us also." They jeered at her as she went along the street. They threw stones at her. They pelted her with bad eggs as she stood on the platform. Some of the advocates of the very cause for which she endured all this were ready to drive her from the field."

"The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained."

"Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society. But the spinning-wheel and the loom, which had given employment to women, had been superseded by machinery, and something else had to take their places. The taking care of the house and children, and the family sewing, and teaching the little summer school at a dollar per week, could not supply the needs nor fill the aspirations of women. But every departure from these conceded things was met with the cry, "You want to get out of your sphere," or, "To take women out of their sphere;" and that was to fly in the face of Providence, to unsex yourself in short, to be monstrous women, women who, while they orated in public, wanted men to rock the cradle and wash the dishes. We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the tools belonged to those who could use them; that the possession of a power presupposed a right to its use."

"When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York, she was regarded as fair game, and was called a "she doctor." The college that had admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women; and supposed they were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great personal worth and a level head. How good it was that such a woman was the first doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to contend with prejudice and every opposing thing."

"The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and opposition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and west, all over the country."

"In Massachusetts, where properly qualified "persons" were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a "person," and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar. But today women are lawyers."

"Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copyright of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal existence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy." When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance.""

"While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it."

"By what toil and fatigue and patience and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

"Mrs. R. (Ernestine Rose) and myself were talking of the know nothing organizations [the anti-immigrant American Party], when she criticized Lucy Stone and Wendell Philips with regard to their feelings toward foreigners. Said she had heard them both express themselves in terms of prejudice against granting to foreigners the rights of Citizenship."

"Lucy Stone came closest to expressing the dilemma confronting the men and women who debated this issue [the 15th Amendment], and a dilemma it was, for she could not resolve the question of priority either: "Mrs. Stanton will, of course, advocate the precedence of her sex, and Mr. Douglass will strive for the first position for his, and both are perhaps right. If it be true that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, we are safe in trusting that principle to the uttermost. If one has a right to say that you cannot read and therefore cannot vote, then it may be said that you are a woman and therefore can not vote. We are lost if we turn away from the middle principle and argue for one class....There are two great oceans; in the one is the black man, and in the other is woman. But I thank God for the XV Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of this terrible pit. But I believe that the safety of the government would be more promoted by the admission of woman as an element of restoration and harmony than the negro. I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power”...Precisely because passage of the Fifteenth Amendment was intended to advance the cause of Afro-American freedom, it inevitably would have rebounded to the benefit of woman, but only a class-conscious element could have seen that point in 1869. Douglass and Stone came closest to understanding it, but neither one could develop an analysis that did not rest upon making one oppression more important than the other."

"I remember always how beautiful and how heavenly sweet and splendid was our best woman, Lucy Stone, the ornament of the human race."

"One thing causes me sorrow. It is the thought that the name of Lucy Stone, so often mentioned in her Journal, is known to few persons, and that the young generation pronounce that venerable name only by heart, without understanding how great and holy it is...You have no right to leave the world without giving it the biography of your noble and beautiful mother. You have no right to rob posterity of such a treasure. Humanity is not yet too rich in beautiful examples not to show them to us as largely as possible. We need to have before us such images as can inspire us, teach us."

"On another occasion, I returned to Boston, where Cell 16 had fulfilled one of my dreams by organizing a forum in historic Fannueil Hall in old Boston. In that hall, Lucy Stone, the Grimké sisters, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass had held antislavery and profeminist meetings during the decades before the Civil War. Their legacy had motivated me to move to Boston to launch female liberation."

"Nor let it be said that we have forgot/The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;/Nor her who to the world was known/By the simple name of Lucy Stone."

"In all action taken under her supervision, Mrs. Stone was most careful that the main issue should be constantly presented and kept in view. While welcoming every reform which gave evidence of the ethical progress of the community, she yet held to woman suffrage, pure and simple, as the first condition upon which the new womanhood should base itself. Efforts were often made to entangle suffrage with the promise of endless reforms in various directions, but firm as Cato, who always repeated his words that Carthage should be destroyed, Lucy Stone always asked for suffrage because it is right and just that women should have it...What had she to work with? A silver voice, a winning smile, the great gift of a persuasive utterance. What had she to work from? A deep and abiding faith in divine justice and in man’s ability to follow its laws and to execute its decrees...Here she was still debarred the right to cast her ballot at the polls, but lo, in the blue urn of heaven her life was received, one glowing and perfect vote for the rights of women, for the good of humanity, for the Kingdom of god on earth."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"Through the Quakers, who believed in equality for women, I first came into touch with the woman suffrage movement. I began to be very much interested in the question, especially after reading about Lucy Stone, one of the earliest fighters against Negro slavery, and a leader for many years in the struggle for woman's suffrage."

"I have half-believed for a long time that you were preparing for a public speaker, though I hoped I might be mistaken. Not that I think I wrong in itself, but because I think it an employment a great many grades below, what I believe my only and dearly loved sister qualified to engage in. I don't hardly know what you mean by "laboring for the restoration and salvation of our sex" but I conclude you mean a salvation from some thralldom imposed by man. Now my sister I don't believe woman is groaning under half so heavy a yoke of bondage as you imagine. I am sure I do not feel burdened by anything man has laid upon me, be sure I can't vote, but what care I for that, I would not if I could. I know there is a distinction made in the wages of males and females when they perform the same labor, this I think is unjust, and it is the only thing in which woman is oppressed, that I know of, but women have no one to blame, but themselves in this matter. If as a general thing they had qualified themselves, as men have they would command the same price, but they have not, and the few who have are obliged to suffer on that account. I think my sister if you would spend the remainder of your life in educating our sex, you would do afar greater good than you will if you spend your noble energies in forever hurling "back the insults and indignities that men heap upon us." This I am sure you can never do "by the grace of God" for it is entirely contrary to his spirit and teachings. My sister commit your ways unto the Lord, and he will direct your steps."

"Now Miss Lucy, you will hear what Mother thinks about your Public Speaking. Mother said she had rather you would marry and have a pair [of] twin babies every year. She did not say how many years. Mother cannot bear to think of your Preaching or Lecturing. She thinks it is a wrong course for you to take, says if you go to Lecturing you will fix it so you can’t keep school. Mother wants you should Teach, she thinks you would do the most good that way. You will want to know [my] mind. I don’t know what to tell you. You know it will make much talk in our quarter of the World. You will do that which seems right in your own eyes. I suppose, to be honest, I like mother’s plan better than yours. You are of age to [do] that which you think is your duty. Mother says she cannot find no place where Christ ever sent Women to Preach. We shall want to hear from you as soon as you get this, you will write what you think about Mother’s plan."

"The Bible says, “Let your women keep silence.” It is flying in the face of Providence!"

"If you think you have got brass enough, and can do more good by giving public lectures than any other way, I say go to it. But Mother doesn’t like the idea."

"I believe Sarah said in her last letter that if you intend lecturing she hoped you would not come into this State. I wish you to do what you think is your duty. If you violate your sense of duty to please your friends, you will lose more than you will gain."

"At the low wages then paid to women, it took Lucy nine years to save up money enough to enter college. There was no difficulty as to the choice of an alma mater. There was only one college that admitted women."

"The young men had to hold debates as part of their work in rhetoric, and the young women were required to be present, for an hour and a half every week, in order to help form an audience for the boys, but were not allowed to take part."

"A few of the young women, led by Lucy, organized the first debating society ever formed among college girls. At first they held their meetings secretly in the woods, with sentinels on the watch to give warming of intruders. When the weather grew colder, Lucy asked an old colored woman who owned a small house, the mother of one of her colored pupils, to let them have the use of her parlor. At first she was doubtful, fearing that the meetings might be a cover for flirtation; but when she found that the debating society was made up of girls only, she decided that it must be an innocent affair, and gave her consent. Her house was on the outskirts of the town, and the girls came one or two at a time, so as not to attract attention. Lucy opened the first formal meeting with the following statement: "We shall leave this college with the reputation of a thorough collegiate course, yet not one of us has received any rhetorical or elocutionary training. Not one of us could state a question or argue it in successful debate. For this reason I have proposed the formation of this association.""

"While the man is born to do whatever he can, for the woman and the negro there is no such privilege."

"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her... He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective to the franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise , thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, her has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead."

"In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object."

"Resolved, That is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise."

"The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man."

"Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered."

"Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning...We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens."

"Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes."

"We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal."

"I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church."

"For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power and the canon law."

"In defense of the right to...marry whom we please -- we might quote some of the basic principles of our government [and] suggest that in some things individual rights to tastes should control....If a good man from Maryland sees fit to marry a disenfranchised woman from New York, there should be no legal impediments to the union."

"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."

"All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!"

"Susan had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity."

"In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles's time, a Puritan; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a Reformer."

"The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings."

"No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation."

"No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life."

"To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment."

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving."

"The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman."

"Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice."

"The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible."

"Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?"

"In fact the wives of the patriarchs, all untruthful, and one a kleptomaniac, but illustrate the law, that the cardinal virtues are seldom found in oppressed classes."

"In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?"

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"I want you to understand that I never could have done the work I have if I had not had this woman at my right hand."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

"there was considerable anti-Semitic sentiment among Protestant suffrage leaders. Stanton focused on the Jewish (“Old”) Testament attitude to women..."

"It is no wonder that the eager, highly intelligent, already rebellious, young bride Elizabeth Cady Stanton found Lucretia Mott a "revelation," and they "walked home arm in arm" from the convention hall to their lodgings in Queen Street declaring "it was high time some demand was made for the liberties of women," and "discussing the propriety of calling a woman's rights convention.""

"The struggle for the right of women to vote was nationwide and growing. It had started with the first Equal Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was addressed by Frederick Douglass, the great Negro leader. The suffragists had been ridiculed, assaulted by mobs, refused halls, arrested for attempting to vote, disowned by their families. By 1904, groups of working women, especially Socialist women, were banding together to join in the demand for the vote. Two years later, International Women's Day was born on the East Side of New York, at the initiative of these women demonstrating for suffrage. It spread around the world and is universally celebrated today, while here it is deprecated as "a foreign holiday.""

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"The History of Woman Suffrage is an incomplete, flawed and heavily biased assemblage of sources. It distorts the origins of the movement by ignoring or downplaying the role of many activists and antecedent activists in favor of stressing the leadership of a few women. The strongly secular bias of its editors and their disenchantment with the organized churches in regard to the struggle of women for their emancipation are reflected in the way they defined the movement as mostly political and constitutional, disregarding the important feminist struggles in the various churches during the century.It is also factionally biased in its downplaying of the role of the women who in 1869 split with Stanton and Anthony, a distortion which is particularly striking in regard to the role of Lucy Stone. Yet these volumes have provided the basis for over a hundred years of historiography on the subject and, in what Mary Ritter Beard called "the long history of women," represent a milestone."

"I have documented 700 years of feminist bible criticism prior to 1870, and every woman who engaged in that feminist bible criticism thought she was the first woman ever to do this. And when Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1893, published the Woman’s Bible, she put in the forward, “No woman before me has ever done this.” This is tragic, because it symbolizes the true position that women held in the world, which was to think, each woman thought, and each man taught each woman to think, and each mother taught their sons and daughters to think, that women have not contributed significantly to the creation of thought, to the creation of culture, and to the creation of civilization. This is a lie, all right?"

"Mainstream feminist leaders (with the exception of the aging Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the younger Charlotte Perkins Gilman) muted the earlier criticism of sexual and familial relationships in favor of concentration on legal and political issues. Whether they shifted their emphasis because of ideological considerations or as a tactical move was in one sense irrelevant; in the eyes of both its own rank-and-file and the larger society the movement as a whole became less radical, less threatening, and hence less likely to effect fundamental changes. The anarchist-feminists refused to accept this solution to the dilemma."

"From the mid-seventies onward, organized feminism had become increasingly decorous. Matilda Joslyn Gage, after all, was forced to go outside the organized movement to find a platform for her anticlerical views, and the venerable but always irreverent Elizabeth Cady Stanton found herself out-flanked and outvoted by her more conventional sisters. While feminism moved toward respectability, anarchism, at least in the public view, became increasingly radical. Partly because of the fiery rhetoric of Johann Most and his admirers, and partly because of antiforeign sentiment, the anarchist came to be viewed as a symbol of irrational violence. The public image of the anarchist was that of a deranged terrorist."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton who, amid no little derision from American lawyers, had battled valiently against William Blackstone's dictum that woman was a favorite in English law and had lived to see many triumphs over common-law doctrines in the enactment of married women's property acts in state after state."

"With constant reiteration, the acclaimed legalist of the woman movement in the nineteenth century, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an outstanding pleader for women's rights before law-making bodies, spoke and wrote as if William Blackstone's account of English law was in fact the law of the land-supreme law-in nearly all vital man-woman relations. It is true that Mrs. Stanton mentioned from time to time the gains which women had been making and were making in their struggle against formulas of the common law; but she repeatedly resorted to wholesale generalizations which treated Blackstone's sweeping generalizations as still binding in law, even to her day in the United States."

"Struggle brought about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the government from denying women the right to vote. The amendment did not just appear: It was the fruit of the struggle of the suffragettes, led by such figures as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the mid-nineteenth century."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the greatest of the early leaders"

"I had always resented the pains that militant suffragists took to belittle the work that woman had done in the past in the world, picturing her as a meek and prostrate "doormat." They refused, I felt, to pay proper credit to the fine social and economic work that women had done in the building of America. And in 1909, after we took over the American Magazine, I burst out with a series of studies of leading American women from the Revolution to the Civil War, including such stalwarts as Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Esther Reed, Mary Lyon, Catharine Beecher, the fighting antislavery leaders-not omitting two for whom I had warm admiration, if I was not in entire agreement with them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony."

"Pillars are fallen at thy feet, Fanes quiver in the air, A prostrate city is thy seat, And thou alone art there."

"Genius hath electric power Which earth can never tame, Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower, Its flash is still the same."

"England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland."

"I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book."

"Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do."

"Neither the planters nor the Colonization Society, seem to ask what right we have to remove people from the places where they have been born and brought up, —where they have a home, which, however miserable, is still their home, —and where their relatives and acquaintances all reside. Africa is no more their native country than England is ours, —nay, it is less so, because there is no community of language or habits; —besides, we cannot say to them, as Gilpin said to his horse, "'Twas for your pleasure you came here, you shall go back for mine.""

"We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate."

"They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!"

"In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery."

"In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns."

"I do not know how the affair at Canterbury is generally considered; but I have heard individuals of all parties and all opinions speak of it—and never without merriment or indignation. Fifty years hence, the black laws of Connecticut will be a greater source of amusement to the antiquarian, than her famous blue laws."

"I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me."

"Over the river, and through the wood, To grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way, To carry the sleigh, Through the white and drifted snow."

"Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism."

"Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning."

"None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much."

"The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home."

"Home—that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wings."

"The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos."

"Reverence is the highest quality of man’s nature; and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshipping themselves."

"Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs."

"There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. Everything seems to me to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not merely uncouth garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling troop of gnomes—but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on which society rests; or rather, on which it now reels and totters."

"Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kind, sunshiny old age."

"A human heart can never grow old if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves. letters from ny wqadd"

"That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds."

"The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word LOVE. It is the divine vitality that produces and restores life. To each and every one of us it gives the power of working miracles, if we will."

"Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike." letters from ny wqadd"

"It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world."

"Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box."

"The United States is...a warning rather than an example to the world."

"I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually."

"All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure."

"Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last."

"That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom."

"our republican ideas cannot be consistently carried out while women are excluded from any share in the government. ... Any class of human beings to whom a position of perpetual subordination is assigned, however much they may be petted and flattered, must inevitably be dwarfed, morally and intellectually."

"Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being."

"The civilization of any country may always be measured by the degree of equality between men and women; and society will never come truly into order until there is perfect equality and copartnership between them in every department of human life."

"It is wonderful how shy even liberal ministers generally are about trusting people with the plain truth concerning their religion. They want to veil it in a supernatural haze. They are very reluctant to part with the old idea that God has given to Jews and Christians a peculiar monopoly of truth. It is a selfish view of God's government of the world, and it is time that we knew enough to outgrow it."

"I keep working because I am quite sure that no particle of goodness or truth is ever really lost, however appearances may be to the contrary."

"Although women were present at the founding meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a few of them received permission to speak, they did not vote or otherwise partake in the decision-making apparatus of the convention. The AASS constitution provided that all persons except slaveholders, who subscribed to the organization's principles and supported it financially were eligible for membership. "For the first few years," one historian reported, "no one thought of defining 'persons,' and custom determined the respective roles of men and women members." In time, however, woman's prominence in the antislavery work became evident. Lydia Maria Child, for example, was probably as important as William Lloyd Garrison in the formative years of the AASS; and by 1837 Angelina and Sarah Grimké were among the best known public figures identified with the abolitionist cause."

"Biographies of eminent women designed to appeal to literate women readers became a popular genre in the 19th century in England and in other European countries.In the United States this genre is represented by a two-volume History of Women by Lydia Maria Child. ... The only female sources she uses are travel writers and Phillis Wheatley. Her omissions are more interesting than her inclusions; for example, under "Vindications of Women" she lists Marguerite de Navarre but neither Christine de Pzan nor Mary Wollstonecraft. Frances Wright, who shortly before the publication of Child's book had given widely publicized and highly controversial public lectures in the Eastern seaboard cities advocating women's rights and sexual freedom, was dismissed by Child in a passing reference as a modern disciple of "the infidels of the French revolution Child's attempt at a cultural and societal discussion of the condition" of women is innovative, but her list is quite traditional."

"Feminist writers, not trained historians, were the first to undertake a systematic attempt to approach the problem of women's role in American life and history. This took the form of feminist tracts, theoretical approaches, and compilations of woman's "contributions." The early compilers attacked the subject with a missionary zeal designed, above all, to right wrong. Their tendency was to praise anything women had done as a "contribution" and to include any women who had gained the slightest public attention in their numerous lists. Still, much positive work was done in simply recounting the history of the woman's rights movement and some of its forerunners and in discussing some of the women whose pioneering struggles opened opportunities to others. Feminist writers were hampered by a two-fold bias. First, they shared the middle-class, nativist, moralistic approach of the Progressives and tended to censure out of existence anyone who did not fit into this pattern. Thus we find that women like Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose received little attention because they were considered too radical. "Premature feminists" such as the Grimké sisters, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child are barely mentioned."

"I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind."

"The nature of women's oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us."

"The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it."

"Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use."

"While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact."

"Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."

"Seductive mirages of progress notwithstanding, nowhere in the world is apartheid practiced with more cruelty and finality than in Saudi Arabia. Of course, it is women who are locked in and kept out, exiled to invisibility and object powerlessness within their own country. It is women who are degraded systematically from birth to early death, utterly and total and without exception deprived of freedom. It is women who are sold into marriage or concubinage, often before puberty; killed if their hymens are not intact on the wedding night; kept confined, ignorant, pregnant, poor, without choice or recourse. It is women who are raped and beaten with full sanction of the law. It is women who cannot own property or work for a living or determine in any way the circumstances of their own lives. It is women who are subject to a despotism that knows no restraint. Women, locked out and locked in. Mr Carter, enchanted with his good friends, the Saudis. Mr Carter, a sincere advocate of human rights. Sometimes even a feminist with a realistic knowledge of male hypocrisy and a strong stomach cannot believe the world she lives in."

"By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of "I am afraid", we say, "I don't want to", or "I don't know how", or "I can't.""

"The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity."

"For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values—or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be—to be through her son, to live through her son."

"A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture—in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers."

"Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation.... The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover."

"I represent the morbid side of the women's movement. I deal with the shit, the real shit."

"The female life-force is characterized as a negative one: we are defined as inherently masochistic. [. . .] Sexual masochism actualizes female negativity, just as sexual sadism actualizes male positivity. A woman’s erotic femininity is measured by the degree to which she needs to be hurt, needs to be possessed, needs to be abused, needs to submit, needs to be beaten, needs to be humiliated, needs to be degraded."

"The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable."

"I think the essence of romantic love for women is being the special one, and that's an absolutely terrible trap. If the lover treats certain other people badly, you will be treated that badly, too."

"Q: People think you are very hostile to men. A: I am. Q: Doesn't that worry you? A: From what you said, it worries them."

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated pornography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women."

"I want to see this men's movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political actions are lies if we don't make a commitment to ending the practice of rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has to be systematic. It has to be public. It can't be self-indulgent."

"Anti-feminism is also operating whenever any political group is ready to sacrifice one group of women, one faction, some women, some kinds of women, to any element of sex-class oppression: to pornography, to rape, to battery, to economic exploitation, to reproductive exploitation, to prostitution. There are women all along the male-defined political spectrum, including both extreme ends of it, ready to sacrifice some women, usually not themselves, to the brothels or the farms. The sacrifice is profoundly anti-feminist; it is also profoundly immoral..."

"When a word is used to provoke hatred, it does not matter what the word actually means. What matters is only what the haters insist it means—the meaning they give it, the common prejudices they exploit."

"It is no secret that fear and hatred of homosexuals permeate our society. But the contempt for lesbians is distinct. It is directly rooted in the abhorrence of the self defined woman, the self-determining woman, the woman who is not controlled by male need, imperative, or manipulation. Contempt for lesbians is most often a political repudiation of women who organize in their own behalf to achieve public presence, significant power, visible integrity."

"Enemies of women, those who are determined to deny us freedom an dignity, use the word lesbian to provoke a hatred of women who do not conform. This hatred rumbles everywhere. This hatred is sustained and expressed by virtually every institution. When male power is challenged, this hatred can be intensified and inflamed so into violence. The threat is omnipresent because violence against women is culturally applauded. And so the word lesbian, hurled or whispered as accusation, is used to focus male hostility on women who dare to rebel, and it is also used to frighten and bully women who have not yet rebelled."

"All around us there are other women, seemingly not hurt, making small talk, acting normal, which means happy, not discontent, certainly not devastated. Girls are still being socialised not to identify with—feel empathy for—other females: she got hurt because she did x, y, z—I didn’t, so I didn’t get hurt; she’s at fault, I’m not; the punishment fits her crime; blame her, exonerate him. This continuing, culturally applauded socialisation of women not to empathize with other women is a malignant part of the culture of men, dead white ones or not. Women are perceived to be appalling failures when we are sad. Women are pathetic when we are angry. Women are ridiculous when we are militant. Women are unpleasant when we are bitter, no matter what the cause. Women are deranged when women want justice. Women are man-haters when women want accountability and respect from men. Women are trash when women let men do what men want Women are shrews or puritans when we do not."

"Any man will follow any feminine looking thing down any dark alley; I've always wanted to see a man beaten to a shit bloody pulp with a high-heeled shoe stuffed up his mouth, sort of the pig with the apple; it would be good to put him on a serving plate but you'd need good silver."

"(On prostitution:) Incest is boot camp. Incest is where you send the girl to learn how to do it. So you don't, obviously, have to send her anywhere, she's already there and she's got nowhere else to go. She's trained. And the training is specific and it is important: not to have any real boundaries to her own body; to know that she's valued only for sex; to learn about men what the offender, the sex offender, is teaching her."

"I'm going to ask you to remember the prostituted, the homeless, the battered, the raped, the tortured, the murdered, the raped-then-murdered, the murdered-then-raped; and I am going to ask you to remember the photographed, the ones that any or all of the above happened to and it was photographed and now the photographs are for sale in our free countries. I want you to think about those who have been hurt for the fun, the entertainment, the so-called speech of others; those who have been hurt for profit, for the financial benefit of pimps and entrepreneurs. I want you to remember the perpetrator and I am going to ask you to remember the victims: not just tonight but tomorrow and the next day. I want you to find a way to include them -- the perpetrators and the victims -- in what you do, how you think, how you act, what you care about, what your life means to you. Now, I know, in this room, some of you are the women I have been talking about. I know that. People around you may not. I am going to ask you to use every single thing you can remember about what was done to you -- how it was done, where, by whom, when, and, if you know -- why -- to begin to tear male dominance to pieces, to pull it apart, to vandalize it, to destabilize it, to mess it up, to get in its way, to fuck it up. I have to ask you to resist, not to comply, to destroy the power men have over women, to refuse to accept it, to abhor it and to do whatever is necessary despite its cost to you to change it."

"one thing to talk about the redistribution of wealth. It's quite another thing to talk about the redistribution of power. That's more what interests me."

"Michael Moorcock: Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying? Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever.… My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse—it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman."

"I have been asked, politely and not so politely, why I am myself. This is an accounting any woman will be called on to give if she asserts her will. In the home the question will be couched in a million cruelties, some subtle, some so egregious they rival the injuries of organized war. … It must be admitted that those who want me to account for myself are intrigued in hostile, voyeuristic ways, and their projections of me are not the usual run-of-the-mill rudeness or arrogance to which writers, especially women writers, become accustomed. The work would be enough, even for the unfortunate sad sacks mentioned above. So here's the deal as I see it: I am ambitious—God knows, not for money; in most respects but not all I am honorable; and I wear overalls: kill the bitch. But the bitch is not yet ready to die. Brava, she says, alone in a small room."

"[Interviewer:] What would you say is the most overrated virtue? [Dworkin:] Compliance and conformity.... normal is seriously overrated."

"is often a hostile act, often an exercise of power over somebody else."

"Pornography is used in rape—to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender the excitement to commit the act."

"The pornographers actually use our bodies as their language. We are their speech. . . . Protecting what they 'say' means protecting what they do to us, how they do it. It means protecting their sadism on our bodies, because that is how they write: not like a writer at all; like a torturer."

"Rape is a question of access. Men will rape woman to whom they have access. The stranger in rape is used in a very important political way especially in organizing woman on the right: the stranger is used as a scapegoat. In the United States the stranger is black and he is a rapist. In Nazi Germany the stranger was a Jew and he was a rapist.This use of rape associated with a stranger is a basic component of racism. Women's fears of rape are legitimate. Those fears are manipulated to serve the ends of racism. We now see the same scapegoat strategy being used against homosexual men, who are accused of child molestation when most child molestation is of little girls. It is not that homosexual men do not rape. They do. So do black men and Jewish men. Men in all classes and of all races and ethnicities rape, which is not to say that all men rape. It is to say that all men benefit from rape, because all men benefit from the fact that women are not free in this society; that women cower; that women are afraid; that women cannot assert the rights that we have, limited as those rights are, because of the ubiquitous presence of rape."

"I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds."

"I know a hell of a lot about intercourse. I wish I knew less."

"(Dworkin's statements quoted:) Her own experiences—as a rape victim, a prostitute and a battered wife—only added to the trenchancy of her views, but she reacted with fury to suggestions that such traumas had made it difficult for her to be objective. "I've never heard Solzhenitsyn asked if he can be objective about the gulag," she snarled. "As if not paying attention to rape and wife battery were some kind of objectivity.""

"Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy."

"Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance."

"Pornography incarnates male supremacy. It is the DNA of male dominance. Every rule of sexual abuse, every nuance of sexual sadism, every highway and byway of sexual exploitation, is encoded in it."

"...pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity–the woman trapped in the picture used on the woman trapped wherever he's got her."

"[I]n the male sexual lexicon, which is the vocabulary of power, erotica is simply high-class pornography: better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer. As with the call girl and the streetwalker, one is turned out better but both are produced by the same system of sexual values and both perform the same sexual service."

"Male supremacy is fused into language, so that every sentence as language, is permeated by the linguistic and perceptual values developed expressly to subordinate women. Men have defined the parameters of every subject."

"Money speaks, but it speaks in a male voice. In the hands of women, money stays literal; count it out it buys what it is worth or less. In the hands of men, money buys women, sex, status, dignity, esteem, recognition, loyalty, all manner of possibility."

"Wife beating and marital rape , pervasive here as elsewhere, are predicated on the conviction that a man's ownership of his wife licenses whatever he wishes to do to her: her boy belongs to him to use for his own sexual release, to beat, to impregnate. The male power of owning by virtue of its historical centrality, is barely constrained b the modest legal restrictions put on it."

"Men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it. Men are regarded for leaning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them. The conflict between these groups embody the male commitment to violence: conflict is action; action is masculine."

"Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity."

"Men renounce whatever they have in common with women so as to experience no commonality with women; and whatis left according to men, is one piece of flesh a few inches long, the penis."

"Boys and Men do experience sexual abuse at the hands of men. The honmophobes distorting concentration on this fact, which cannot and must not be denied, neatly eliminates from view the primary victim of male sexual abuse: women and girls. This is congruent with the fact that crimes against females are ultimately viewed as expressions of male normalcy, while crimes against men and boys are viewed as perversions of that same normalcy. Society's general willingness to do anything necessary to protect boys and men from male sexual aggression is testimony to the value of a male life. Society's general refusal to do anything meaningful to protect women and girls from male sexual aggression is testimony to the worthlessness of a female life. A male life must be protected for its own sake. A female life warrants protection only when the female belongs to a male, as wife, daughter, mistress, whore; it is the owner who has a right to have his rights over his females protected from other men. A female's bodily integrity or well-being is not protected because of the value of the woman as a human being in her own right."

"Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from the brutality of male history. The private world of sexual dominance that men demand as their right and their freedom is the mirror image of the public world of sadism and atrocity that men consistently and self-righteously deplore. It is in the male experience of pleasure that one finds the meaning of male history."

"Those leftists who champion Sade might do well to remember that prerevolutionary France was filled with starving people. The feudal system was both cruel and crude. The rights of the aristocracy to the labor and bodies of the poor were unchallenged and not challengeable. The tyranny of class was absolute. The poor sold what they could, including themselves, to survive. Sade learned and upheld the ethic of his class."

"Women, for centuries not having access to pornography and now unable to bear looking at the muck on the supermarket shelves, are astonished. Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do."

"The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too."

"Intercourse is a world that moves through the sexed world of dominance and submission. It moves in descending circles, not in a straight line, and as in a vortex each spiral goes down deeper."

"The public censure of women as if we are rabid because we speak without apology about the world in which we live is a strategy of threat that usually works. Men often react to women's words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence' sometimes men react to women's words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men—control, violence, insult, contempt—that no threat seems empty."

"Men must make women afraid and compliant, including through beatings; women must be housebound and servile. The men, then, can attend orgies or engage in any other sexual activity."

"Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal, though pop culture magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan would suggest that it is. It is intense, often desperate. The internal landscape is violent upheaval, a wild and ultimately cruel disregard of human individuality, a brazen, high-strung wanting that is absolute and imperishable, not attached to personality, no respecter of boundaries; ending not in sexual climax but in a human tragedy of failed relationships, vengeful bitterness in an aftermath of sexual heat, personality corroded by too much endurance of undesired, habitual intercourse, conflict, a wearing away of vitality in the numbness finally of habit or compulsion or the loneliness of separation."

"Sex is the dim echo of that original nakedness, primal, before anything else that is also human; later, isolated in an identity, hidden by it, in insensate because of it, one is a societal human being ruled by conformity and convention, not naked."

"In Amerika, there is the nearly—or so it appears—that sex (fucking) is good and that liking it is right: morally right; a sign of human health; nearly a standard for citizenship. Even those who believe in original sin and have a theology of hellfire and damnation express the Amerikan creed, an optimism that glows in the dark: sex is good, healthy, wholesome, pleasant fun; we like it, we enjoy it, we want it, we are cheerful abut it; it is as simple as we are, the citizens of this strange country with no memory and no mind."

"There is no imagination in fetishlike sexual conformity; and no ques­tions are being asked in political discourse on sex about hope and sorrow, intimacy and anguish, communion and loss. Imagination is both aggressive and delicate, a mode of cogni­tion unmatched in its ability to reveal the hidden meanings in reality now and the likely shape of tomorrow. Imagination is not a synonym for sexual fantasy, which is only—patheti­cally—a programmed tape loop repeating repeating in the narcoleptic mind. Imagination finds new meanings, new forms; complex and empathetic values and acts. The person with imagination is pushed forward by it into a world of possi­bility and risk, a distinct world of meaning and choice; not into a nearly bare junkyard of symbols manipulated to evoke rote responses. The paring down of the vocabulary of human affect to fuck-related expletives suggests that one destroys the com­plexity of human response by destroying the language that communicates its existence."

"Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more—also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth."

"No one deserves brutality because of what they are, their condition of birth, including being born female; and the women in this book are not asking for it—instead they are risking as much as any man risks to live, to love."

"Intercourse is commonly written about and comprehended as a form of possession or an act of possession in which, during which, because of which, a man inhabits a woman, physically covering her and overwhelming her and at the same time penetrating her; and this physical relational—over her and inside her 0 is his possession oh her. He has her, or when is is done, he has had her. By thrusting into her, he takes her over. His thrusting into her is taken to be her capitulation to him as a conqueror; it is a physical surrender of herself to him; he occupies and rules her, expresses his elemental dominance over her, by his possession of her in the fuck."

"This is nihilism; or this is truth. He has to push past his boundaries. There is the outline of a body, distinct, separate, its integrity an illusion, a tragic deception, because unseen there is a slit between the legs, and he has to push into it. There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist withe intercourse: with being entered. The vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have to be pushed apart. The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She is occupied—physically, internally, in her privacy."

"Life can be better for women—economic and political conditions improved—and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom."

"Freedom is not an abstraction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more of it is not enough either. Having less, being less, impoverished in freedom and rights, women then inevitably have less self-respect: less self-respect than men have and less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. Intercourse as domination battens of that awful absence of self respect."

"A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy."

"But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography."

"Being female in this world is having been robbed of he potential for human choice by men who love to hate s. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy, specially as it exists in relation to intercourse."

"Can intercourse exist without the woman herself turning herself into a thing, which she must do because men cannot fuck equals and men must fuck: because one price of dominance is that one impotent in the face of equality?"

"To become the object, she takes herself and transforms herself into a thing: all freedoms are diminished and she is caged, even in the cage docile, sometimes physically maimed, movement is limited: she physically becomes the thing he wants to fuck."

"Society says with the authority of its police power how intercourse will and will not occur. Any act so controlled by the state, proscribed and prescribed in detail, cannot be private in the ordinary sense. Privacy is essentially a sphere of freedom immune from regulation by the state. In that sense, intercourse has never occurred in private."

"Women do not know how to be women exactly; men constantly fail to be men."

"Law steps in where nature fails: virtually everywhere. Laws create nature—a male nature and a female nature and natural intercourse—by telling errant, unnatural human beings what to do and what not to do to protect and express their real nature—the real man, the real female, the real hierarchy that nature or God created putting man on top."

"Laws creates male dominance, and maintain it, as a social environment. Male dominance is the environment we know, in which we must live. It is our air, water, earth. Laws shape our perceptions and knowledge of what male dominance is, of how it works, of what it means to us. Laws shape the experiences the experiences we have before we have them Laws significantly predetermine how we will feel, will understand, what will happen to us in life. Laws establish or humans the terms of our symbiosis with male dominance: what it takes from us to sustain itself as an overall environmental system."

"Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or circles under the eyes. it is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor it is it a trivial inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but (frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a "point of view" that some people with soft skins find "offensive." It is the deep and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from even the possibility of wholeness or internal integrity."

"Berlin says: "… You cannot combine full liberty with full equality—full liberty for the wolves cannot be combined with full liberty for the sheep...." …. Are women sheep ("led like sheep to the slaughter")? Must women become wolves? Is violence against women a direct result of the fact that there is no inevitable, painful, retaliatory consequence for hurting women?"

"Do women need sovereignty—not only over their own bodies as currently understood in the United States ...; but control of a boundary further away from their bodies, a defended boundary? Do women need land and an army ...; or a feminist government in exile ...? Or is it simpler: the bed belongs to the woman; the house belongs to the woman; any land belongs to the woman; if a male intimate is violent he is removed from the place where she has the superior and inviolate claim, arrested, denied parole, and prosecuted. .... Could women "set a high price on our blood"? Could women set any price on our blood? Could women manage self-defense if not retaliation? Would self-defense be enough? Could women execute men who raped or beat or tortured women? .... [¶] .... Could the acts of women in behalf of women … have a code of honor woman-to-woman that weakens the male-dominant demands of nationalism or race-pride or ethnic pride? Could women commit treason to the men of their own group: put women first, even the putative enemy women? Do women have enough militancy and self-respect to see themselves as the central makers of legal codes, ethics, honor codes, and culture?"

"Can women make use of men's vulnerability not to marry but instead to destroy male power?"

"Could women's liberation ever be a revolutionary movement, not rhetorically but on the ground?"

"One needs either equality or political and economic superiority."

"The women's movement is like other political movements in one important way. Every political movement is committed to the belie that there are certain kinds of pain that people should not have to endure. They are unnecessary. They are gratuitous. They are not part of the God-given order. They are not biologically inevitable. They are acts of human will. They are acts done by some human beings to other human beings."

"The pride comes from accomplishment. I have done what I wanted to do more than any other thing in life. I have become a writer, published two books of integrity and worth. I did not know what those two books would cost me, how very difficult it would be to write them, to survive the opposition to them."

"A take back the night march goes right to our emotional core. We women are especially supposed to be afraid of the night The night promises harm to women. For a woman to walk on the street at night is not only to risk abuse, but also—according to the values of male domination—to ask for it. The woman who transgresses the boundaries of night is an outlaw who breaks an elementary rule of civilized behavior: a decent woman does not go out—certainly not alone, certainly not only with other women—at night. A woman out in the night, not on a leash, is thought to be a slut or an uppity bitch who does not know her place."

"If you believe that God made women to be submissive and inferior, then there is almost nothing that feminism can say to you about your place in society."

"The purpose of theory is to clarify the world in which we live, how it works, why things happen as they do. The purpose of theory is understanding. Understanding is energizing. It energizes to action. When theory becomes an impediment to action, it is time to discard the theory and return naked, that is, without theory, to the world of reality. People become slaves to theory because people are used to meeting expectations they have not originated—to doing what they are told, to having everything mapped out, to having reality prepackaged. People can have an antiauthoritarian intention and yet function in a way totally consonant with the demands of authority. The deepest struggle is to root out of us and the institutions in which we participate the requirement that we slavishly conform. But an adherence to ideology, to any ideology, can give us the grand illusion of freedom when in fact we are being manipulated and used by those whom the theory serves. The struggle for freedom has to be a struggle toward integrity defined in every possible sphere of reality—sexual integrity, economic integrity, psychological integrity, integrity of expression, integrity of faith and loyalty and heart. Anything that shortcuts us away from viewing integrity as an essential goal or anything that diverts our attention from integrity as a revolutionary value serves only to reinforce the authoritarian values of the world in which we live."

"In the 1980s, Ellen Willis led the so-called pro-sex radical feminists in their heated challenge to the antipornography movement. Countering the arguments of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and others that "sexual liberation is a male supremacist plot, Willis proclaimed that sexual liberation was the keystone of broader social and cultural change."

"Andrea presented herself as a street fighter intellectual, a bohemian freedom fighter, and someone who wanted to get to the bottom of things. That quote about Malcolm X is apt. Malcolm pointed out “The problem is WHITE PEOPLE.” Dworkin said, “The problem is MEN.” And for all the holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt."

"Even if you believe that prostitution and pornography are fundamentally acceptable, the challenge of Dworkin is to explain why they should exist – rather than merely accepting their current existence as an argument for their continuation. We are creatures of culture and Intercourse is the promise that we are not doomed to the endless replication of misogyny, but can reinvent that culture in new and better shapes."

"I’m sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. She never got to see people like me, Carol, and the rest of us little protégées who took her inspiration and flew to a new dimension. She got stuck, and then she got sick, and when you’re famous for one thing, no one wants to see you change unless you reject it all, like a pathetic sinner seeking redemption. She was too stubborn and too old-fashioned for that. Andrea Dworkin never would have admitted that she was a SuperStar. She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her."

"So now we come to what Andrea Dworkin wants and it is this: she wants women to have their own country. But that's mad, I said to her. Why bother discussing it? It isn't going to happen. To which she has a reply -- didn't they say that about Israel? And didn't the world think that Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, was a crank? The Jews got a country because they had been persecuted, said that enough was enough, decided what they wanted and went out and fought for it. Women should do the same. And if you don't want to live in Womenland, so what? Not all Jews live in Israel, but it is there, a place of potential refuge if persecution comes to call. Furthermore, Dworkin says, as the Jews fought for Israel so women have the right to execute -- that's right, execute -- rapists and the state should not intervene. I couldn't really believe she was serious, but she is."

"Andrea Dworkin, who was pelted and ridiculed for decades of her life, was another of those rare people who feel other people's pain as if it were their own. When she first sent me one of her books, I was all ready to snigger. But she could write, and think, and argue, and it was often a pleasure to disagree violently with her, which is more than I can say for some of her detractors. Like many clever and tormented people, she had the gift of getting the gist of supposedly complex questions. It wasn't OK with her that President Clinton had a special staff of private dicks to "handle" and to slander truth-telling women; it wasn't OK with her that Serbia used rape as a weapon of ethnic cleansing; and she wasn't neutral against a jihadist threat that wanted, and wants, to enslave and torture females. That she could be denounced as a "conservative" for holding any of those positions says much about the left to which she used to belong. If she was indeed crazy, I wish she had bitten more of her twisted sisters."

"Dworkin, like Kate Millet, has turned a garish history of mental instability into feminist grand opera. Dworkin publicly boasts of her bizarre multiple rapes, assaults, beatings, breakdowns and tacky traumas, as if her inability to cope with life were the patriarchy’s fault rather than her own. She pretends to be a daring truth-teller but never mentions her most obvious problem: food."

"I am just thinking of Andrea Dworkin. I have really known Andrea since she was very young. I have known her since she was about eighteen years old. I used to love her very much. She was very dear to me. I mean when she writes about sexual life, it's horrible. And she did have some horrible experiences, you know, but I am not writing about her. That's all I can say. For me I really want to celebrate sexuality. (“Because that's the way you feel about it?”) And because I want to celebrate it. Because I think it's one of the greatest things invented [laughs], and it may be a pure invention that it is so great. I could be wrong, and Andrea could be right. But I think it should be. One of the things that bothers me with a lot of my sisters in movements that I have worked with is that their anger with men really has turned them not against men, which is all right as far as I am concerned, but against sex in general, so that even their lesbian experiences don't strike me as so hot as far as that's concerned."

"When I was a young lawyer, working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously."

"When I went to represent my law firm anywhere—I was a young kid just out of college—I said, “How do you do? I'm Bella Abzug from the law firm of such and such,” and people would say, “Yes, fine, fine, sit down.” So I'd wait and nothing much would happen, so finally I'd clear my throat and say, “I'm Bella Abzug from the law firm of such and such,” and they'd say, “Yes, we know, but we're waiting.” I'd say, “What are we waiting for?” And they'd say, “We're waiting for the lawyer.” They thought I was the secretary. So I had this identity crisis. I went home and discussed it with my husband, Martin. In those days professional women wore hats—and gloves, so I put on gloves and a hat. And every time I went anywhere for business, with the hat and gloves, they knew I was there for business. And I jokingly often say, as you can see, I've taken off the gloves. But I like wearing hats and I continue to wear it. When I ran for Congress and got to Washington, they made such a fuss about the hat instead of what was under it that I didn't know whether they wanted me to take it off or keep it on. I decided that they wanted me to take it off, which made me determined to keep it on."

"Just imagine for a moment what life in this country might have been if women had been properly represented in Congress. Would a Congress where women in all their diversity were represented tolerate the countless laws now on the books that discriminate against women in all phases of their lives? Would a Congress with adequate representation of women have allowed this country to reach the 1970s without a national health care system? Would it have permitted this country to rank fourteenth in infant mortality among the developed nations of the world? Would it have allowed the situation we now have in which thousands of kids grow up without decent care because their working mothers have no place to leave them? Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills? Would it allow fraudulent packaging and cheating of consumers in supermarkets, department stores and other retail outlets? Would it consent to the perverted sense of priorities that has dominated our government for decades, where billions have been appropriated for war while our human needs as a people have been neglected?"

"When it comes to child care, the United States is at a primitive stage compared to countries like Israel, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. (p 39)"

"All I say is that anybody who thinks he can take me lightly because I'm fresh and colorful had better watch out. (p 49)"

"Ever since my youth I've been a Zionist, and I worked hard for the cause of a Jewish homeland too. I've visited Israel and I raised my kids with a very strong background in Jewish culture. Besides that, I spent a couple of years of my life as a Hebrew teacher! To try to make me out as anti-Israel was nothing but rotten and vicious. (p 70)"

"The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be in the arrangement of your chromosomes. (p. 80)"

"Then up gets Carl Albert to tell us he supports Bolling's resolution because he wants to see us work together with the Republicans to end the war. I was appalled! Here was the Speaker of the House-a man in that kind of position-giving us more old-fashioned, desperate, moldy garbage from the past. Since World War II the Democrats and the Republicans have been "joining hands" to fight international communism, and where has it gotten us? We've created a nuclear monster and a vast, uncontrollable military machine. We've inspired guys like Joe McCarthy and Spiro Agnew to level all the opposition. The military and the industrialists and the munitions-makers have moved in to take over our power structure, influencing it, manipulating it and dominating it. All for the sake of good old bipartisanism; all for the sake of good old anticommunism. (p 93)"

"Without getting scientific or psychological or historical about it, it's long been my judgment that women have been at the forefront of social change. When we first got the vote, we used it to clean up the sweat shops, to clean up the horrors of child labor, and so on. Then we got sidetracked. Instead of carrying forth Carrie Chapman Catt's notion that women should organize as a political movement, the movement became nonpartisan and followed the League of Women Voters route. So between their nonpositions and Madison Avenue's assigned stereotype of women as flowers in the home who can be sold all kinds of products to beautify themselves, and Hollywood with its awful stereotypes, women were sunk. Up until now, we've been laboring under the concept of women as appendages to men and children and subjected to constant brainwashing by Madison Avenue, Hollywood, TV-and the descendants of John Adams who know when they have a good thing going. We now see the concept changing because the women's movement, which renewed itself several years ago as an intellectual revolt of the bored middle class housewife, has grown into a broad movement seeking complete economic, social and political change in all arenas. It's like the black movement, which started out over the right to a seat in the front of the bus and then extended itself to pursue for the black people their rightful piece of the whole system. The women's movement, like the black movement and the movement of the young people, comes at a time when the system is not responding to the largest numbers of its people. This puts all these movements in a very critical perspective, because out of all this ferment the last thing we can realistically expect is for things to remain the same. (p 202)"

"This moment in history requires women to lead the movement for radical change (p 203)"

"I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing. Whether I'm any of these things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am-and this ought to be made very clear at the outset-I am a very serious woman. I am not being facetious when I say that the real enemies in this country are the Pentagon and its pals in big business. It's no joke to me that women in this country are terribly oppressed and are made to suffer economic, legal and social discrimination. I am not evoking a wild fantasy when I claim that I'm going to help organize a new political coalition of the women, the minorities and the young people, along with the poor, the elderly, the workers and the unemployed, which is going to turn this country upside down and inside out. We're going to reclaim our cities, create more jobs, better housing, better health care, more child care centers, more help for drug addicts; we're going to start doing something for the millions of people in this country whose needs, because of the callousness of the men who've been running our government, have taken a low priority to the cost of killing people in Indochina. To some people all this may sound a bit grandiose, but let me tell you something: This is the only thing we can do and still survive."

"Perhaps the best way to change Congress to make it more representative, to make it more responsive-is to show people exactly what it is. This is the reason I've decided to keep this diary. I want people to share my personal experiences in struggling with the system. Having spent many years as the legislative director of Women Strike for Peace, I'm no innocent to Washington. I've already had a pretty good whiff of what to expect. The inside operation of Congress-the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building-is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about"

"I felt if we are going to get anywhere, Congress has got to begin to reflect in its composition the great diversity of this country."

"I am an activist. I'm the kind of person who does things at the same time that I'm working to create a feeling that something can be done. And I don't intend to disappear in Congress as many of my predecessors have. My role, as I see it, is among the people, and I am going to be outside organizing them at the same time that I'm inside fighting for them. That is the kind of leadership that I believe will build a new majority in this country, and it was primarily in the hope of being able to exemplify that kind of leadership that I ran for Congress."

"These are very special times we live in. The priorities in this country-against the will of the people-are upside down. At this moment, as the 92nd Congress is about to convene, the mood of the country is one place and its government is someplace else."

"I want to bring Congress back to the people. If that proves to be impossible to do by working from within, then I'm prepared to go back outside again-to the streets-and do it from there."

"It's also important for me to run again so that other women will be encouraged to do the same. One thing that crystallized for me like nothing else this year is that Congress is a very unrepresentative institution. Not only from an economic class point of view, but from every point of view-sex, race, age, vocation. Some people say this is because the political system tends to homogenize everything, that a Congressman by virtue of the fact that he or she represents a half million people has to appeal to all sorts of disparate groups. I don't buy that at all. These men in Congress don't represent a homogeneous point of view. They represent their own point of view-by reason of their sex, background and class."

"the liberals. They've not only been a terrible disappointment to me, but further proof that the nature of Congress must be changed. Unfortunately, the liberals have failed to take notice of the massive and fundamental movement for social change in this country, so they're still too busy patching things up when what we need is a whole new set of works. I'm sympathetic with them; I think they did very well in such things as defeating the SST and getting the detention camp bill reversed; and I know they've been trying hard to get us out of Vietnam; but I'm also very annoyed that they aren't out there fighting for and organizing people, encouraging the young to register and the underfranchised to run for office. We need activists for leaders-and they aren't filling the bill."

"the men in Congress represent essentially their own class interests and are opposed to any kind of real change that might benefit people at large."

"who are they representing? Themselves or their constituents?"

"People are desperate for help, for leadership. There's no place else to go but to me, they say, and the sad thing is that very often they are right. That's what I want to help change."

"Earth’s most valuable and most neglected natural resource: women."

"much of what has been done in the name of progress and growth and development has been done without much regard for the effects on human beings—women, men and children—on water, air and soil, on our delicately balanced, intricately interconnected global ecology."

"Women are not just victims. We are thinkers, organizers, and activists. We are part of a worldwide women’s movement that has brought into every nation of the world, no matter how poor or oppressed, the message that women can work together to take control of our lives and to bring our collective experience, wisdom, and numbers into the areas where the policies and decisions are being made about the future of our planet."

"It was thousands of women marching and demonstrating against dangerous Strontium 90 nuclear fallout who helped to win the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests and who have continued their struggle against the nuclear arms race and hazards in areas ranging from Greenham Common, Europe and the U.S. to Africa and Asia."

"it was Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland’s vision and leadership as head of the UN Commission on Environment and Development that told us of “our common future” and what we must do to assure that we have a livable future. Dr. Brundtland is an inspiring example of what can happen when the right woman is in the right place."

"Women are both affected by and effectors of the environmental crisis. We must be part—a central part—of the solution. Our views on economic justice, human rights, reproduction and the achievement of peace—all elements of the environment/development crisis—must be heard at local, national, and international forums wherever policies and decisions are made that can affect the future of life on our planet."

"Women are participating in large numbers at the grassroots levels, but in the overwhelming majority of nations, we still lack effective political power. And that is also true in the United Nations—in the Secretariat and in the member nation delegations."

"All over the world, ordinary citizens are coming forward to assert their democratic and human rights, and concern about the environment permeates their demands."

"Some of you may have been at the UN Decade of Women conferences in Nairobi in 1985. That was where global feminism came of age—a symbol of sisterhood, of international women’s networks, of our hopes for a better, fairer, safer world. Nairobi was the birthplace of the “Forward-Looking Strategies” document, the most comprehensive historic statement of our agenda, encompassing peace, equality, human rights, sustainable development and environmental protection. Now we must move on and expand our vision. The women’s movement is strong and continues to grow. We are everywhere, and we will be heard . . . or else we—women, men and children—will all hear from Mother Nature. Remember, hell hath no fury like a woman—or an Earth—scorned and despoiled."

"Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments...It is an agenda for change, fueled by the momentum of civil society, based on a transformational vision of a better world for all."

"We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didn't craft them. They didn't let us."

"As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo."

"Some wonder how I have kept going for so long and how I manage to remain optimistic. When governments were removing the brackets from the document over the last two weeks, the French tested another nuclear weapon in the Pacific, NATO was bombing Bosnia and the Serbs were shelling Sarajevo. Refugee camps overflowed in too many places around this globe. Conditions for women on factory floors did not change. Women died in childbirth and in their homes Hunger gnawed at the bellies of millions. The world went on, in its downward spiral we all know all too well. In the face of so much pain, I remain an incurable optimist. I am fueled by the passion of the women I have been privileged to meet and work with, buoyed by their hope for peace, justice and democracy. I am strengthened by each of them. And to each government delegate who pushed the boundaries of progress I thank you. I thank the United Nations and my sisters in the NGO community for your good humor and hard work. I wish each of you well and sustainable optimism for the days ahead. Never underestimate the importance of what we are doing here. Never hesitate to tell the truth. And never, ever give in or give up."

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherríe Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"As activists and rebels, Jewish women like Emma Goldman, Maud Nathan, Rose Schneiderman, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan influenced many of the key social movements of their eras suffrage, trade unionism, international peace, and the contemporary women's rights movement."

"She did not appear in Brooklyn, but about five minutes before the Washington press conference started I had a call from an Abzug aide asking whether Bella could appear with me and my supporters at the event. I could not discover whether she intended to endorse me, or what she had in mind, but I said yes because I could see no reason to say no. After my statement, Mitchell and Dellums spoke; they gave me strong and moving endorsements. Then Bella made a strange statement, largely about movements and the underprivileged in politics. She said lit about my candidacy, except that it was "an idea whose time has come," if I remember correctly. Later a reporter asked her whether she had endorsed me or not. Bella hedged. She said she supported "the idea" of my candidacy and would support me in those states where I was running. Bella never offered to campaign for me in Florida, North Carolina or even New York, for that matter. It was a letdown, and also bewildering: if she intended to sit on the fence, why did she ask to appear with me when I made my announcement for the Presidency?"

"I believe in the stubbornness of civil disobedience and I'm not afraid of it. I remember one May Day demonstration. In 1971. Still wartime. We were arrested and we were in this big, sort of football field. Barbara Deming and I were walking around, arm in arm. We had been arrested together. It was very cold. Everybody was finding someone to walk very close to. Later on, one person wasn't enough, we would try to get into groups that huddled: fifteen. But at that point, Barbara and I were walking arm in arm and it was a pretty messy place, because that was the year they arrested thirteen or fourteen thousand people, just picking them up off the street, and then they didn't know what the hell to do with them. At that point we were in a football field. Later, we were put inside a stadium. And so we were walking around, arm in arm, talking to each other, and then congresspeople came in to see what was going on, and Bella Abzug came over to talk to us. She and I had always had these disagreements about the electoral work and what you can call action, direct action, and we would talk to each other about this. So she came over and she looked at me and Barbara walking arm in arm. She asked how we were. She was a congresswoman at this time. She was worried about us. We said we were all right. And then she said, "Well, I guess you're where you want to be and I'm where I want to be." And we laughed, we all laughed together. And I want to say about Bella that she was at this Women's Pentagon demonstration. She came, she walked with everybody, she didn't look for any limelight of any kind. She just sort of walked, and begged me not to get arrested. Again, she said she thought it was a waste of time. I could do more outside. But she really was just a part of the action. That's what we wanted all of our leaders to be, just a part of the women's action."

"Bella Abzug established a standard of integrity and chutzpah (nerve, courage) that challenges us all to tell the truth and to fight back."

"How can I, Nawal El Saadawi, have an identity if my history is effaced? If my female ancestors are forgotten, buried in oblivion? If Ma'at, Isis, and Sekhmet are not spoken of? If Khadija the wife of Prophet Muhammad (who was the first to call him Prophet, to tell him not to fear or doubt but go on with courage) is not spoken of, although if it were not for her courage Islam might have been born not through him but perhaps through someone else. Is it I who decides what my identity is or those who have the power, and the money, and the arms and the media, and the global market and the multinational corporations in their hands?"

"In the Western media and in Western popular thinking, the term "fundamentalist" is almost restricted to Islamic groups, and yet the New World Order is characterized by the upsurge of so-called fundamentalist religious movements. Fundamentalism is a universal phenomenon, which increases with increasing poverty and racism."

"When I travel in the Arab countries, I notice that the TV screen often shows two contradictory images one after the other. A religious man talking about the need to veil women appears on the TV screen, and immediately following is a half-naked woman or belly dancer advertising some makeup or perfume. Girls and women in our countries are torn between these images. According to the moral and religious system, they are supposed to be veiled, but they are also supposed to be exposed and naked (fashionable, feminine, beautiful) in order to conform to the media advertisements and the global culture."

"All fundamentalists - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise - are partners in the attempt to breed division, strife, racism and sexism; they help international imperialism to maintain its control and to overcome popular resistance to policies that lead to war and increased exploitation. It is known that the Mafia of today in Italy and the USA and Canada has close connections with some international fundamentalist groups, some of which are Islamic. The economic resources of such groups are, like those of the Mafia, drawn from the sale of arms, trafficking in drugs, and speculation in foreign exchange; these activities"

"We are all born creative. Creativity is not a gift that comes to us from heaven. It is something inside us. We are born with it. Men and women, female and male, black and white, poor and rich. But we loose this creativity by the way we are brought up, by education, by the educational system. I teach creativity and dissidence and usually the first class when i go to my class, I tell them, I cannot teach creativity. I cannot teach dissident. But what I can do is to undo what education did to you"

"The woman sitting on the ground in front of me was a real woman, and the voice filling my ears with its sound, echoing in a cell where the window and door were tightly shut, could only be her voice, the voice of Firdaus."

"All my life I have been searching for something that would fill me with pride, make me feel superior to everyone else, including kings, princes and rulers."

"Every single man I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face."

"Do you prefer oranges or tangerines?"

"My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?"

"Her voice continued to echo in my ears, vibrating in my head, in the cell, in the prison, in the streets, in the whole world, shaking everything, spreading fear wherever it went, the fear of the truth which kills, the power of truth, as savage, and as simple, and as awesome as death, yet as simple and as gentle as a child that has not yet learnt to lie."

"Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself."

"Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another."

"I knew that [prostitution] had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another."

"For Islam in its essence, in its fundamental teachings, in its birth and development under the leader­ship of Muhammad, was a call to liberate the slave, a call to social equality and public ownership of wealth in its earliest form… But primitive socialism in Islam did not last long. It was soon buried under the growing prosperity of the new classes that arose and thrived after Muhammad’s death (Page 3)"

"The revolution in Iran, therefore, is in its essence political and “economic”. It is a popular explosion which seeks to emancipate the people of Iran, men and women, and not to send women back to the prison of the veil, the kitchen and the bedroom (Page 3)"

"The Iranian revolution of today, therefore, is a natural heritage of the historical struggle for freedom and social equality among Arab people, who have continued to fight under the banner of Islam and to draw their inspiration from the teachings of the Koran and the prophet Muhammad (Page 4)"

"Any ambiguity in Islamic teachings, any mistake by an Islamic leader, any misinterpreta­tion of Islamic principles, any reactionary measure or policy by Islamic rulers can be grist for the mill of imperialist conspiracy, can be inspired by CIA provocation, can be blown up and emphasised by Western propaganda.’ (Page 5)"

"The last two decades have seen a vigorous revival in the political and social movements of Islamic inspiration… The movements aiming at cultural emancipation, independence and identity run parallel to and intertwine with the political and economic struggles waged by the people of underdeveloped countries’ (Page 5)"

"Cultural differences between the Western capitalist societies and Arab Islamic countries are also of importance. If all this is not taken into account and studied with care, enthusiasm and the spirit of solidarity on its own may lead feminist movements to taking a stand that is against the interests of the liberation movements in the East, and therefore also harmful to the struggle for women’s emancipation. (Page 9)"

"The Man’s absolute right to divorce in Arab-Islamic countries, to marriage with more than one wife, and to a legalised licentiousness all negate any real security and stability for children and destroy the very essences of true family life (Page 13)"

"Many people think that female circumcision only started with the advent of Islam. But as a matter of fact it is well known and widespread in some areas of the world before the Islamic era, including the Arabian peninsula. Mohammad the Prophet tried to oppose this custom since he considered it harmful to the sexual health of the woman."

"The hijab has nothing to do with moral values. A woman's moral values are reflected in her eyes, in the way she talks, and in the way she walks. They put on a hijab and go dancing, wearing high heels and lipstick. They wear tight jeans that show their bellies."

"I’m surrounded by young people, day and night. Thousands of them. The government is afraid of the young, and they won’t touch me because they know I have the power of the young people behind me."

"…This is everyone’s struggle—whether against men in the family, or against capitalism. It’s power. I don’t think that people in power can be convinced by words or articles. They will never give it up by choice. Even a husband in the house, no—power has to be taken with power…"

"…Nobody can help anybody. Nobody can help us in Egypt—we did our revolution alone, we liberated ourselves alone. I don’t believe in charity or “helping.” I believe in the equal exchange of ideas, and networking."

"(What role did women play in the revolution last spring?) El Saadawi: Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups. (2011)"

"Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression...Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can’t have anything without women. You cannot have dignity. The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women. (2011)"

"All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am very hopeful because I trust the revolution and feel nobody can really conquer a nation that has decided to be united and to fight, and we decided to fight. The revolution is there, inside the Egyptians by the millions. (2011)"

"The oppression of women in Egypt cannot be traced to traditions, Islam and fundamentalism, but rather to the slavery system – a system of the patriarchal class society that is supported by the religions. (2014)"

"There are many people today who say that the Islamic religion oppresses women. I say to them: no, it's Christianity and Judaism. Islam merely adopted this practice. (2014)"

"I spent ten years comparing the Old and New Testaments with the Koran – they are very similar; the differences are minimal. So we can say that the root of the oppression of women lies in the global post-modern capitalist system, which is supported by religious fundamentalism. This is because they need a god to justify oppression, their political hypocrisy, colonialism and the killing of people. How can the invasion of Palestine or Iraq be justified?! How can it be that today, 50 per cent of Egyptian people live below the poverty line while two percent have billions of dollars? How can we justify this? You need God in order to justify it. (2014)"

"We're not living in three worlds, we're living in one."

"The veil is a political symbol and has nothing to do with Islam...They are using women as a political tool in a political game. Many people are aware of that, but the educational system puts a veil on the mind. The veiling of the mind is more serious. Our slogan at the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association is "Unveil the Mind.""

"Feminism to me is to fight against patriarchy and class and to fight against male domination and class domination. We don’t separate between class oppression and patriarchal oppression. Many so-called feminists don’t. We can’t be liberated under American occupation, for example."

"These days, there is also a phenomenon I call "false awareness." Many women who call themselves feminists today wear makeup, high heels, tight jeans and they still wear the hijab. It is very contradictory. They are victims of both religious fundamentalism and American consumerism. They have no political awareness. They are unaware of the connection between the liberation of women on the one hand and of the economy and country on the other. Many consider only patriarchy as their enemy and ignore corporate capitalism."

"Sadat put me in prison along with some other men. Under Mubarak, I’ve been "gray-listed." Although there is no official order banning me, I can’t appear in the national media–it’s an unwritten rule. There is no chance for people like me to be heard by the people."

"Progressive groups should unite. We are divided and scattered. There must be efforts for unity. Women and men fighting against the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank should fight together. Local and global resistance should not be separated. We must give a lot of attention to organization and unveiling of the mind. The new superpower of the people should be organized."

"A progressive Muslim is a Muslim who respects all religions. He doesn’t politicize his God. God is not a book. God is justice and freedom and love and honesty. That is what my father taught me–to be honest."

"You ask me if I regret anything I've written. No, I regret none of my 47 books. If I started my life again I would write the same books. They are all very relevant even today: the issues of gender, class, colonialism (although of course that was British and is now American), female genital mutilation, male genital mutilation, capitalism, sexual rape and economic rape. My books have always taken on taboos – political, economic, sexual, religious taboos – but my most radical was my last play: God Resigns at the Summit Meeting. It will never be put on in a theatre, and of course it is totally banned in Egypt...as for my actions, I don't regret any of them either. What I did I had to do, whether it was running in the presidential election against [President] Mubarak [in 2005], divorcing two husbands, or challenging the system. What I regret was that I was not too radical. I compromised to live; my name was on death lists. You have to be a bit – but not too – diplomatic in order to survive in life. Nobody can tolerate the truth. The truth is very savage."

"I describe myself as like a horse jumping obstacles, obstacle after obstacle. I am a winning horse. I insist on it; winning brings me energy. I lose sometimes, of course, like when I went to prison, but you need a dose of pain, challenges to develop your power and energy."

"I get great pleasure from creativity and writing, especially novels. It gives me a lot of energy, and for me it is more pleasurable than sex or food or anything. And I am a happy person because of this pleasure."

"Hope, too, is power."

"The solution can only come from us, from the people who were beaten by the system. But we were beaten because we were not organised, not powerful. All of the demonstrations, against the Iraq war, at Davos, against the Israeli attack on Gaza: why didn't we win? I have to answer that it is because young people are not organised; they don't represent a political power."

"Veiling and nakedness, they are two faces of the same kind. To see a woman naked, that does not mean she is liberated. It means the woman is just a body, not a mind. Traditional education, even postmodern education, veils the mind; the media veils the mind."

"My dream is a world without religion, with real morality and one standard for men and women, poor and rich. A world with no war, with equality and justice between genders and classes, real freedom and democracy. That would be to finish with patriarchy and capitalism and class, to have a really human society, to unveil the mind."

"She is a reminder that feminism is indigenous to the region and not something we need to import..She inspired me to be savage and dangerous in telling the truth as her life clearly showed"

"The words of 75-year old Nawal Al-Sa'dawi, Egypt's leading feminist on Al-Arabiya TV on March 3, 2007, reflected her bitterness at how the covering of a women's head has been misrepresented as an act of piety and the most defining symbol of Islam. All Canadian women have at some time in their lives, chosen to wear a head cover. In blinding snow storms or in freezing rain, the covering of the head, irrespective of what religion one practices, is crucial to one's survival in a harsh winter. Halfway across the world, in the deserts of Arabia, whether one was a Muslim or a pagan, the covering of one's head and face was at times an absolute necessity, not just when facing a blistering sandstorm, but anytime one stepped out of the home in the searing sun. What was essentially attire necessary for a particular climate and weather, has today been turned into a symbol of defiance and at best a show of piety by Islamists and orthodox Muslims. There is not a single reference in the Quran that obliges Muslim women to cover their hair or their face. In fact the only verse that comes close to such a dress code is (33: 59) which asks women to "cover their bosoms"."

"Three worlds theory flattens heterogeneities, masks contradictions, and elides differences. Third World feminist critics such as Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt), Vina Mazumdar (India), Kumari Jayawardena (Sri Lanka), Fatima Mernissi (Morocco), and Leila Gonzales (Brazil) have explored these differences and similarities in a feminist light, pointing to the gendered limitations of Third World nationalism."

"The Arab Spring did a great deal for women because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street. Nawal El Saadawi is a founding figure of Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism who wrote a book opposing female genital mutilation (of which she is a victim). She’s been banned. She’s been in prison. She’s now in her eighties and during the Arab Spring she was like the wise woman of Liberation Square, sitting in the middle of it as young women and young men came to her for instruction, for blessings, and so on. But it’s very often the case with revolutionary moments that women are present but then they’re drummed out of it afterwards."

"It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi."

"With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, 'cause that's what really happens."

"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

"It's time for America to get right."

"I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed."

"You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap."

"When they asked for those to raise their hands who'd go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it up high as I could get it. I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared — but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

"Fanny Lou Hamer of Mississippi, a woman of great dignity and natural eloquence"

""All of this on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America? Thank you." It is important that we know that those words came from the lips of an African American woman. It is imperative that we know those words come from the heart of an American...We must hear the questions raised by Fannie Lou Hamer forty years ago…Fannie Lou Hamer knew that she was one woman and only one woman. However, she knew she was an American, and as an American she had a light to shine on the darkness of racism. It was a little light, but she aimed it directly at the gloom of ignorance."

"Fannie Lou Hamer's address at the Atlantic City Convention stunned the country. The reforms that were later introduced into the Democratic Party structure derived from the urgent need for change which she communicated. Not a few of the Black political leaders in the South today, e.g., Charles Evers, Julian Bond, and Ernest N. Morial (the Black mayor of New Orleans), owe their political fortunes to the foundations of reform that Fannie Lou Hamer laid in 1964. In 1965 the MFDP under Hamer's leadership organized the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union and began recruiting Black sharecroppers in the state in a drive to end their terrible poverty. A strike in May 1965 marked the first such action in the Mississippi farm lands since an abortive uprising by 'croppers in the 1930s...Fannie Lou Hamer died in March 1977, at the age of sixty. In a tribute to her, Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote: "This profoundly black woman was of a world broader than her own race and sex. She reached out to the miserably poor whites in her native Sunflower County, organizing a cooperative farm to raise animals and vegetables. Hunger, it turned out, was the vital bond between the white and black poor.""

"(What's the difference between a spokesman and a witness?) A spokesman assumes that he is speaking for others. I never assumed that I never assumed that I could. Fannie Lou Hamer, for example, could speak very eloquently for herself. What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear was that what the Republic was doing to that woman, it was also doing to itself. No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society."

"In many ways, she paved the way for Barack Obama."

"People such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King Jr. frequently quoted the Declaration in their efforts to eradicate racism."

"They were remarkable women and deserve to be remembered that way."

"In 1961, civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, a disabled Black woman, was forcibly sterilized without her knowledge; the procedure was so common at the time that it had its own nickname, the "Mississippi appendectomy." Buck v. Bell has never been overturned."

"We will never forget Aaron Henry and Fannie Lou Hamer. Their testimony educated a nation and brought the political powers to their knees in repentance, for the convention voted never again to seat a delegation that was racially segregated. But the true test of their message would be whether or not Negroes in Northern cities heard them and would register and vote."

"In the final analysis, it must be said that this Nobel Prize was won by a movement of great people, whose discipline, wise restraint, and majestic courage has led them down a nonviolent course in seeking to establish a reign of justice and a rule of love across this nation of ours: Herbert Lee, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, and the thousands of children in Birmingham, Albany, St. Augustine, and Savannah who had accepted physical blows and jail and had discovered that the power of the soul is greater than the might of violence. These unknown thousands had given this movement the international acclaim, which we received from the Norwegian Parliament."

"Over and over again the defense of the family is seen as the primary concern of black women; their understanding of the defense of the family always includes the elevation of the black man. "We are here to work side by side with the black man in trying to bring liberation to all people," is the way Fannie Lou Hamer, the 20th-century Mississippi grassroots leader, summarized a long tradition."

"The voices of the grassroots, of people like Fannie Lou Hamer, must always be heard if we are to understand the past and move effectively toward the future."

"a lot of the women in northern New Mexico were like the women I had met in rural Mississippi. They were Fanny Lou Hamers — only they spoke Spanish — in northern New Mexico. Same kind of older, tough ladies who had seen it all, and the same kind of strength, you know? So there was just nothing you could do except respect — a whole lot — those women."

"if you think about the civil rights movement, what we were able to do was get Jim Crow out of three very distinct arenas in the country: First, there was public accommodations; second, there was voting rights and access to the political structures of the country; and third, and not well known, access to the national party structure itself — that is, to the Democratic Party. And that was Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 convention of the Democratic Party. And remember, Kennedy had been assassinated. Johnson had been moved into the presidency, but he hadn’t been nominated yet, right? And so, we won those struggles, but what we didn’t win was getting Jim Crow out of education, right? And that was actually the subtext of the right to vote...And Fannie Lou Hamer, when she testified — and, you know, Martin Luther King testified, but President Johnson wasn’t afraid of him. He was afraid of this sharecropper from Louisville, Mississippi. And when she went on to testify, the president said, “We have an announcement to make.” And he took over the TV, right?"

"when I think about this, in order to become president of the United States, you have to be nominated by one of the two political parties, so the crucial thing for me was, in reflecting back, was the 1964 challenge of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the National Democratic Convention, because that was where the stage was set that allowed this to happen, because without opening up the national political structure in the country, this wasn’t going to happen. And, you know, we could have gotten the right to vote without the opening up of the national political party structure. And the party structure wasn’t opened up by getting the right to vote; the party structure was opened up by directly challenging in Mississippi the right of Mississippi to send an all-white delegation to the 1964 National Democratic Convention. And it was Fannie Lou Hamer and all the people in that delegation that really forced the national Democratic Party to open up, you know?...all I heard and all I saw was Fannie Lou Hamer giving her testimony. I had no idea that while she was giving her testimony, that the President, Lyndon Johnson, was so afraid of this woman, who had been raised and lived her life as a sharecropper and had been working on the Marlow plantation in Sunflower County, outside of Ruleville. He was so afraid of her that he went — you know, at that time, we just had the three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. And he went to — notified all three networks that he had a special announcement, because he was terrified that her testimony was so powerful and she was so authentic that people would flood the convention, the credentials committee, with telegrams demanding that her party be seated. And so, he went and interrupted her testimony."

"legendary organizer Fannie Lou Hamer"

"I idolize Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. And they are supreme examples of what being freedom fighters, principled, fearless — or at least courageous. There’s a difference between being fearless and being courageous. Courageous is actually better, because everyone should have some fear about what might actually harm them. And, of course, Fannie Lou Hamer paid a huge price for wanting to do something as seemingly ordinary as vote. But in the Jim Crow South of that era, Black people, virtually none of them were allowed to vote. She paid a permanent price because of the beating that she received. And I just found out yesterday, if you can believe it, after all these years, that she actually was blinded in one eye. She is known for having worked with SNCC, doing voter organizing and other kinds of antiracist organizing during that Jim Crow era, and then, of course, speaking out so powerfully at the 1964 Democratic convention about what went on in Mississippi, and asking the very, very, very relevant question: “Is this America?”...I actually had the great, great pleasure and honor of meeting Fannie Lou Hamer when I was a teenager in Cleveland in 1965 and was very involved in the civil rights movement as a young person."

"women played a crucial role in those early dangerous years of organizing in the South, and were looked on with admiration...Women of all ages demonstrated, went to jail. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper in Ruleville, Mississippi, became legendary as organizer and speaker. She sang hymns; she walked picket lines with her familiar limp (as a child she contracted polio). She roused people to excitement at mass meetings: "I'm sick an' tired o' bein' sick an' tired!""

"Mrs. Hamer is short and stocky, her skin like weather-beaten copper, her eyes soft and large; she walks with a limp because she had polio as a child, and when she sings she is crying out to the heavens. She told what happened after she went down to register: "The thirty-first of August in '62, the day I went into the courthouse to register, well, after I'd gotten back home, this man that I had worked for as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years, he said that I would just have to leave....So I told him I wasn't trying to register for him, I was trying to register for myself. . . . I didn't have no other choice because for one time I wanted things to be different...Mrs. Hamer became a field secretary for SNCC after her eviction from the plantation. Just as Moses and the other "outsiders" had become insiders, now the insiders were beginning to become outsiders to the society they had grown up in. As Mrs. Hamer put it: "You know they said outsiders was coming in and beginning to get the people stirred up because they've always been satisfied. Well, as long as I can remember, I've never been satisfied. It was twenty of us, six girls and fourteen boys, and we just barely was making it. You know I could see the whites was going to school at a time when we would be out of school…and most of the time we didn't have anything to wear. I knew it was something wrong. ... I always sensed that we was the one who always do the hard work, you know..." I asked her if she was going to remain with the movement, and she responded with the words to a song: "I told them if they ever miss me from the movement and couldn't find me nowhere, come on over to the graveyard, and I'll be buried there.""

"SNCC workers have found that F.B.I. men in the South often share the segregationist views of the people around them; this is reflected in the lack of enthusiasm which F.B.I. men show in handling civil rights cases. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer once told an F.B.I. agent, "If I get to heaven and I see you there, I will tell St. Peter to send me on back to Mississippi!""

"Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work."

"America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children."

"If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?"

"Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children."

"The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"Another revolution! Naples free and all of Italy in insurrection! How wonderful has been the march of the human mind in these last thirty years … so may it be till the last link of the chains of slavery is broken and the banner of freedom waves over the whole earth!"

"Is not an hereditary nobility inconsistent with liberty? I will ask more, is it not inconsistent with public virtue? Not only does it lodge authority with the unskillful but with those whose interest it is to abuse it. It does more – it degrades the minds of men, it corrupts their hearts and debases their understanding, leading them to attach honor and to yield respect to something else than talent and virtue."

"The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals. As all those acquainted with the character of the Virginia planters, whether American or foreigners, appear to concur in bearing testimony of their humanity, it is probable that they are entitled to the praise which they claim. But in their position, justice should be held superior to humanity; to break the chains would be more generous than to gild them; and whether we consider the interests of the master or the slave, decidedly more useful. To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable."

"I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of your sex instead of poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements as any male child of Adam."

"An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue."

"We detect … throughout the whole of things — in the operations of nature, of human society, and in those of our own internal percipient and sentient soul — two master energies. These — while preserving equal forces and acting in conjunction — keep all existences in life, all bodies in place; impart and preserve to each and all their appropriate sphere of action or of movement; and tend, throughout the world of matter, as of mind — to order, harmony, and beauty. Acting in disjunction — i.e. singly, or in opposition — these two principles are transformed into agents of disorder and death; producing variously, violence, inertia, confusion, stagnation, convulsion, decomposition, dissolution. To render this facile of apprehension by every ordinarily informed and reflecting understanding, let us, for a moment, conceive the material universe itself — in which we move and feel and think and have our being, submitted to one only of those universal energies which as considered in disjunction — we call attractive and repellant. Conceive the material universe, I say, submitted to one only of these; it matters not which, for select either, the result must be the same — stagnation, darkness, immovability, universal death."

"It is not, happily, within our power thus to work destruction in the universal womb of things; still within the sphere of human influence — which extends to the uttermost limit of our world's circumambient atmosphere — we can, and do, modify all nature's kingdom; bending towards good or ill, health or disease, harmony or discord, each part, each unit of the universal plan. Upon our just or erroneous comprehension then, of the laws of nature, must depend our adaptation of art for the right improvement or for the ignorant deterioration of Nature's works. And moreover, upon our just or erroneous interpretation of these in the first division of truth — the physical — will depend our interpretation of them in the intellectual and in the moral; from all which it follows, that our system of human economy will present, even as it has ever presented, a practical exhibition of that of the universe. There is more consistency in the human mind, as in the course of events, than is supposed. In both, the first link in the chain decides the last. Man hath ever made a cosmogony in keeping with his views in physics; a scheme of government in keeping with his cosmogony; a theory of ethics in keeping with his government, and a code of law and theology in keeping with his ethics. Every perception of the human mind modifies human practice. Science is but the theory of art."

"I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life."

"From the era which dates the national existence of the American people, dates also a mighty step in the march of human knowledge. And it is consistent with that principle in our conformation which leads us to rejoice in the good which befalls our species, and to sorrow for the evil, that our hearts should expand on this day; — on this day, which calls to memory the conquest achieved by knowledge over ignorance, willing co-operation over blind obedience, opinion over prejudice, new ways over old ways, when, fifty-two years ago, America declared her national independence, and associated it with her republican federation."

"Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well, that is, it would be useful, if on each anniversary we examined the progress made by our species in just knowledge and just practice."

"The political dismemberment of these once British colonies from the parent island, though involving a valuable principle, and many possible results, would scarcely merit a yearly commemoration, even in this country, had it not been accompanied by other occurrences more novel, and far more important."

"There is, in the institutions of this country, one principle, which, had they no other excellence, would secure to them the preference over those of all other countries. I mean — and some devout patriots will start — I mean the principle of change. I have used a word to which is attached an obnoxious meaning. Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change? What is there in the physical world but change? And what would there be in the moral world without change?"

"In the moral world — that is, in the thoughts, and feelings, and inventions of men, change may certainly be either for the better or for the worse, or it may be for neither. Changes that are neither bad nor good can have regard only to trivial matters, and can be as little worthy of observation as of censure. Changes that are from better to worse can originate only in ignorance, and are ever amended so soon as experience has substantiated their mischief. Where men then are free to consult experience they will correct their practice, and make changes for the better. It follows, therefore, that the more free men are, the more changes they will make. In the beginning, possibly, for the worse; but most certainly in time for the better; until their knowledge enlarging by observation, and their judgment strengthening by exercise, they will find themselves in the straight, broad, fair road of improvement. Out of change, therefore, springs improvement; and the people who shall have imagined a peaceable mode of changing their institutions, hold a surety for their melioration. This surety is worth all other excellences. Better were the prospects of a people under the influence of the worst government who should hold the power of changing it, than those of a people under the best who should hold no such power."

"Here, then, is the great beauty of American government. The simple machinery of representation carried through all its parts gives facility for its being moulded at will to fit with the knowledge of the age. If imperfect in any or all of its parts, it bears within it a perfect principle — the principle of improvement. And, let us observe, that this principle is all that we can ever know of perfection. Knowledge, and all the blessings which spring out of knowledge, can never be more than progressive; and whatsoever sets open the door does all for us — does every thing."

"We tax our ingenuity to draw nice distinctions. We are told of political liberty — of religious liberty — of moral liberty. Yet, after all, is there more than one liberty; and these divisions, are they not the more and the less of the same thing? The provision we have referred to in our political institutions, as framed in accordance with the principle inherent in ourselves, insures to us all of free action that statues can insure."

"The great national and political revolution of '76 set the seal to the liberties of North America. And but for one evil, and that of immense magnitude, which the constitutional provision we have been considering does not fairly reach — I allude to negro slavery and the degradation of our coloured citizens — we could foresee for the whole of this magnificent country a certain future of uniform and peaceful improvement."

"The great error of the wisest known nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, was the preference invariable given to the imagined interests of an imaginary existence called the state or country, and the real interests of the real existences, or human beings, upon whom, individually and collectively, their laws could alone operate. Another error was the opposition in which they invariably placed the interests of their own nation to the interests of all other nations; and a third and greater error, was the elevating into a virtue this selfish preference of their own national interests, under the name of patriotism. The moderns are growing a little wise on these matters, but they are still very ignorant."

"Americans no longer argue on the propriety of making all men soldiers, in order that their nation may be an object of terror to the rest of the world. They understand that the happiness of a people is the only rational object of a government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all. They have, farther, almost excluded war as a profession, and reduced it from a system of robbery to one of simple defence. In so doing, they ought also to have laid aside all show of military parade, and all ideas of military glory. If they have not done so, it is that their reform in this matter is yet imperfect, and their ideas respecting it are confused."

"In continental Europe, of late years, the words patriotism and patriot have been used in a more enlarged sense than it is usual here to attribute to them, or than is attached to them in Great Britain. Since the political struggles of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, the word patriotism has been employed, throughout continental Europe, to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil; in short, patriotism there is used rather to express the interest felt in the human race in general, than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And patriot, in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement, rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs. Used in this sense, patriotism is a virtue, and a patriot a virtuous man. With such an interpretation, a patriot is a useful member of society, capable of enlarging all minds, and bettering all hearts with which he comes in contact; a useful member of the human family, capable of establishing fundamental principles, and of merging his own interests, those of his associates, and those of his nation, in the interests of the human race. Laurels and statues are vain things, and mischievous as they are childish; but, could we imagine them of use, on such a patriot alone could they be with any reason bestowed."

"Is there a thought can fill the human mind More pure, more vast, more generous, more refined Than that which guides the enlightened patriot's toll: Not he, whose view is bounded by his soil; Not he, whose narrow heart can only shrine The land — the people that he calleth mine; Not he, who to set up that land on high, Will make whole nations bleed, whole nations die; Not he, who, calling that land's rights his pride Trampleth the rights of all the earth beside; No: — He it is, the just, the generous soul! Who owneth brotherhood with either pole, Stretches from realm to realm his spacious mind, And guards the weal of all the human kind, Holds freedom's banner o'er the earth unfurl'd And stands the guardian patriot of a world!"

"If such a patriotism as we have last considered should seem likely to obtain in any country, it should be certainly in this. In this, which is truly the home of all nations, and in the veins of whose citizens flows the blood of every people on the globe. Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America. Mischievous every where, it were here both mischievous and absurd. The very origin of the people is opposed to it. The institutions, in their principle, militate against it. The day we are celebrating protests against it. It is for Americans, more especially to nourish a nobler sentiment; one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country, not because it is their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty — the favoured scene of human improvement. It is for them more especially, to know why they honour their institutions, and feel that they honour them because they are based on just principles. It is for them, more especially, to examine their institutions, because they have the means of improving them; to examine their laws, because at will they can alter them."

"Liberty means, not the mere voting at elections, but the free and fearless exercise of the mental faculties, and that self-possession which springs out of well-reasoned opinions and consistent practice. It is for them to honour principles rather than men — to commemorate events rather than days; when they rejoice, to know for what they rejoice, and to rejoice only for what has brought, and what brings, peace and happiness to men. The event we commemorate this day has procured much of both, and shall procure, in the onward course of human improvement, more than we can now conceive of. For this — for the good obtained, and yet in store for our race — let us rejoice! But let us rejoice as men, not as children — as human beings, rather than as Americans — as reasoning beings, not as ignorants. So shall we rejoice to good purpose and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the jubilee of independence."

"Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ."

"Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!"

"However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion that until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good they will for evil, if they advance not knowledge they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race."

"It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex."

"How many, how omnipotent are the interests which engage men to break the mental chains of women! How many, how dear are the interests which engage them to exalt rather than lower their condition, to multiply their solid acquirements, to respect their liberties, to make them their equals, to wish them even their superiors! Let them inquire into these things. Let them examine the relation in which the two sexes stand, and ever must stand, to each other. Let them perceive that, mutually dependent, they must ever be giving and receiving, or they must be losing — receiving or losing in knowledge, in virtue, in enjoyment. Let them perceive how immense the loss, or how immense the gain. Let them not imagine that they know aught of the delights which intercourse with the other sex can give, until they have felt the sympathy of mind with mind, and heart with heart; until they bring into that intercourse every affection, every talent, every confidence, every refinement, every respect. Until power is annihilated on one side, fear and obedience on the other, and both restored to the birthright — equality. Let none think that affection can reign without it; or friendship or esteem. Jealousies, envyings, suspicions, reserves, deceptions — these are the fruits of inequality."

"Oh! then, let us gird up our minds in courage, and compose them in peace. Let us cast aside fear and suspicion, suspend our jealousies and disputes, acknowledge the rights of others and assert our own. And oh! let us understand that the first and noblest of these rights is, the cultivation of our reason."

"I must intreat your patience — your gentle hearing. I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine; enquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the ground of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you… But your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed, you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it."

"Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding."

"Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown."

"Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten."

"The appropriate character of a woman demands delicacy of appearance and manners, refinement of sentiment, gentleness of speech, modesty in feeling and action, a shrinking from notoriety and public gaze, a love of dependence, and protection, aversion to all that is coarse and rude, and an instinctive abhorrence of all that tends to indelicacy and impurity, either in principles or actions. These are what are admired and sought for in a woman, and your sex demand and appreciate these qualities, as much as my own. With this standard of feeling and of taste, who can look without disgust and abhorrence upon such an one as Fanny Wright, with her great masculine person, her loud voice, her untasteful attire, going about unprotected, and feeling no need of protection, mingling with men in stormy debate, and standing up with bare-faced impudence, to lecture to a public assembly. And what are the topics of her discourse, that in some cases may be a palliation for such indecorum? Nothing better than broad attacks on all those principles that protect the purity, the dignity, and the safety of her sex. There she stands, with brazen front and brawny arms, attacking the safeguards of all that is venerable and sacred in religion, all that is safe and wise in law, all that is pure and lovely in domestic virtue. Her talents only make her the more conspicuous and offensive, her amiable disposition and sincerity, only make her folly and want of common sense the more pitiable, her freedom from private vices, if she is free, only indicates, that without delicacy, and without principles, she has so thrown off all feminine attractions, that freedom from temptation is her only, and shameful palladium. I cannot conceive any thing in the shape of a woman, more intolerably offensive and disgusting; and I believe that in eulogizing her, you did violence to your judgment and your taste, from a natural desire to make a prominent member in your party appear respectable."

"There is a class of minds, of which I consider Robert Owen and Fanny Wright as specimens, who, while wanting in that fine mental balance called common sense, are supplied with a large amount of enthusiasm. Such a combination, if united with a contemplative turn of mind and lively imagination, often leads to that mysticism whose votaries reside in a world of imagination and feeling. But when united to an active and fearless temperament, and under certain influences, it tends to that practical Atheism, which is exhibited in the projects and visionary efforts of Owen and Fanny Wright."

"It is far easier to educate for evil than for good, for children since the Fall take to evil as naturally as ducks take to water. The enemies of religion and society understand this perfectly well, and hence whenever in their power they seize upon the schools, and seek to control the education of the young. To accomplish Iheir purposes, they have only to exclude religion from the schools, under the plea of excluding sectarianism, and instead of teaching religion, teach as Frances Wright was accustomed to say, knowledge, and they may soon have a community whose thoughts and affections will be exclusively of the earth earthy. It is not without design that I have mentioned the name of Frances Wright, the favorite pupil of Jeremy Bentham, and famous infidel lecturer through our country, some twenty years ago; for I happen to know, what may not be known to you all, that she and her friends were the great movers in the scheme of godless education, now the fashion in our country. I knew this remarkable woman well, and it was my shame to share, for a time, many of her views, for which I ask pardon of God and of my countrymen. I was for a brief time in her confidence, and one of those selected to carry into execution her plans. The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our Churches into Halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might belabor the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could; but to establish a system of state, we said, national schools, from which all religion was to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught but such knowledge as is verifiable by the senses, and to which all parents were to be compelled by law to send their children. Our complete plan was to take the children from their parents at the age of twelve or eighteen months, and to have them nursed, fed, clothed and trained in these schools at the public expense; but at any rate, we were to have godless schools for all the children of the country, to which the parents would be compelled by law to send them."

"To this heroic woman, who left ease, elegance, a high social circle of rich culture, and with true self-abnegation gave her life, in the country of her adoption, to the teachings of her highest idea of truth, it is fitting that we pay a tribute of just, though late, respect. Her writings are of the purest and noblest character, and whatever there is of error in them is easily thrown aside. The spider sucks poison from the same flower from which the bee gathers honey; let us therefore ask if the evil be not in ourselves before we condemn others. Women joined in the hue and cry against her, little thinking that men were building the gallows and making them the executioners. Women have crucified in all ages the redeemers of their own sex, and men mock them with the fact."

"First articulated in 1792 by the English radical Mary Wollstonecraft, the doctrine of women's rights was brought to the United States in the 1820s by Frances Wright, a Scotswoman who gained great notoriety by her radical pronouncements on democracy, education, marriage, and labor. The threat that Wright's ideas represented to notions of respectable Christian womanhood can be appreciated by Catharine Beecher's horrified description of her: "There she stands, with brazen front and brawny arms, attacking the safeguards of all that is venerable and sacred in religion, all that is safe and wise in law, all that is pure and lovely in domestic virtue."n35 For several years, any woman who publicly advocated radical ideas was derisively called a "Fanny Wright woman.'"

"The matter and manner of the dialogue is strictly ancient … the scenery and portraiture of the interlocutors are of higher finish than anything in that line left us by the ancients; and like Ossian, if not ancient, it is equal to the best morsels of antiqity."

"Feminist writers, not trained historians, were the first to undertake a systematic attempt to approach the problem of women's role in American life and history. This took the form of feminist tracts, theoretical approaches, and compilations of woman's "contributions." The early compilers attacked the subject with a missionary zeal designed, above all, to right wrong. Their tendency was to praise anything women had done as a "contribution" and to include any women who had gained the slightest public attention in their numerous lists. Still, much positive work was done in simply recounting the history of the woman's rights movement and some of its forerunners and in discussing some of the women whose pioneering struggles opened opportunities to others. Feminist writers were hampered by a two-fold bias. First, they shared the middle-class, nativist, moralistic approach of the Progressives and tended to censure out of existence anyone who did not fit into this pattern. Thus we find that women like Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose received little attention because they were considered too radical. "Premature feminists" such as the Grimké sisters, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child are barely mentioned."

"Frances Wright, the first woman to engage in public lecturing in America, scandalized her contemporaries in a variety of ways. Not only did she advocate birth control, easy divorce and free love, but she allowed the latter to be practiced, even on an interracial basis, in the utopian community she had founded in Tennessee. Nashoba was to demonstrate the feasibility of the gradual emancipation of slaves, who earned their purchase price by manual labor in the community, while being educated for freedom. Frances Wright believed that these former slaves should be accorded the same sexual rights as other members of the community and she refused to disavow her fellow-utopians' actions, when a community diary, published in a reform journal during her absence, revealed incidents of interracial free love relationships, which deeply shocked abolitionist reformers outside the community. Moreover, she was actively involved in organizing the first labor party in the United States, the Workingman's Association and promoted within that group, during the 1828 and 1830 state election campaigns, the principle of public education for all children, starting at age two and in boarding schools. While women's liberation was not specifically listed as one of the expected benefits, she did mention that this scheme would equalize educational opportunities for workers' children, imbuing children of all classes with the egalitarian spirit that she regarded as the essential principle of American democracy."

"Frances Wright appeared on the scene too soon to influence the first generation of feminists directly, although some of them had certainly heard of her activities. It is noteworthy that the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage features a tribute to Frances Wright, though only in her role as a public speaker. Latter-day feminists ignored her advanced ideas for sexual, moral, and educational reform."

"Frances Wright, little known to the present generation, was really the spiritual helpmate and better half of the Owens, in the socialistic revival of 1826. Our impression is, not only that she was the leading woman in the communistic movement of that period, but that she had a very important agency in starting two other movements that had far greater success and are at this moment in popular favour, viz., Anti-Slavery and Woman's Rights. If justice were done, we are confident her name would figure high with those of Lundy, Garrison, and John Brown on the one hand, and with those of Abby Kelly, Lucy Stone and Anna Elizabeth Dickinson on the other."

"She was thoroughly versed in the literature of the day, was well informed on general topics, and spoke French and Italian fluently. She had travelled and resided for years in Europe, was an intimate friend of General Lafayette, and made the acquaintance of many leading reformers, Hungarian, Polish, and others, and was a thorough republican; indeed, an advocate of universal suffrage without regard to colour or sex."

"Frances Wright was the first woman in this country who spoke on the equality of the sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The elements were entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil of conservatism, and her reward was sure — the same reward that is always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and persecution. But these were not the only things she received. Oh, she had her reward — that reward of which no enemies could deprive her, which no slanders could make less precious — the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty."

"The first step in every great movement is the most difficult. Frances Wright (nicknamed "Fanny Wright," because the world has not grown up to the high standard on which she took her position here)-Frances Wright was the first woman in this country who spoke on the equality of the sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The elements were entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil of conservatism, and her reward was sure-the same reward that is always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and persecution. But these were not the only things that she received. Oh! she had her reward!-that reward which no enemies could deprive her, which no slanders, could make less precious the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty; the reward springing from the consciousness of right, of endeavoring to benefit unborn generations. How delightful to see the moulding of the minds around you, the infusing of your thoughts and aspirations into others, until one by one they stand by your side, without knowing how they came there! That reward she had. It has been her glory, it is the glory of her memory; and the time will come when society will have outgrown its old prejudices, and stepped, with one foot, as least, upon the elevated platform on which she took her position. But owing to the fact that the elements were unprepared, she naturally could not succeed to any great extent. After her, in 1837, the subject of woman's rights was again taken hold of-aye, taken hold of by woman; and, the soil having been already somewhat prepared, she began to sow the seeds for the future growth, the fruits of which we now begin to enjoy."

"You do honor to our species."

"Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes."

"In those days I frequented the anti-slavery halls, in New York — heard many of their speakers — people of all qualities, styles — always interesting, always suggestive. It was there I heard Fanny Wright … a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs — too large to be tolerated for long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character — one of the best in history though also one of the least understood. She had a varied career here and in France — married a damned scoundrel, lost her fortune, faced the world with her usual courage. Her crowning sorrow was when the infernal whelp who had been her husband tried in France, through the aid of a priest, to take from her her daughter, charging that the child needed to be protected from the danger of her mother's infidelistic teachings. Think of it! … The scoundrel, through the aid of the French law, which is of all law probably the least favorable to women, got nearly her whole fortune, perhaps the whole of it, so that at the last, when she needed five thousand dollars or so, she had to beg it of him, he even then making the concession reluctantly. But my remembrance of her all centers about New York. She spoke in the old Tammany Hall there, every Sunday, about all sorts of reforms. Her views were very broad — she touched the widest range of themes — spoke informally, colloquially. She published while there the Free Inquirer, which my daddy took and I often read. She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her: fell down before her: her very appearance seemed to enthrall us. I had a picture of her about here — it is probably somewhere in the house still: a sitting figure — graceful, deer-like: and her countenance! oh! it was very serene."

"She had all of Ingersoll's magnetism and perhaps more than his tact. … She was a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate, who was never satisfied unless she was busy doing good — public good, private good."

"Frances Wright of Scotland, an early feminist and utopian socialist, was invited by Philadelphia workingmen to speak on the Fourth of July 1829 to one of the first city-wide associations of labor unions in the United States. She asked if the Revolution had been fought "to crush down the sons and daughters of your country's industry under... neglect, poverty, vice, starvation, and disease...." She wondered if the new technology was not lowering the value of human labor, making people appendages to machines, crippling the minds and bodies of child laborers."

"Probably the easiest thing would be to vasectimize males at the age of 13 after freezing some of their sperm. Then you could unfreeze it only after they have enough money to support a child up to the age of 18."

"Take assertiveness training, get paid what you're worth, join a consciousness raising group."

"When I think of the thousands and thousands of pounds which have been spent by the National Art Collections Fund on the purchase of paintings—some of questionable merit and dubious condition—by Old Masters already represented in the National Gallery—it makes me boil with rage to think that in 1905 it would not contribute one halfpenny towards the purchase for the nation of a picture by one of the Great French Masters of the late nineteenth century. It was a short-sighted policy, but the Fund's inertia and snobbish ineptitude are entirely characteristic of the habits of art-officialdom in England."

"Hullo! What's this? What are these funny brown-and-olive landscapes doing in an impressionist exhibition? Brown! I ask you? Isn't it absurd for a man to go on using brown and call himself an impressionist painter?"

"Where, oh where was Mr. Roger Fry in 1905, and why was his voice not heard in the land? How could he allow anybody to call Cézanne an "amateur" with impunity?"

"That, by the accident of an illegality in the codicil to his will, it should have been possible for Hugh Lane's pet collection to be snaffled by the British Government, is a fitting conclusion to the shabby story of England's appreciation of French impressionist painting."

"The first time you see Winston Churchill you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues."

"Teaching is successful only as it causes people to think for themselves. What the teacher thinks matters little; what he makes the child think matters much."

"There does not seem to be anything to do."

"Robert Ingersoll was humorist, iconoclast and lover of humanity. It is said that the difference between man and the lower animals is that man has the ability to laugh. When you laugh you relax, and when you relax you give freedom to muscles, nerves and brain-cells. Man seldom has use of his reason when his brain is tense. The sense of humor makes a condition where reason can act. Ingersoll knew that he must make his appeal to man's brain."

"Robert Ingersoll preferred to every political and social honor the privilege of freeing humanity from the shackles of bondage and fear. He knew no holier thing than truth. He preferred using his own reason to receiving popular applause or approbation. His keen wit, clear brain and merciless sarcasm uncrowned the King of Superstition and made him a puppet in the court of reason."

"Elbert Hubbard sees, too, that just so long as there is one woman who is denied any right that man claims for himself, there is no free man; that no man can be a superior, true American so long as one woman is denied her birthright of life, liberty and happiness. He knows that freedom to think and act, without withholding that right from any other, evolves humanity — Therefore he gives his best energy to inspiring men and women to think and to act, each for himself. He pleads for the rights of children, for so-called criminals, for the insane, the weak, and all those who having failed to be a friend to themselves, need friendship most. The Golden Rule is his rule of life. His work is to emancipate American men and women from being slaves to useless customs, outgrown mental habits, outgrown religion, outgrown laws, outgrown superstitions. He would make each human being rely upon himself for health, wealth and happiness."

"The world can only be redeemed through action — movement — motion. Uncoerced, unbribed, and unbought, humanity will move toward the light."

"To this woman I owe all I am — and to her the world owes its gratitude for any and all, be it much or little, that I have given it. My religion is all in my wife's name. And I am not bankrupt, for all she has is mine, if I can use it, and in a degree I have. And why I prize life, and desire to live is that I may give the world more of the treasures of her heart and mind, realizing with perfect faith that the supply coming from Infinity can never be lessened nor decreased."

"Grouping and mutuality of countries and peoples in the Balkans is the only road that leads to economic, national and political liberation."

"Unlimited enmity of the Albanian people against Serbia is the foremost real result of the Albanian policies of the Serbian government. The second and more dangerous result is the strengthening of two big powers in Albania, which have the greatest interests in the Balkans."

"We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment.... In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies."

"It is now necessary to face the truth and to acknowledge against all prejudices that the struggle that the Albanian tribe is leading today is a natural and unavoidable historic struggle for a different political life than that experienced under Turkish rule – different also from that which its neighbours Serbia, Greece and Montenegro would like to force upon the Albanians."

"It is only a plain tale of plain people told in the plain dialect of a plain old woman."

"I've noticed that whenever a woman's willin' to be imposed upon there's always a man standin' 'round ready to do the imposin'."

"Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality."

"For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life."

"Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself. Where are true peace and true glory? Are they not in God?"

"[E]veryone agrees that a bitch is always a female .... It is also generally agreed that a Bitch is aggressive, and therefore unfeminine (ahem).... Bitches have some or all of the following characteristics … Bitches are aggressive, assertive, domineering, overbearing, strong-minded, spiteful, hostile, direct, blunt, candid, obnoxious, thick-skinned, hard-headed, vicious, dogmatic, competent, competitive, pushy, loud-mouthed, independent, stubborn, demanding, manipulative, egoistic, driven, achieving, overwhelming, threatening, scary, ambitious, tough, brassy, masculine, boisterous, and turbulent. Among other things.... Bitches are big, tall, strong, large, loud, brash, harsh, awkward, clumsy, sprawling, strident, ugly. Bitches move their bodies freely rather than restrain, refine and confine their motions in the proper feminine manner.... Bitches seek their identity strictly thru themselves and what they do. They are subjects, not objects … Whatever they do, they want an active role and are frequently perceived as domineering. Often they do dominate other people when roles are not available to them which more creatively sublimate their energies and utilize their capabilities. More often they are accused of domineering when doing what would be considered natural by a man."

"The most prominent characteristic of all Bitches is that they rudely violate conceptions of proper sex role behavior. They violate them in different ways, but they all violate them. Their attitudes towards themselves and other people, their goal orientations, their personal style, their appearance and way of handling their bodies, all jar people and make them feel uneasy. Sometimes it's conscious and sometimes it's not, but people generally feel uncomfortable around Bitches. They consider them aberrations. They find their style disturbing.... A Bitch is blunt, direct, arrogant, at times egoistic. She has no liking for the indirect, subtle, mysterious ways of the “eternal feminine”. She disdains the vicarious life deemed natural to women because she wants to live a life of her own. Our society has defined humanity as male, and female as something other than male. In this way, females could be human only by living vicariously thru a male. To be able to live, a woman has to agree to serve, honor, and obey a man and what she gets in exchange is at best a shadow life. Bitches refuse to serve, honor or obey anyone. They demand to be fully functioning human beings, not just shadows. They want to be both female and human. This makes them social contradictions. The mere existence of Bitches negates the idea that a woman's reality must come thru her relationship to a man and defies the belief that women are perpetual children who must always be under the guidance of another."

"A highly competent Bitch often deprecates herself by refusing to recognize her own superiority.... Bitches are among the most unsung of the unsung heroes of this society. They are the pioneers, the vanguard, the spearhead. Whether they want to be or not this is the role they serve just by their very being. Many would not choose to be the groundbreakers for the mass of women for whom they have no sisterly feelings but they cannot avoid it. Those who violate the limits, extend them; or cause the system to break.... Their major psychological oppression is not a belief that they are inferior but a belief that they are not.... Like most women they were taught to hate themselves as well as all women. In different ways and for different reasons perhaps, but the effect was similar. Internalization of a derogatory self-concept always results in a good deal of bitterness and resentment. This anger is usually either turned in on the self —making one an unpleasant person or on other women — reinforcing the social cliches about them. Only with political consciousness is it directed at the source — the social system.... We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever."

"Love is the most dangerous thing in the world."

"Love is the greatest light, the brightest torch, and will always be the greatest instrument of change."

"Love is large; love defies limits. People talk about the sanctity of love -- love is by definition sacred. Not some love between some people, but all love between all people."

"For some people, they may categorize it as “gay love”. And for me, I simply see it as love. And there’s no corner of the universe where love cannot abide and grow."

"There is no wasted effort. There is no wasted effort. It will all add to the path. It will all add to the journey. Somehow. You just can't even imagine how it will. But you just need to do things fully to the best of your ability. And you go towards the thing that you love. What you love to do."

"At any given moment in your life, you have the choice between love and fear. And that’s a choice you make. You make the choice of how you react to events."

"It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history."

"…The L Word reaffirmed that good storytelling has a way of creating community. Fans everywhere have been connecting with each other online, in public and at home-viewing parties."

"[About the end of the The L Word] Everything has its cycle. I think it’s appropriate for us to be ending now. But the beauty of storytelling, and the beauty of film and television is that it continues on."

"[On the importance of positive representations of LGBT people in the media] You know, I don't think it's helpful to anyone to... for example, say that every LGBT person is wonderful and perfect and without flaw, and lets all ring the bells to perfection. I think it's much more helpful to tell the story as truthfully as you can, and with all of its complications, because that's also when people recognize themselves, and that's when people who are not part of the LGBT community will recognize themselves within that character. And then [they] hopefully empathize and maybe there'll be some kind of shift."

"With more mainstream filmmaking, the problem is who’s making the decisions. They’re not artists. The key creative decisions are being made by lawyers and accountants—that’s a very precarious situation. It’s precarious because it really does matter. Icons are being made and manufactured. People say it’s just a movie—but it’s not."

"I believe that people want to turn from fear towards hope, from divisiveness towards unity, from intolerance to an understanding that we all belong to one great community. Within all the chaos, within the despair, the not knowing, the anger, the anxiety, there is always the possibility for change. There is a seed of hope. And I'm not talking about a pie-in-the-sky kind of hope, but a kind of hope that calls on each and every one of us to stand up and be counted — a kind of hope that calls on each and every one of us to give the very best of ourselves — not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all of us, collectively."

"I'm interested when people will stand up for themselves. I'm always interested in that moment when someone decides it's not good enough, and even though it's painful, they're willing to make a change."

"It behooves all of us to have everyone experience their deepest, most beautiful, most profound and powerful self, because those people are more apt to give their gift to everyone else rather than shudder in fear."

"People get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don’t know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don’t know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else."

"We can have the final word on hate, neglect, disease and all the other insidious characters that still script their way into our stories...for now, but not forever."

"Just when you think you know something, it gets turned around and challenged in some way. But those changes are welcome because you end up learning more."

"Politics is a lot like sex - if you want something, you have to ask for it, if they’re not doing it right you’ve got to speak up and show them and if you still don’t get what you want, then there is nothing wrong with doing it yourself."

"“I’ve had my letters from klansmen, believe me...I could always navigate it. I don’t know if that’s just because I was conditioned to navigate it. But I always could. It just made me determined to work even more...Every single thing is narrative. Our understanding of things is a narrative. It’s the narrative of who’s in power. It’s the narrative of the person in the bodega down the street. What is the story that I’m telling myself? Am I telling myself the story that my teachers told me that I was? Am I telling myself the story that my parents told me that I was? How do I come to the narrative that serves my highest good?"

"[Her message to women and girls of the world] You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. And it is incumbent upon you to use that power--not only for yourself, but for everyone else around you."

"Inside every woman there is a Kali. [Hindu goddess who morphed into seven hidden beings to win a battle] Do not mistake the exterior for the interior."

"[On what she learned from working on The L Word] I think that I learned the most clearly was how connected we all are. And that (does air quotation marks) "gay issues" are also women's issues because homophobia is a form of misogyny…And I feel much more motivated to speak out when I see something that I don't like or that just smells wrong…I see how all women are connected. You know, and that we are all either repressed or we repress ourselves in certain ways, and that's truly codified within the culture. And that I'm not so far removed from that woman in the Congo who's terrified to go out into the woods to look for firewood."

"One of the things that the show did for me was bring up so many women’s issues and the notion that homophobia is a form of misogyny. The women’s community and the gay community are interrelated, whether you’re straight or not. It also made me realize how connected women are everywhere. Women who are gay are repressed in similar ways as women who are straight."

"The fact is we are all, no matter where we live, surrounded constantly by stories, whether they are literal, oral or visual...the benign story I'm really growing tired of is the "humorous" story of the blonde woman who is either injured or humiliated all in order to sell beer. Not funny. I am tired of these stories. I am angered by these stories. There are other stories far more wondrous — stories of women claiming and reclaiming power, stories of rage and resistance and indefatigable courage, and stories of women and some men — reaching across great divides and into the most treacherous places on Earth where turmoil reigns and violence against women is unchecked, taking the hands of those women, helping to lift them up and leading them toward safety and sanctuary and self-determination."

"Every set is a man's world. Even on 'The L Word,' the crew was primarily men. The whole world is a man's world, unless you're in a nunnery. And even that is colored by what you're allowed, what doctrine you're allowed to practice."

"[Speaking about women’s friendships] If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody."

"Women are so often segregated to their sexuality, and how they appear. In fact, there’s a lot of talk, even now, I think in most jobs this is true…people will say, when a woman rises to power, they ask, ‘who did she sleep with?’ You know, it couldn’t possibly be about her acumen, it couldn’t possibly be about her intelligence. It’s got to be about her body, because that’s how women get ahead."

"The ways in which we are similar are far more numerous than the ways in which we are different."

"I hope through The L Word to become an honorary member of the gay tribe. I cherish the thought that some young girl or woman somewhere may one night turn on the television and for the first time ever see her life represented -- not as an isolated incident but as a multiplicity. Her overwhelming fear may have been that she might never find her tribe, she might never find love and now she knows that they are both out there waiting for her."

"...[B]eing part of The L Word made me realize how much more television can be that what I had experienced in my lifetime in terms of being able to be of service to people. I had so many fans come up to me who were really deeply appreciative of the show and what it had meant for them and their own sense of identity and their own sense of inclusion in our society and in our culture."

"There is this incredible, indelible community that has sprung up around the show, a community that gathers in homes and clubs, from Los Angeles to Topeka, Kansas and around the world. A community that, in some places, meets quietly in a lesbian bar that doesn’t even exist depending on whom you ask."

"[Speaking about the US military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy] The health of a democracy is directly dependent on hearing the voices of its individual citizens. Silence is destructive. What could mar our safety more than this restrictive policy that requires its citizens' silence? What could mar our safety more than this restrictive policy that quietly attacks its own citizens' very selfhood out of fear? What keeps us truly unsafe as a country on a day-to-day basis is our inability to look inside and experience ourselves as a multitude, as a complexity. And as sure as I'm standing here, things are not always black or white, but sometimes they can be both."

"[Speaking about her dedication to advocating for LGBT rights] I think after playing Bette Porter on The L Word for six years I felt like an honorary member of the community. They are not just gay issues. They affect everybody because they affect the fabric of our community. I am in a position to be helpful...people are indoctrinated and they have their point of view but hopefully slowly but surely we can help change the paradigm. That's what I hope for and it's happening little by little. It's not easy."

"I was doing press for the show and they were going to show a clip from The L Word that included a love scene of sorts between me and another character, and she had the audacity to say, 'If there are any children in the room, you might want to ask them to leave.' And my mind was blown open and I said to her, ‘If it had been a heterosexual love scene, would you have asked the same question?’ I asked her on air, because I thought, it’s important to ask -- it contextualizes the import of the show." My feelings were hurt and it just spoke to me of what the gay and lesbian community has to deal with on a day-to-day basis in terms of popular media."

"Now, at this time, I think there’s too many people who feel comfortable with hate speech. It’s become too commonplace, and acceptable. And it’s not okay, and we’ve got to change that…I think we also have to take responsibility for the words that come out of our mouths, because we are all connected. We are all part of one community."

"[Speaking about same-sex marriage] It’s about familiarity, and I think the only reason they’re uncomfortable with the notion of same-sex marriages is because they haven’t come into contact with gay and lesbian couples enough to understand that it’s about love—and that it is a civil right."

"[Demystifying lesbian sex for an interviewer] In a way, the sex isn’t really that different... From what I can tell, no, not really. All the things that men and women do together, think of everything that men and women do together, women and women can do together. And that makes you realize that sex is just simply about connecting with another person, or about intimacy…"

"When I started out, there weren't that many strong female roles, especially women who weren't just strong emotionally. I mean this is a also woman [her character on The Chicago Code, Teresa Colvin] who is strong physically, who isn't afraid of physicality. But now there are a lot more roles for women that are quite strong. I think the Academy Award nominations bespeak how many really great roles there are for women right now, and that's primarily because women are creating those roles for themselves."

"[Regarding how the L Word change how she selects her roles] I really have a lot less tolerance for being subjugated to simply being the emotional center of a story, rather than being the active portion of the plot. It's as if women can't drive the action so often in stories. I don't know who made up that rule but it can get very frustrating if there's not more to play."

"[Regarding Flashdance-related fame] It was very clear to me that it’s not real. It’s not real…I was never the little girl who thought I wanted to be famous. My first real quest that I can recall…other than wanting to be a jockey…was trying to figure out who or what God was. That really drove me for quite some time…I had a notion that there was this mystery that I didn’t really know anything about, and I wanted to try to figure it out….so fame was not my driving force."

"Whether it’s that moment in acting when everything is suspended and you’re not yourself, or breaking through the veil of a very long run or swim, or hearing my daughter laugh—they are all pathways to what I think God must be."

"[About compassion] You can have the ‘golden rule’—do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But then you take it one step farther—where you just do good unto others, period. Just for the sake of it."

"[On service] Giving feels good. It's a form of healing. Not just for you as an individual, but for everyone."

"[On the message of the Dalai Lama] We are in a very important time, where it’s clear that we live…in a pluralistic society. And certainly the Internet has made it clear that the actions of one group of people on one side of the globe can instantaneously affect the actions of another group people on the other side of the globe. So in this time when we are all so interconnected, the idea of practicing tolerance and non-discrimination doesn’t mean that you weaken yourself or that you weaken your society. On the contrary, I think it means that you’re able to strengthen yourself and your society."

"I think science and spirituality are one and the same, I don't think they're really different…quantum physics is validating all kinds of spiritual teachings."

"I was never that kid practising an acceptance speech in the mirror, holding an award. I was the kid who wanted to know, who was God? What is God? That was my obsession. I mailed away for catechism lessons from an advertisement in the back of the Silver Surfer comic, but that wasn’t what I meant. Then I started collecting Bibles. Then I moved on to tarot cards. My mom was just horrified. Cut to two years from now – I’ll have started a religion based on Star Wars."

"All of us have an artist inside us. It's part of our DNA as human beings. We have all witnessed the power of the arts to deeply connect people, to open our minds to new ideas and express our innermost sacred selves. The imagination isn't just simply reserved for children. The imagination can be, for all of us, a very real gateway to joy, understanding, liberation and peace."

"Compassion takes imagination."

"[On yoga] Once you've completed a wonderful class, you get a sense of the deepest, purest part of yourself. You feel like you are connected to everybody else in the world."

"[On meditation] ...that's the single most important thing that I do...there's something about understanding who you truly are. The essence of everyone is so beautiful that it's startling."

"[On running] For me running is about freedom. I find that the freer I feel, the faster I am."

"[On boxing] [For] The Chicago Code, I did some boxing. It makes you stand differently when you know you can punch someone out."

"[On handling stress] When you start projecting on the future—"Oh my God, I gotta do this and I’m not there yet"—well, of course you’re not there yet because you’re here now. That time will come…I try to stay in the moment as much as I can and find whatever joy I can in that moment, no matter what it is. Then it doesn’t feel as stressful."

"[On dealing with physical and emotional pain] … a friend taught me before I gave birth…“don't try to take your mind away from the pain. Go right into the centre of the pain”, because when she did that she found the pain dissipated. It's true for me anyway, but it's not always possible, I admit. It has become a valuable exercise to apply to different things in life, of not avoiding or disregarding pain or bad feelings. I just have to remember that nothing in life is ever stagnant and that this grief or ache is going to change because everything in life changes."

"[On cancer] One of the problems is that the notion of cancer has been so normalized. You hear about it so often, and it's not ok... it's not ok to normalize this disease. And with all of the pinkwashing that goes on —where companies are selling products based on breast cancer month — it's a lovely gesture, but consumers get so used to it that it becomes more normal."

"I don’t know that I’ve ever fit in, ever. And I say that not in a bad way. I mean, in some ways, it’s a relief not to fit in, because you get to look at different sides equally. Like I don’t know that I have always found my tribe. My tribe are the people who don’t feel like they fit in. And frankly, I think that a lot of people don’t feel like they fit in."

"I am strong-willed, and I am driven, and I am passionate...but I don’t have…a central cause…a motivating cause, I don’t know what that would be…other than trying to tell the truth when I work."

"I’m not always really calm, but I try not to get taken away by things that are incredibly transitory."

"[On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation — that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation."

"When I was younger, I enjoyed being strong, and I loved it when my heart was very strong, but I think it was also about submitting to the cultural idea that if you're a 22-year-old woman, you have to look a certain way. I'm not into that anymore. But I do appreciate it when my clothes fit."

"[What her career looks like] "It looks like a marathon. And I'm proud that I'm not a DNF (did not finish). I'm not a DNF yet. I just kept going. I think that's been the key is just to keep going and really try to get better and try to be as truthful as I can and hope that good things come my way.""

"The more affluent areas, by and large, are afforded these big, beautiful, spectacular buildings, and then the poorer neighborhoods are just disintegrating. And there’s this imbalance, obviously, of power and resources."

"What’s shocking is to see six-year-old children jump roping in the street at 2:00 a.m.—that’s shocking—a block away from drug dealers. Just to see that the gap in the circle is education, in my mind, primarily for young women, because it’s the young women that are raising the kids and that’s where the circle, I think, perpetuates itself."

"What rights have women? …(they are) punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance— if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion — parlor puppets…"

"…There is 10 times more in the world than would maintain all in yet unknown luxury. Yet how much misery there is in our midst; not because there is not enough, but owing to the misdirection of it."

"We have heard a great deal of our Pilgrim Fathers…but who has heard of the Pilgrim Mothers? Did they not endure as many perils, encounter as many hardships, and do as much to form and fashion the institutions of New England as the Pilgrim Fathers? And were not their trials, and is not their glory equally great? Yet they are hardly remembered."

"Who that has human blood flowing in his veins, who that ever felt the warm gush of affection thrill his being, can hesitate whether to throw his weight into the balance of life and freedom, or that of chains, oppression or death?....to him who fears only your opposition...silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destroyer's hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose..."

"I suppose you all grant that woman is a human being. If she has a right to life she has a right to earn a support for that life. If a human being, she has a right to have her powers and faculties as a human being developed. If developed, she has a right to exercise them."

"“For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged as mistress of herself. For her cradle to her grave she is another's. We do indeed need and demand the other rights of which I have spoken, but let us first obtain ourselves.”"

"Human rights include the rights of all, not only man, but woman, not only white but black; wherever there is a being called human, his rights are as full and expressive as his existence, and ought to be without limits or distinction of sex, country, or color…and only ignorance, superstition, and tyranny — both the basis and the influence of the Bible - deprive him of it."

"I am perfectly willing, nay, desirous, that the sentiments and principles I advocate should be known and criticized by the public; but I am not willing to have imputed to me sentiments which do not belong to me, and, believing that you do not willfully misrepresent me, take the liberty to correct some errors in regard to myself, in the account of the Rutland Convention, in your paper of this morning."

"I ask for a law of Divorce…to prevent the crimes and immoralities now practiced…too often under the name of marriage…I believe in true marriages, and therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones."

"Not long after we arrived here, nearly 28 years ago, we saw an advertisement for a meeting at Tammany Hall to discuss Robert Owen's Community principles. Being interested in the subject we attended the meeting, but to our surprise, and I must say regret, the various speakers, instead of debating Owen's Community, debated Owen. I told them that, according to the notice, principles and not persons were to be discussed. In every controversy it is well to keep the two distinct."

""…The nature of the Jew is governed by the same laws as human nature in general…In England, France, Germany and in the rest of Europe (except Spain), in spite of the barbarous treatment and deadly persecution they suffered, they have lived and spread and outlived much of the poisonous rancor and prejudice against them, and Europe has been none the worse on their account. Of course, where they are still under the Christian lash, as in Rome, where for the glory of God, their children even are stolen from them, self-preservation forces them to be narrow and exclusive. In other countries more civilized and just, they are so too; they progress just as fast as the world they live in will permit them."

"human nature (Jewish included) cannot remain tied down to all eternity."

"Then let us, as Infidels, while promoting liberty and spreading useful knowledge, to prevent any sect from getting power, not add to the prejudice already existing towards the Jews, or any other sect."

"We need no other; but we must, reassert in 1876 what 1776 so gloriously proclaimed and call upon the law-makers and the law-breakers to carry that declaration to its logical consistency by giving woman the right of representation in the government which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow, the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of man are claimed, moral consistency points to the equal rights of woman."

"I did not intend to publish anything about myself, for I had no other ambition except to work for the cause of humanity, irrespective of sex, sect, country, or color"

"thirty or forty years ago, the press was not sufficiently educated in the rights of women, even to notice, much less to report speeches as it does now"

"All that I can tell you is, that I used my humble powers to the uttermost, and raised my voice in behalf of Human Rights in general, and the elevation and Rights of Woman in particular, nearly all my life."

"Say to the friends. Go on, go on, halt not and rest not. Remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and of right. Much has been achieved; but the main, the vital thing, has yet to come. The suffrage is the magic key to the statute-the insignia of citizenship in a republic."

"the suffrage is not only a badge of citizenship but a mental and moral elevator that prepares the possessor of it to self-respect and dignity and prepares him for greater usefulness and higher and nobler aims in the progress of Humanity."

"We have been told, to-day, that it was a woman that agitated Great Britain to its very centre, before emancipation could be effected in her colonies. Woman must go hand in hand with man in every great and noble cause, if success would be insured."

"were only that great, noble truth of the Declaration of Independence carried out, as it ought to be, there would be no need of our meeting here to-day. Then indeed might we all rejoice when the Fourth of July arrives."

"in comparison to the liberation of 800,000 slaves, the Declaration of Independence falls into utter insignificance."

"the great act of emancipation of 800,000 human beings has shown to the world that the African race are not only capable of taking care of themselves, but are capable of enjoying peacefully as much liberty and as much freedom as the white men. Thus it has done far more towards the cause of freedom — towards emancipation from all kinds of slavery — than the Declaration of Independence did. For in spite of that Declaration — in sadness and sorrow do I say it — the United States of America are guilty of outrage and recreancy to their own principles in retaining slavery; while Great Britain, without that Declaration, having yet a great deal of oppression and tyranny in her midst, has shown a noble example to the world in emancipating all her chattel slaves."

"It is utterly impossible for us, as finite beings, with the utmost stretch of the imagination, to conceive the depth and immensity of the horrors of slavery."

"Not to be your own, bodily, mentally, or morally — that is to be a slave... Slavery is, not to belong to yourself — to be robbed of yourself. There is nothing that I so much abhor as that single thing — to be robbed of one’s self. We are our own legitimate masters. Nature has not created masters and slaves; nature has created man free as the air of heaven. The black man and the white man are equally the children of nature. The same mother earth has created us all; the same life pervades all; the same spirit ought to animate all. Slavery deprives us of ourselves."

"I go for emancipation of all kinds — white and black, man and woman. Humanity’s children are, in my estimation, all one and the same family, inheriting the same earth; therefore there should be no slaves of any kind among them. There are ties that bind man to man far stronger than the ties of nation — than the political and commercial ties — an even stronger than the ties of relationship; and these are the ties of humanity. Humanity, the great mother of all, has thrown around us ties, sympathies and feelings which are more endearing, more effectual, and more noble, than any other than have ever bound man to man."

"A gentleman once asked me in the South, what I thought, on the whole, of South Carolina. I told him: ”I am sorry to say that you are a century, at least, behind in the means of civilization.” He wanted to know why I thought so. I said: “The only civilization you have exists among your slaves: for if industry and the mechanical arts are the great criterion of civilization (and I believe they are), then certainly the slaves are the only civilized ones among you, because they do all the work.”"

"Our friend William Lloyd Garrison has repeated to us the many blessings resulting from upright actions. Yes, every act brings its own reward or its own punishment. Every good act produces its own corresponding reward, and every bad act its corresponding punishment. How, then, must not only the South but the North be punished in consequence of that great, immeasurable wrong of Slavery? Oh, the shame and outrage that, for one single moment, that great blot should be suffered to remain on the otherwise beautiful escutcheon of this republic! But permit me to say that the slaves of the South are not the only people that are in bondage. All women are excluded from the enjoyment of that liberty which your Declaration of Independence asserts to be the inalienable right of all. The same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that pertains to man, pertains to woman also. For what is life without liberty? Which of you here before me would not willingly risk his or her life, if in danger of being made a slave? Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle. I go for the recognition of human rights, without distinction of sect, party, sex, or color."

"Natural history gives us a knowledge of the animal kingdom in general; the different organ­isms, structures, and powers of the various species. Physiology teaches the nature of man, the laws that govern his being, the functions of the vital organs, and the conditions upon which alone health and life depend. Phrenology treats of the laws of mind, the different portions of the brain, the temperaments, the organs, how to develop some and repress others to produce a well balanced and healthy condition. But in the whole animal econ­omy—though the brain is considered to be a "mi­crocosm," in which may be traced a resemblance or relationship with everything in Nature—not a spot can be found to indicate the existence of a God."

"Mathematics lays the foundation of all the ex­act sciences. It teaches the art of combining num­bers, of calculating and measuring distances, how to solve problems, to weigh mountains, to fathom the depths of the ocean; but gives no directions how to ascertain the existence of a God."

"Astronomy tells us of the wonders of the Solar System—the eternally revolving planets, the ra­pidity and certainty of their motions, the distance from planet to planet, from star to star. It pre­dicts with astonishing and marvellous precision the phenomena of eclipses, the visibility upon our Earth of comets, and proves the immutable law of gravitation, but is entirely silent on the exist­ence of a God."

"The Universe of Matter gives us no record of his existence. Where next shall we search? En­ter the Universe of Mind, read the millions of volumes written on the subject, and in all the speculations, the assertions, the assumptions, the theories, and the creeds, you can only find Man stamped in an indelible impress his own mind on every page. In describing his God, he delineated his own character: the picture he drew represents in living and ineffaceable colors the epoch of his existence—the period he lived in."

"It was a great mistake to say that God made man in his image. Man, in all ages, made his God in his own image; and we find that just in accordance with his civilization, his knowledge, his experience, his taste, his refinement, his sense of right, of justice, of freedom, and humanity,—so has he made his God. But whether coarse or refined; cruel and vindictive, or kind and generous; an implacable tyrant, or a gentle and loving fa­ther;—it still was the emanation of his own mind—the picture of himself."

"But the Bible, we are told, reveals this great mystery. Where Nature is dumb, and Man ignorant, Revelation speaks in the authoritative voice of prophecy."

"The Universe is one vast chemical laboratory, in constant operation, by her internal forces. The laws or principles of attraction, cohesion, and re­pulsion, produce in never-ending succession the phenomena of composition, decomposition, and recomposition. The how, we are too ignorant to understand, too modest to presume, and too honest to profess. Had man been a patient and im­partial inquirer, and not with childish presump­tion attributed everything he could not under­stand, to supernatural causes, given names to hide his ignorance, but observed the operations of Na­ture, he would undoubtedly have known more, been wiser, and happier."

"Slavery being the cause of the war, we must look to its utter extinction for the remedy"

"Abraham Lincoln has issued a Proclamation. He has emancipated all the slaves of the rebel States with his pen, but that is all. To set them really and thoroughly free, we will have to use some other instrument than the pen. The slave is not emancipated; he is not free."

"I speak for myself. I do not wish any one else to be responsible for my opinions. I am loyal only to justice and humanity. Let the Administration give evidence that they too are for justice to all, without exception, without distinction, and I, for one, had I ten thousand lives, would gladly lay them down to secure this boon of freedom to humanity. But without this certainty, I am not unconditionally loyal to the Administration. We women need not be, for the law has never yet recognized us. Then I say to Abraham Lincoln, “Give us security for the future, for really when I look at the past, without a guarantee, I can hardly trust you.” And then I would say to him, “Let nothing stand in your way; let no man obstruct your path.”"

"I say to Abraham Lincoln, if these generals are good for anything, if they are fit to take the lead, put them at the head of armies, and let them go South and free the slaves you have announced free. If they are good for nothing, dispose of them as of anything else that is useless."

"I ask the President why McClellan was kept in the army so long after it was known — for there never was a time when anything else was known—that he was both incapable and unwilling to do anything?"

"If the Cabinet is in the way of freedom, dispose of the Cabinet — some of them, at least. The magnitude of this war has never yet been fully felt or acknowledged by the Cabinet. The man at its head — I mean Seward — has hardly yet woke up to the reality that we have a war. He was going to crush the rebellion in sixty days. It was a mere bagatelle! Why, he could do it after dinner, any day, as easy as taking a bottle of wine! If Seward is in the way of crushing the rebellion and establishing freedom, dispose of him."

"I am not unconditionally loyal, until we know to what principle we are to be loyal. Promise justice and freedom, and all the rest will follow."

"Human freedom and true democracy are identical."

"justice, like charity, must begin at home."

"What has brought on this war? Slavery, undoubtedly. Slavery was the primary cause of it. But the great secondary cause was the fact that the North, for the sake of the Union, has constantly compromised. Every demand that the South made of the North was acceded to, until the South came really to believe that they were the natural and legitimate masters, not only of the slaves, but of the North too."

"A true Union is based upon principles of mutual interest, of mutual respect and reciprocity, none of which ever existed between the North and South. They based their institutions on slavery; the North on freedom."

"Slavery and freedom can not exist together. Seward proclaimed a truism, but he did not appreciate its import."

"A small republic, a small nation, based upon the eternal principle of freedom, is great and powerful. A large empire based upon slavery, is weak and without foundation. The moment the light of freedom shines upon it, it discloses its defects, and unmasks its hideous deformities. As I said before, I would rather have a small republic without the taint and without the stain of slavery in it, than to have the South brought back by compromise. To avert such calamity, we must work. And our work must mainly be to watch and criticise and urge the Administration to do its whole duty to freedom and humanity."

"After all, we come down to the root of all evil—to money...Give us one million of dollars, and we will have the elective franchise at the very next session of our Legislature. (Laughter and applause.) But as we have not got a million of dollars, we want a million of voices. There are always two ways of obtaining an object. If we had had the money, we could have bought the Legislature and the elective franchise long before now. But as we have not, we must create a public opinion, and for that we must have voices."

"I have always thought I was convinced not only of the necessity but of the great importance of obtaining the elective franchise for woman; but recently I have become convinced that I never felt sufficiently that importance until now. Just read your public papers and see how our Senators and our members of the House are running round through the Southern States to hold meetings, and to deliver public addresses. To whom? To the freedmen. And why now, and why not ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago? Why do they get up meetings for the colored men, and call them fellow-men, brothers, and gentlemen? Because the freedman has that talisman in his hands which the politician is looking after. Don't you perceive, then, the importance of the elective franchise? Perhaps when we have the elective franchise in our hands, these great senators will condescend to inform us too of the importance of obtaining our rights."

"If we once have the elective franchise, upon the first indication that any man will endeavor to disturb a woman in her duty at the polls, Congress will enact another Freedman's Bureau—I beg pardon, a Freedwoman's Bureau—to protect women against men, and to guard the purity of the ballot-box at the same time."

"Men can pray in secret, but must vote in public. (Applause.) Hence the ballot, of the two, ought to be the most respected; and it would be if women were once there; but it never will be until they are there."

"We have been told this evening that it is not good for man to be alone. No; if it was not well for him to be alone in the garden of Eden, it surely cannot be well for him to be alone at the ballot-box."

"we have asked Congress, in the reconstruction of the Republic, to place it upon a sound foundation."

"A wrong always operates against itself, and falls back on the wrong-doer. We have proclaimed to the world universal suffrage; but it is universal suffrage with a vengeance attached to it—universal suffrage excluding the negro and the woman, who are by far the largest majority in this country. It is not the majority that rules here, but the minority. White men are in the minority in this nation. White women, black men, and black women con.pose the large majority of the nation. Yet, in spite of this fact, in spite of common sense, in spite of justice, while our members of Congress can prate so long about justice, and human rights, and the rights of the negro, they have not the moral courage to say anything for the rights of woman."

"In proportion to power is responsibility."

"When Chase, Summer, Stevens, and Wilson talk to the negro of the importance of having the franchise, and stop short of giving the franchise to woman, I proclaim them hypocrites—I proclaim them politicians. They speak so to the newly freed slave, because he has already the ballot in his hands, and they want him to vote for them. We have not that right, and hence they do not speak one word in favor of our attaining the elective franchise."

"There are a great many objections urged against the enfranchisement of women; and one that I have recently heard is that women would not go to war. Perhaps, if women had the franchise, men would not need to go to war neither. (Applause.) And this is one great reason why I demand the franchise. War is only a relic of the old barbarisms. So long as woman is deprived of her right, man is only next door to a barbarian. If he were not, he never would go to war."

"The ballot is a teacher. Henry Ward Beecher, in a discourse on the subject last winter, said, in regard to woman's franchise, that the ballot is a teacher. I am glad to be able to agree with a minister, which is not often the case. Yes, it is a teacher. Yet, when a man alone has the ballot, it fails to be his teacher. It has not taught him the great lesson that the ballot is useless, that it becomes perverted and corrupt, when woman is kept from it."

"For my part, I never knew a social evil to be removed by force of law...The prevention of that social evil must commence in the nursery. If you will bring up woman as you ought to bring up men—not as you do bring up men—acknowledging her right to live the same as men, giving her the same advantages and the same rights that men have, there will be no need to enact laws against a "social evil.""

"I say to the Legislature that, if you enact laws against social evils, whatever those laws are, let them be alike for man and for woman."

"Let woman have the franchise; let all the avenues of society be thrown open before her, according to her powers and her capacities, and there will be no need to talk about social evils. Depend upon it that she will not only take care of herself, but will help to take care of man, which is more than he has ever done for himself."

"At length in the anguish of my soul, I said, Mrs. Rose, there is not one in the Reform ranks, whom you think true, not one but whom panders to the popular feeling. She answered, I can't help it. I take them by the words of their own mouths. I trust all until their words or acts declare them false to truth and right and, continued she, no one can tell the hours of anguish I have suffered, as one after another I have seen, those whom I had trusted, betray falsity of motive as I have been compelled to place one after another on the list of panderers to public favor. Said I, do you know, Mrs. Rose, that I can but feel that you place me too on that list. Said she, I will tell you when I see you untrue. A silence ensued. While I copied the verse from the hymn sung in Church this A.M., and subscribed it Susan B. Anthony, for her dear friend Ernestine L. Rose, as I handed it to her, I observed tears in her eyes. Said I, Mrs. Rose, have I been wicked and hurt your feelings? She answered, no, but I expect never to be understood while I live. Her anguish was extreme. I too wept, for it filled soul with anguish to see one so noble, so true (even though I felt I could not comprehend her) so bowed down, so overcome with deep swelling emotions. At length she said, no one knows how I have suffered from not being understood. [I said] I know you must suffer and heaven forbid that I should add a feather's weight to your burdens. Mrs. Rose is not appreciated, nor cannot be by this age. She is too much in advance of the extreme ultraists even, to be understood by them. Almost every reformer feels that the odium of his own ultraisms is as much as he is able to bear and therefore shrinks from being identified with one in whose view their ultraism is sheer conservatism. This fact has been most plainly brought home to me. Every[one] says, "I am ultra enough, the mercy knows; I don't want to seem any more so by identifying myself with one whose every sentiment is so shocking to the public mind."..."

"Rose captivated her audiences with the passion and audacity of her women's rights reform message, her freethought ideas, and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about the platform, her clear brown eyes conveyed sincerity of feeling, while her orator's gestures added emphasis and fervor to her eloquent arguments. Her caustic humor provided a defense against hecklers, and served to entertain and win over her audiences. Simply appearing before mixed audiences flouted the accepted customs of her adopted land, where the public platform was still off-limits to women. But Rose was a visually striking figure as well. Unlike most married women of her day, she did not cover her head in a gesture of modesty or piety, and her black curls cascaded over her shoulders. Rose dressed with European sophistication and simplicity, in black or gray with white lace at her throat and cuffs and ever-present leather gloves. To accentuate the simplicity of her outfit, she wore a single piece of jewelry, either a cameo pin or a watch on a chain…Rose's colleagues and protégés became better known than she, but her vision continued to inspire them, and at the dawn of the twenty-first century, she inspires us still."

"Rose has been called the translator of the women's rights movement because of her knowledge of French, German, and Polish"

"suffragists in most of the first wave, certainly its 19th century years, were overwhelmingly Protestant, as was the country. The one really important Jewish-born woman of note in the early years, about whom I have written, was Ernestine Rose, born Esther Potowski in Russian Poland in 1810. After a rebellion from her rabbi father, she moved to London, where she married William Rose and became a socialist feminist. The couple moved to New York in 1836, where now Ernestine Rose became the leading woman in the campaign to grant married women basic economic rights in the State of New York. From this position, she became a major influence on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Rose considered herself a “freethinker” but she was definitely not a Protestant and her attitudes remained influenced by her Jewish background: Talmudic approach to texts, not approaching marriage as a divine sacrament…"

"Feminist writers, not trained historians, were the first to undertake a systematic attempt to approach the problem of women's role in American life and history. This took the form of feminist tracts, theoretical approaches, and compilations of woman's "contributions." The early compilers attacked the subject with a missionary zeal designed, above all, to right wrong. Their tendency was to praise anything women had done as a "contribution" and to include any women who had gained the slightest public attention in their numerous lists. Still, much positive work was done in simply recounting the history of the woman's rights movement and some of its forerunners and in discussing some of the women whose pioneering struggles opened opportunities to others. Feminist writers were hampered by a two-fold bias. First, they shared the middle-class, nativist, moralistic approach of the Progressives and tended to censure out of existence anyone who did not fit into this pattern. Thus we find that women like Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose received little attention because they were considered too radical. "Premature feminists" such as the Grimké sisters, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child are barely mentioned."

"I have long esteemed her for her honest, out-spoken radicalism, her discerning & discriminating mind, and her enlarged charity & forbearance toward the ignorant criminal and wrong doer-as well as wrong thinker - All this before she was associated with us in the Wom. Rig. movement. Her lectures always attracted me-so rare is candor in unpopular heterodoxy- A warm attachment is the result-"

"Mlle. Siismund Potoski [sic], best known to us as Ernestine L. Rose, was born in Poland and belonged to a Jewish family. She was sincere in her faith and conscientious in the observance of all its ceremonies. She was a faithful student of the Scriptures and of the ritual and dogmas of her faith until the persecutions of the Jews in Poland and Russia led her to investigate the theologies of both Jews and Christians and to reject alike their creeds and ceremonies. This involved much suffering all her life persecuted by Christians as well as those of her own faith. She was a liberal alike in religion and government and sympathized with France in her struggle for a Republic and rejoiced in its establishment in the United States. Traveling extensively on the continent, by her eloquent appeals to those in authority she relieved many cases of injustice and oppression, bringing peace and happiness to many an humble home...During the years of 1855 to 1860 Mrs. Rose traveled with Miss Anthony all over the State of New York, speaking to large audiences in fifty different counties. The result of their united labors was the passage of a bill securing to married women the right to their ways and guardianship of their children. For half a century, as a public speaker, her eloquent voice was heard on both continents, she having taken an active part in all the great progressive movements of our day, associated with the most influential classes of reformers in both Europe and America. All through those eventual years, Mrs. Rose fought a double battle, not only for the political rights of her sex, but for their religious rights as individual souls, to do their own thinking and believing, How much of the freedom we now enjoy may be due to this noble Polish woman cannot be estimated, for moral influences are too subtle for measurement. They who sat with her in bygone days on the platform will remember her matchless powers as a speaker, and how safe we all felt when she had the floor that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee would she in any way compromise the dignity of the occasion. She had the advantage of rare grace and beauty, which in a measure heightened the effect of all she said. She had a rich musical voice and a ready flow of choice language. In style she was clear, logical, and at times impassioned. I visited her during her last sad days in London, after the death of her husband, when she was stricken with the disease that terminated her life. She talked with deep feeling of her eventful life and with a lively interest in what was still passing, familiar as she was with every step of progress in our movement, both in England and America. "I am happy," she said at parting, "that I have helped to usher in the dawn of a new day for woman..." Of death and the future life she said nothing. I had often heard her say in former days that of the future [life after death] she knew nothing, and seldom thought of that subject, as she had always found enough in this life to occupy her time and thoughts. She had no fears of death and passed away calmly, sustained in her last days by the same philosophy that inspired her noble, unselfish life."

"Mrs. Rose was the first woman who presented herself on a public platform in America as a speaker against Negro slavery. It was perilous in a man to do it when she did it. She even went into the slave states pleading for [N]egro freedom. She was threatened with tar and feathers. She answered that "for the sake of humanity she would risk the tar." More than comely in features which had the dignity of contour, Mrs. Rose had a voice which at once arrested attention by its strength and melody. She spoke with easy accuracy and with eloquence and reason. Robert Owen, on his visits to America, paid her great respect. From being an opponent she became the most influential advocate of his views in that country. There was genius in her sympathy with social improvement. In the words of a recent poetess, Mrs. Rose could say: -"I said it in the meadow path,/I said it on the mountain stairs -/The best things any mortal hath/Are those which every mortal shares." Her German education gave her intellectual intrepidity. In her youth her dark hair and gleaming eyes showed she had the fire of Judith in her; and her passion was to see women possess civil and social equality, and to inspire women and men with self-helping sense, not taking religion, politics, or social ideas secondhand from their "pastors and masters" but choosing principles of belief, government, and conduct for themselves. Like her great co-worker in the anti-slavery movement, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Rose took truth for authority, not authority for truth. After forty years of agitation-the period of her public activity-her end was painless peace. In her closing days she would often say, "It is no longer necessary for me to live. I can do nothing now. But I have lived." The slave she had helped to free from bondage of ownership, and the minds she had set free from the bondage of authority, were the glad and proud remembrance of her last days. If any around her grave shall provide memories of good done to brighten the end of life, it will be equally well with them and better for all who have passed within their influence."

"There are many great women in the early history of the American women's rights movement, but not all continue to invite a kind of personal connection over history and across time. Ernestine L. Rose is one of these few. Paula Doress-Worters characterizes Rose as ahead of her time, meaning that her words, ideas, and life speak to us in modern times, even more perhaps than to her own contemporaries. Indeed, Rose saw the position of her sex from an angle different from other thoughtful women of her own time. Her speeches and writings, her life and experiences, offer oblique yet illuminating insights into the past and on the present."

"Rose and Margaret Fuller are similarly intriguing historical figures. Like Fuller, Rose's life, combined with her insights and writings, remain so inviting and multifaceted that each generation of biographers, feminists, and general readers has found something unique, some new lesson about a woman's effort to make sense of, live through, dissent from, and change history. Ernestine Rose offers the feminist historian a compelling combination of an heroic, path-breaking life dedicated to the well-being of all humanity, made palpable through an action-packed life of social commitment."

"The breadth of Rose's vision for radical social change is important to emphasize. She believed in women's rights and she believed in other causes as well. Popular and scholarly judgment too often miscasts feminism as an exclusive political tradition, in which dedication to women's advancement crowds out all other aspects of social change, inevitably becoming a "single-issue movement." This flies in the face of considerable evidence from many historical periods, none more insistently than the antebellum years in which the American women's rights movement came into being. Despite an increasing concern with women's rights, Rose neither turned away from her determination to overcome religious superstitions, abolish economic inequality, and banish human slavery; nor did she allow her determination to advance women's equality to be set aside in favor of these other commitments."

"Even in alternative communities dedicated to radical social change, Rose often found herself on the margins. Within the history of the American women's rights movement, Rose is an especially interesting figure precisely because she differed from her sister activists along several crucial dimensions. Her presence alone forbids us from describing this early movement as exclusively "white middle class." She was an immigrant among the native born and of Jewish origins in a society in which even the religious dissidents worked from thoroughly Protestant premises. She and her husband earned their living through their own labors. Among other women who linked their efforts to the national promise of American democracy, she was an internationalist. She was a socialist, by virtue of her knowledge of British Owenite communitarianism. Each of these dimensions means that once we insist on Rose's proper place among the leaders of American feminism's first generation, our sense of who and what fueled the earliest phases of that movement must be considerably enlarged."

"I am particularly interested in Rose's Jewish origins. To point to Rose's Jewishness needs some clarification, in light of her strenuous repudiation of all religious superstition. In what ways then is there any point to linking this self-declared materialist and atheist to a religious tradition that she herself had abandoned, at great personal cost? Although Rose was a freethinker, she was never a Christian, despite every sort of pressure to become one. "I have not abandoned the trunk in order to attach myself to the branches," was how she explained it. By this, she meant, "If my reason prevents me from being Jewish, it cannot allow me to become Christian." Conversion, and only conversion, could have removed the taint of Jewishness under which she labored and this she would not do. Her Jewishness was thus not something from which, ultimately, she was willing to remove herself."

"Rose remembered Tom Paine, who was in danger of being forgotten for his radical hopes for the American Revolution. In a similar spirit, we remember Rose, in honor of those aspects of her vision of a free womanhood that have not yet been realized and that continue to inspire. To remember our ancestors is an act on our own behalf as well as theirs."

"These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. In the worst cases, women who need this medication for other medical reasons suffer dire consequences."

"One woman told us doctors believe she has , but it can’t be proven without surgery, so the insurance hasn’t been willing to cover her medication."

"One student told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered, and she assumed that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handled all of women’s sexual healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health."

"Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy. After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room all night in excruciating pain. … Without her taking the birth control, a massive the size of a tennis ball had grown on her . She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary."

"This is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends. A woman’s reproductive healthcare isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority."

"Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared are Catholic women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for access to the healthcare we need."

"One woman came to me recently, since this happened, and described that she needs contraception to prevent seizures. So she has several seizures a month if she doesn't have contraception to balance her hormones. And that's just an incredible intrusion on her life, her ability to manage her daily affairs, if she doesn't have access to that medical prescription. So that's one of the huge impacts."

"I think another impact that it's really important that we all think about, is that contraception when it first became available was a revolution in this country. It allowed women to enter employment and educational opportunities that had previously not been accessible because they were unable to control their reproduction in the same way. And I just can't imagine rolling back the clock on that progress."

"I’m here because I spoke out, and this November, each of us must do the same."

"During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women. And how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past."

"In that America: Your new president could be a man who stands by when public figures try to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won’t stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who cosponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms."

"Over the last six months, I’ve seen what these two futures look like. And six months from now, we’ll all be living in one, or the other. But only one. A country where our president either has our back – or turns his back."

"A country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom – or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies and our voices."

"We talk often about choice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to choose."

"By now, many have heard the stories I wanted to share thanks to the congressional leaders and members of the media who have supported me and millions of women in speaking out."

"Because we spoke so loudly, opponents of reproductive health access demonized and smeared me and others on the public airwaves. These smears are obvious attempts to distract from meaningful policy discussions and to silence women's voices regarding their own health care."

"These attempts to silence women and the men who support them have clearly failed. I know this because I have received so many messages of support from across the country -- women and men speaking out because they agree that contraception needs to be treated as a basic health care service."

"Restricting access to such a basic health care service, which 99% of sexually experienced American women have used and 62% of American women are using right now, is out of touch with public sentiment."

"Attacking me and women who use contraception by calling us prostitutes and worse cannot silence us."

"I am proud to stand with the millions of women and men who recognize that our government should legislate according to the reality of our lives -- not for ideology."

"What female students might not remember is that the men with whom we stand shoulder-to-shoulder at graduation don't face the same financial challenges."

"Many young women of my generation believe they live in a post-feminist world, without unfair sex discrimination -- a world in which career paths are designed with fathers and mothers in mind. Unfortunately, that world doesn't exist quite yet."

"A significant gender pay gap still persists. That's why we cannot be passive as we acknowledge Equal Pay Day, which marks the day when a woman's earnings catch up to what her male peers earned in the previous year. To millennials, it's startling to see that women still earn just 77 cents to the dollar of what men earn."

"Paycheck discrimination is not the only obstacle preventing women from having the same economic opportunities as men. As our country continues to focus on our economic recovery, leveling the financial playing field for women must be a priority. According to recent predictions, within a generation, more families will be supported by women than men. If these primary breadwinners earn lower incomes, it won't just affect their families, but also consumer spending and our larger financial growth."

"Our generation can change this. We know what the problems are and we know what the solutions are, but we have to demand that our elected officials and business leaders take action. At the federal and state level, we have to fight efforts to repeal equal pay laws. We have to support increases in the minimum wage. And we have to demand that the United States join our global competitors in giving workers paid leave. All these issues affect our individual financial health and the strength of our collective economy."

"[President Obama] encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women. And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud, and that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me. So I just appreciated that very much."

"There have been highs and lows, yes. So it's been quite a journey, and I am just happy that what seems to be happening in the process is that America is hearing the voices of the women affected by lack of contraception coverage and who will benefit from this policy, that is really what is most important for me, and that is why I’ve been working on this for years honestly."

"It means a lot to me, the support of the law school faculty as well as the president of the university has been helpful. And I think it’s really an example of what kind of model we should look to in our national discourse, because clearly the president of the university and i disagree about the issues but we are both able to handle it in a civil manner."

"It's an attempt to silence women. That's really what it's about, if we're called these names, then we'll go away and we won't demand the health care we deserve and we need and I think women have proven those folks wrong."

"I think that a lot of women unfortunately have heard those types of words and historically they've always been used to try to silence women, especially women who are speaking out about their reproductive health and reproductive needs."

"I don’t think that a statement like this, issued saying that his ‘choice of words was not the best,’ changes anything."

"I think his statements that he made on the air about me have been personal enough. so I’d rather not have a personal phone call from him."

"[This] was not someone who made one accidental statement. This was three days of significant portions of his three-hour show. He insulted me and the women of Georgetown who have received no apology. He insulted us over 53 times."

"It can be overwhelming at times but what I am trying to focus on is my main goal in the situation, and that is continuing to advocate on behalf of women affected by the contraception regulation and making sure that policy is implemented in a strong way."

"There are, of course, some people who legitimately disagree about the actual contraception policy, and that legitimate policy disagreement is appropriate."

"I would do this again, because these issues are that important to me."

"Mr. Chairman, I was deeply disturbed that you rejected our request to hear from a woman, a third year student at Georgetown law school named Sandra Fluke."

"Thank you, Madame Leader, for hosting today's event. And thank you, Ms. Fluke, for coming here today to share the testimony you were banned from giving last week. When Chairman Issa rejected your testimony before the Oversight Committee, he argued that his hearing was not about contraceptives and was not about women's reproductive rights. He said you are merely "a college student who appears to have become energized over this issue," that you are not "appropriate or qualified" to testify, and that you did not have "the appropriate credentials" to appear before the Committee. Obviously, everyone on this panel disagrees."

"While it would be nice to believe we're in the twilight zone, the recent ploys of Republicans against women's health are all frighteningly too real. In reality, this hearing did take place with the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee blocking the testimony of women, women like Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, who later testified during a special hearing convened by Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of a fellow female student at Georgetown University who had been denied contraception coverage because of the university's Catholic affiliation. Her friend experienced complications stemming from ovarian cysts that could have been treated with birth control. Sadly, due to nontreatment, doctors eventually were forced to remove her ovary."

"Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to say to Rush Limbaugh, "Shame on you." Shame on you for being the hatemonger that you are. Shame on you for being misogynistic. Shame on you for calling the women of this country sluts and prostitutes, because that's what he did. Ninety-eight percent of the women in this country, at some time in their lives, use birth control. And yet he went on the air recently and called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute because she was trying to access birth control pills as a third-year law student at Georgetown."

"Mr. Speaker, last night, I rested very well on my Sleep Number bed knowing that the company had pulled its ads from Rush Limbaugh's show. In light of Limbaugh's recent misogynistic attack on Georgetown student Sandra Fluke's fight to obtain affordable, legal birth control for women, I have been drawn to the important part that advertisers play in politics. The use of airwaves to spread hatred of women is wrong. Those advertisers who support broadcasters who do so are nothing less than accessories to the crime. Advertisers' money keeps these vitriolic and hateful shows and hosts on the air."

"Yesterday, I mentioned that I slept well on my Sleep Number bed, and I slept well on my Sleep Number bed last night because they canceled their advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show. I mentioned that advertisers are accessories to the crime when radio people go too far and destroy someone's character, or try to, and make libelous statements. Limbaugh did that when he called Sandra Fluke some names, said she did some things or whatever, that were wrong, totally wrong. Eleven advertisers have pulled their advertising because they don't want to, in the future, be accessories to such conduct."

"Madam Speaker, Rush Limbaugh's appalling attack on Georgetown student Sandra Fluke is no isolated incident, but part of a broader GOP assault on women's health. Republicans have ushered in Women's History Month with legislation to allow employers and insurance companies to deny women needed health coverage."

"Here's how sorry Rush Limbaugh is for his attacks on a law school student who dared to give her opinion about access to contraception coverage. He's so sorry that a full transcript of his tirade, including the words he "apologized" for, was available yesterday under the heading "Most Popular" on the home page of his Web site. He's so sorry that the verbatim document of his March 1 rant, in which he repeated his name-calling of Sandra Fluke and mocked Democrats for criticizing him, is right on his Web site today under the title "Left freaks out over Fluke remarks.""

"A young law student, Sandra Fluke, came before this body, before the Members of Congress, and testified regarding coverage for family planning and contraceptives. She was then publicly derailed as being a slut and a prostitute. I would hope the days of derogatory terms to silence women's opinions are over forever, particularly when they speak about truth."

"Today, in light of the recent controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke, Rep. Tim Ryan (OH-17) introduced a bill to ensure that the Pentagon avoids supporting programs that exhibit values contrary to the basic values of the Armed Forces and the United States."

"When female members of the House committee asked for a woman to testify along with the men, they were denied. Their request was simple: to allow Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law School student, to testify on this panel of all men. As a woman she could speak firsthand about how this rule would impact women. But their request was denied because the chairman said Sandra Fluke was unqualified. How can a woman be unqualified to talk about women's health care? Yet every one of these men on the panel was deemed to be qualified to talk about women's health care. I am disappointed. I know it is a disappointment that is shared by millions of women across this country. I am saddened that here we are, in 2012, and a House committee would hold a hearing on women's health and deny women the ability to share their perspective."

"Mr. President, I have said it time and time again all across New York State at event after event: We need more women's voices in our decisionmaking process. We need more women at the table in government and in business. When women are at the table, they bring a very different perspective to the same problems, a different set of solutions, a different approach. At the end of the day, the outcomes are better when women's voices are heard."

"For millions of American women, reading the news this morning was like stepping into a time machine and going back 50 years, seeing the headlines and the photos of this all-male panel in the House talking about a woman's right to access birth control, and no women on the panel. It turns out the chairman of the House oversight committee decided he was not going to allow a young woman who had been asked by the minority to testify and tell her story--actually of a friend who had lost an ovary because of her lack of contraception coverage. So this 19-year-old woman was left to watch, like the rest of us, as all five men addressed the committee about how they supported efforts to restrict access to care. I am sure by now many of my colleagues here have seen this picture of this all-male panel, the picture that says a thousand words. It is one that most women thought was left behind when pictures only came in black and white."

"This is what America saw, a Republican House of Representatives that is so hostile to women's health that they didn't even think about having a person on there who was a female, nor did they have anyone on there that agreed it is important that women have access to birth control knowing that for many women birth control is medicine, knowing that 99 percent of women, sometime in her lifetime, utilized birth control."

"This is about women's health, and women and men all over America are scratching their heads and saying: Are we fighting against contraception? Are we turning the clock back 60 or 70 years? It makes no sense."

"The President called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke … because he wanted to offer his support to her. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate, personal attacks, and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy. And it was a very good conversation."

"It was several minutes. They had a very good conversation. I think he, like a lot of people, feels that the kinds of personal attacks that she's -- that have been directed her way are inappropriate. The fact that our political discourse has become debased in many ways is bad enough. It is worse when it's directed at private citizen who was simply expressing her views on a matter of public policy."

"The fact of the matter is the President was expressing his support for her, and his disappointment in the kind of attacks that have been leveled at her to her, and his appreciation for her willingness to stand tall and express her opinion."

"I don't know what's in Rush Limbaugh's heart, so I'm not going to comment on the sincerity of his apology. What I can comment on is the fact that all decent folks can agree that the remarks that were made don't have any place in the public discourse."

"The reason I called Ms. Fluke is because I thought about Malia and Sasha, and one of the things I want them to do as they get older is to engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on. I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don't want them attacked or called horrible names because they're being good citizens."

"I wanted Sandra to know that I thought her parents should be proud of her, and that we want to send a message to all our young people that being part of a democracy involves argument and disagreements and debate, and we want you to be engaged, and there's a way to do it that doesn't involve you being demeaned and insulted, particularly when you’re a private citizen."

"What happened to Ms. Fluke’s free speech? Since when has it been okay to target people who testify before policy makers with vicious, unwarranted and defamatory attacks? You may think that all of your misconduct disappears because you label yourself an entertainer. Well, we are not entertained – we are disgusted. You think that your non-apology apology coming on the heels of advertisers abandoning your show will make them come back? I guess even some of your advertisers do not find you all that entertaining. We hope that your advertisers continue to show the good sense and judgment that you lack by abandoning your show in droves."

"Women see you for who you are. I have received countless emails from women across the country who are outraged and want to do something about you. You may have thought that women would be silenced by your attacks, but just the opposite is true. Women are rallying because we see that your attack on Ms. Fluke is an attack on all of us and on our right to speak out publicly and to stand up for contraception and our reproductive rights."

"to fashion silence into words"

"Success for a woman means absolute surrender, in whatever direction. Whether she paints a picture, or loves a man, there is no division of labor possible in her economy. To the attainment of any end worth living for, a symmetrical sacrifice of her nature is compulsory upon her."

"I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taliban’s edict."

"On my way from school to home I heard a man saying “I will kill you.” I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone."

"In a situation where a lifelong school break was being imposed upon us by the terrorists, rising up against that became very important, essential."

"I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right."

"I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, 'If he comes, what would you do Malala?' then I would reply to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.' But then I said, 'If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.' Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that 'I even want education for your children as well.' And I will tell him, 'That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want.'"

"It is my dream that one day, great buildings like this one will exist in every corner of the world so every child can grow up with the opportunity to succeed."

"The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives."

"There is no greater weapon than knowledge and no greater source of knowledge than the written word."

"Birmingham is very special for me because it is here that I found myself alive, seven days after I was shot... It is now my second home, after my beloved Pakistan."

"We must speak up for the children of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan who are suffering from terrorism, poverty, child labour and child trafficking. Let us help them through our voice, action and charity. Let us help them to read books and go to school. And let us not forget that even one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world."

"One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world."

"First of all I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves? I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation."

"I don’t know where to begin my speech. I don’t know what people would be expecting me to say, but first of all thank you to God for whom we are equal and thank you to every person who has prayed for my fast recovery and new life."

"Thousands of people have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured. I am just one of them. So here I stand, one girl among many. I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights. Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated."

"Dear friends, on 9 October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. And my dreams are the same. Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists. I do not even hate the Talib who shot me."

"Even if there was a gun in my hand and he was standing in front of me, I would not shoot him. This is the compassion I have learned from Mohamed, the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. This the legacy of change I have inherited from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. This is the philosophy of nonviolence that I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa. And this is the forgiveness that I have learned from my father and from my mother. This is what my soul is telling me: be peaceful and love everyone."

"They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would point guns at people’s heads just for going to school."

"Dear sisters and brothers, we realise the importance of light when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced."

"So let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism, let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution."

"My father says that education is neither Eastern or Western. Education is education: it's the right of everyone."

"The thing is that the people of Pakistan have supported me. They don't think of me as Western. I am a daughter of Pakistan and I am proud that I am a Pakistani."

"On the day when I was shot, and on the next day, people raised the banners of 'I am Malala'. They did not say 'I am Taliban'."

"They support me and they are encouraging me to move forward and to continue my campaign for girls' education."

"I think that it's really an early age...I would feel proud, when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people, 'Yes! I have built that school; I have done that teachers' training, I have sent that (many) children to school'...Then if I get the Nobel Peace Prize, I will be saying, Yeah, I deserve it, somehow...I want to become a Prime Minister of Pakistan, and I think it's really good. Because through politics I can serve my whole county. I can be the doctor of the whole country...I can spend much of the money from the budget on education," she told It appears that becoming prime minister is a means to the end she has dedicated her life to...[in recalling when she got shot] He asked, 'Who is Malala?' He did not give me time to answer his question...He fired three bullets...One bullet hit me in the left side of my forehead, just above here, and it went down through my neck and into my shoulder...But still if I look at (it), it's a miracle...A Nobel Peace Prize would help me to begin this campaign for girls' education...But the real call, the most precious call, that I want to get and for which I'm thirsting and for which I want to struggle hard, that is the award to see every child to go to school, that is the award of peace and education for every child. And for that, I will struggle and I will work hard."

"I think I have more plans for my future from now and I think we must start work for a campaign now so we have set up a Malala foundation. And through Malala fund we are going to educate girls and we want to do work on the ground: building schools, teachers, training, trying to motivate parents of the children to send their children to school. We also want to recognize those girls who are fighting for their rights. In the future when I grow older, much older I want to do politics. I want to serve my country for politics. I want to help my people and I want to help in education."

"First of all, my father inspired me...he is a great social activist and women's rights activist...he spoke out. And he spoke for women's rights...that hard situation, he inspired me, because he spoke. And that's what I learned from him."

"I think....living in such a hard situation when there are terrorists and they slaughter people every night is still hard -- is still a threat. So it's a better idea to speak out for your rights and then die...we will speak out for our rights. This is what we can do, and we tried our best."

"I’m feeling honored that I am being chosen as a Nobel laureate and I have been honored with this – this precious award, the Nobel Peace Prize. And I’m proud that I’m the first Pakistani and the first young woman or the first young person who is getting this award. It’s a great honor for me. And I’m also really happy that I’m sharing this award with a person – with a person from India whose name is Kailash Satyarthi and his great work for child’s right, his great work against – against child slavery."

"Totally inspires me and I am really happy that there are so many people who are working for children’s right and I’m not alone. And he totally deserved this award. So I am feeling honored that I’m sharing this award with him. He received this award and we both are the two Nobel award receivers, one is from Pakistan, one is from India, one believes in Hinduism, one strongly believes in Islam. And it gives a message to people – it gives a message to people of love between Pakistan and India and between – between different religions and we both support each other."

"It does not matter what’s the color of your skin, what language do you speak, what religion you believe in. It is that we should all consider each other as human beings and we should respect each other and we should all fight for our rights, for the rights of children, for the rights of women and for the rights of every human being."

"A girl has the power to go forward in her life. And she’s not only a mother, she’s not only a sister, she’s not only a wife. But a girl has the – she should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy."

"[T]hrough my story I want to tell other children all around the world that they should stand up for their rights. They should not wait for someone else and their voices are more powerful. Their voices – it would seem that they are weak, but at the time when no one speak, your voice gets so loud that everyone has to listen to it. Everyone has to hear it. So it’s my message to children all around the world that they should stand up for their rights."

"This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change. I am here to stand up for their rights, raise their voice ... it is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education."

"Education is one of the blessings of life — and one of its necessities."

"Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school."

"The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?"

"Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?"

"Who is a revolutionary woman? A revolutionary woman wants change, not mere cosmetic change but change to the status quo, and she is willing to sacrifice to make this happen. We have some extraordinary examples: Sojourner Truth, Las Adelitas, Frida Kahlo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Dorothy Day, Malala Yousafzai, Coretta Scott King, and others."

"No child should have to die for going to school, Nowhere should teachers fear to teach or children fear to learn. Together, we can change this picture. … And together let us follow the lead of this brave young girl, Malala. Let us put education first."

"Malala is a brave and gentle advocate of peace who through the simple act of going to school became a global teacher. She said one pen can change the world – and proved how one young woman can lead the way. With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book. Malala is a daughter of the United Nations, from participating in UNICEF events years ago to marking the 500-day countdown to the Millennium Development Goals with us at UN headquarters this summer. The United Nations will continue to stand with her against extremism and for the right of girls everywhere to be free of violence, to go to school and to enjoy their right to an education. … I congratulate both leaders for this well-deserved recognition. The true winners today are the world’s children."

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. … Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education. … The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism. … The struggle against suppression and for the rights of children and adolescents contributes to the realization of the “fraternity between nations” that Alfred Nobel mentions in his will as one of the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize."

"I want to congratulate Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Today’s announcement is a victory for all who strive to uphold the dignity of every human being. In recognizing Malala and Kailash, the Nobel Committee reminds us of the urgency of their work to protect the rights and freedoms of all our young people and to ensure they have the chance to fulfill their God-given potential, regardless of their background, or gender, or station in life. At just 17 years old, Malala Yousafzai has inspired people around the world with her passion and determination to make sure girls everywhere can get an education. When the Taliban tried to silence her, Malala answered their brutality with strength and resolve. Michelle and I were proud to welcome this remarkable young woman to the Oval Office last year. We were awe-struck by her courage and filled with hope knowing this is only the beginning of her extraordinary efforts to make the world a better place. … Malala and Kailash have faced down threats and intimidation, risking their own lives to save others and build a better world for future generations. They come from different countries, religious backgrounds, and generations — a Muslim and a Hindu, a Pakistani and an Indian – but they share an unyielding commitment to justice and an unshakeable belief in the basic dignity of every girl and boy. Even as we celebrate their achievements, we must recommit ourselves to the world that they seek – one in which our daughters have the right and opportunity to get an education; and in which all children are treated equally. Today, we honor Malala and Kailash’s achievements, and reaffirm that the United States will always stand with those who defend our universal human rights."

"We are not to call for tyranny and bans on freedom. It is obvious that we cannot stop publication of what we view as indecent in our sacred faith...failing to make use of Western freedom of press and other technologies to show the West the values of Islam is intellectual failure and a guilt that should not be linked to Islam."

"...The result of burning embassies and treading on flags is the self-same objective these drawings wanted to highlight. It was their intention to say that Muslims are terrorists and their religion is a peril to Western civilization."

"I do not want to belittle or be indifferent to the insults to our prophet (pbuh). I denounce insulting our prophet and announce that my heart is filled with his love. Yet, I refuse that his position should be employed for ignoble political gains. However, I protest being used as a tool."

"The agenda of burning embassies and treading on flags has its objective, of which seeking an apology for defaming our prophet is not among them at all."

"Speaking of the report, I want to say that there are three key innovations of this report compared to the Millennium Development Goals. First, the call for civil and political rights combined with transparent and accountable public institutions as intrinsic to development. Second, the importance of ensuring peace and inclusive sustainable growth. And third, a need for urgent action to enhance the ability of women and youth, like you, to take part in the transformation of their societies."

"Requiring governments to make all publicly held information and data available to people — thus giving citizens a powerful tool to expose corruption — is just one aspect of the accountability revolution that can be unleashed if the report’s recommendations are implemented in full."

"Over the next three years, governments will have to choose whether or not to adopt this new people-centric framework for development. The temptation for political leaders to retreat to a safer, more conventional approach will mean a strong global grassroots campaign will thus be necessary to build pressure for adoption of these groundbreaking and transformative elements recommended in the report."

"...on youth unemployment — governments should ensure that one out of three of jobs in the public sector are opened up to the youth and that at least one person in every household should have access to a job."

"I myself am part of the youth movement. However, after a long discussion, it appears that many of the youth demands and needs, like access to education, jobs, and equitable growth, have been addressed under different goals and targets and youth enjoy the benefits of everything else in the report."

"In many places around the world, the LGBT community and individuals infected with HIV/AIDS continue to face discrimination in employment, political representation, and access to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care and rights. They certainly must not be left behind. I will continue to push for the inclusion of these marginalized groups in the post-2015 agenda and beyond."

"The panel put targets, for example, on nutrition, education, ending preventable child deaths, encouraging birth registration, putting an end to violence against girls, and child marriage — all of which, if enacted, will improve the lives of billions of children throughout the world."

"African youth, just like other youth around the world can, for example, engage in the fight against corruption and hold officials accountable...Youth can also play an important role in engaging and educating their fellow and global citizens about the post-2015 global development agenda and ways to achieve our goals so that we can achieve the developments this time around to the greatest extent possible."

"There is a standalone goal, which is goal number two, on the empowerment of girls and women and achieving gender equality. With regards to violence against women, the panel addresses it at length and in an inclusive way ... We’re hoping that this goal and set of targets will put an end into violence and discrimination against women, empower women, and achieve gender equality and justice and for the better development of our world."

"The youth are our future, and to change anything in our world going forward we must start with this generation of youth, as they’re the new agents of change...In peacebuilding and promoting human rights, the youth are no longer a silent majority, but now they should be an active stakeholder...Youth are bringing to the table great contributions to the peace and state building and are shaping the future to be more peaceful, equal, and prosperous for all."

"Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has."

"With two civil wars, an al-Qaida presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for? He should leave office now...This revolution is inevitable, the people have endured dictatorship, corruption, poverty and unemployment for years and now the whole thing is exploding"

"The extremist people hate me. They speak about me in the mosques and pass round leaflets condemning me as un-Islamic."

"Our party needs the youth but the youth also need the parties to help them organise. Neither will succeed in overthrowing this regime without the other. We don't want the international community to label our revolution an Islamic one."

"One of Karman's widely distributed quotes has stirred passion in many, even to the point that they lie and claim she took the hijab off! When asked about her hijab by journalists and how it is not proportionate with her level of intellect and education, she replied: “Man in early times was almost naked, and as his intellect evolved he started wearing clothes. What I am today and what I’m wearing represents the highest level of thought and civilization that man has achieved, and is not regressive. It’s the removal of clothes again that is regressive back to ancient times." Evidence: http://www.hautehijab.com/blogs/hijab-fashion/4966602-tawakkul-karman-first-arab-woman-and-youngest-nobel-peace-laureate"

"If you go to the protests now, you will see something you never saw before: hundreds of women. They shout and sing, they even sleep there in tents. This is not just a political revolution, it's a social revolution"

"My aim for now is to lead a peaceful revolution to remove this regime. I think if I can be in the street with the people I can achieve more than if I am the president."

"So what happens when the regime falls, as it must? We are in the first stage of change in our country, and the feeling among the revolutionaries is that the people of Yemen will find solutions for our problems once the regime has gone, because the regime itself is the cause of most of them. A new Yemen awaits us, with a better future for all."

"For the first time people in the south stopped calling for separation, raised the national flag and demanded an end to the regime. It's been truly historic. The country is united in its aim to rid itself of the regime through public vigils and rallies, civil disobedience and slogans instead of tear gas and bullets."

"We are confident that our revolution has already succeeded and that the regime of Saleh has in effect, already collapsed."

"We cannot let the bogeyman of al-Qaida and extremism be used to stall historic change in our country"

"Let us be clear: the Yemeni revolution has already brought internal stability to a state riddled with war and conflict."

"I call on the United States and the European Union to tell Saleh that he must leave now...They should end all support for his regime, especially that which is used to crush peaceful opposition...They should freeze the Saleh family's assets and those of Saleh's henchmen and return them to the people."

"If the US and Europe genuinely support the people, as they say, they must not betray our peaceful revolution. It is the expression of the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Yemen."

"I have spent days and nights camped out in tents with fellow protesters; I have led demonstrations in the streets facing the threat of mortars, missiles and gunfire; I have struggled to build a movement for democratic change — all while caring for my three young children."

"We chose to march in the streets demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an end to his corrupt and failed regime and the establishment of a modern democratic state...Yemen is now facing a complete vacuum of authority; we are without a president or parliament. Mr. Saleh may be gone, but authority has not yet been transferred to a transitional presidential council endorsed by the people."

"the United States and Saudi Arabia...have instead used their influence to ensure that members of the old regime remain in power and the status quo is maintained. American counterterrorism agencies and the Saudi government have a firm grip on Yemen at the moment. It is they...that control the country."

"American intervention in Yemen is a product of the war on terror...Because American security was given priority over all other concerns, counterterrorism agencies paid no attention to the human rights abuses being committed by their local partners...Because America has invested so heavily in Yemen’s security forces, it now seems that a transition to democracy will depend on whether Washington believes that investment will remain secure...Sadly, it seems likely that the United States will support figures from the old regime rather than allow a transitional government approved by the people to take control"

"American policy makers must understand that the activists and young people who started Yemen’s peaceful revolution deeply respect the United States and Western civilization...We call on American officials to engage with the leaders of Yemen’s democracy movement and abandon their misplaced investment in the old regime’s security apparatus"

"We understand America’s concerns about terrorism...We have no objection to agreements that protect your security interests. We only ask that you respect international standards on human rights and the Yemeni people’s rights to freedom and justice."

"We also call upon our Saudi neighbors to let us pursue a democratic path....In many cases, Yemeni tribal leaders and other prominent individuals have received far more generous aid payments from Riyadh than from the Yemeni government...Saudi interference in Yemen is also motivated by a fear that the Arab Spring...might soon reach Riyadh"

"We ask our neighbors in Saudi Arabia to stop hindering the rule of law and healthy economic development through the purchase of politicians and tribal leaders."

"The young people of this revolution have made their demands clear: authority must be handed over to a transitional presidential council approved by the people...Yemen’s people have charted the course of revolution and we will follow this course to its end. We have left our authoritarian past behind. Now, we ask our friends in Washington and Riyadh to help us build a democratic future."

"I do not believe that my brother Tariq accused me of this, and you will not drag me into talking about him or responding [to this claim]. [That said,] I do have close strategic ties with American organizations involved in protecting human rights, with American ambassadors and with officials in the U.S. State Department. [I also have ties with activists in] most of the E.U. and Arab countries. But they are ties among equals; [I am not] their subordinate."

"...The interim presidential council will take the reins from the ousted president and his regime...We take this possibility into account, which is why we have demanded that the interim presidential council represent all the national elements, in order to meet the demands of the youth and the people. We demand that the political elements suggest names to present to the youth, since we object to anyone seizing power after Saleh, whoever they may be. These fears exist in any revolution... Whenever officials stray from the straight path, the youth must be prepared to take to the streets in every province and shout: The people want to oust the official in charge, to hold the minister accountable, to prosecute the general."

"There have been violations in the protest squares, especially in Sana'a. This is natural when hundreds of thousands of people [protest] for extended periods of time. However, these violations are marginal, and do not tarnish the beauty of the revolution. We see rival tribes meeting and debating in their tents, and men and women struggling [together] in the square to oust the regime."

"What unites us in the Youth Revolution Council is the desire to oust the regime... We do not ask the members of the Council or of the Preparatory Committee about their source of authority, nor about their political, geographic, or sectarian affiliation... In this revolution, I have forgotten my partisan and geographic affiliations... I belong only to the people of the revolution. The revolution is a glorious [cause] that stands above any consideration."

"I do not represent the Al-Islah party, and I am not tied to its positions. My position is determined by my beliefs, and I do not ask anyone's permission.""

"...it is inappropriate for a public activist [to wear a niqab], since people want to see you. The Islamic faith does not mandate wearing a niqab; it is [just] a social tradition."

"We in Yemen are no less thirsty for freedom and dignity than our brothers and sisters in Tunis...It was feared that the revolution would descend into violence and distort the image of the other Arab uprisings. But the Yemeni revolution surprised everyone with its astonishingly peaceful nature...What is truly regrettable, though, is that the world has not shown the least interest in what the Saleh regime does with Yemen and its revolutionaries...We in Yemen look forward to a clear stand from the UN, world governments and civil society organisations in condemning the violence of Saleh's regime."

"Today we need a concerted international effort that would result in freezing the assets of the ruling family, which are estimated at $10bn."

"The least we desire from the institutions of the free world, and especially the US and the countries of the European Union, is that they appreciate our struggle for freedom. We want them to discharge their responsibilities towards vulnerable people and support them in the face of the cruelty of rulers who continue to kill."

"In my capacity as a leader of the popular and youth revolution in Yemen, I reaffirm our adherence to the peaceful nature of our struggle until the end. At the same time, I ardently call upon the free people of the world to examine what is happening in my country and Syria especially, and to honour their responsibilities to confront rulers who do not hesitate to carry out the most heinous crimes against people who have the temerity to demand their natural rights to freedom and dignity."

"I think it’s —you know, it’s victory of the value of human rights, of the value of anti-corruption, of the value of anti-dictatorship. So I don’t think that I am the only one who win this Nobel [Peace Prize]."

"I came from Yemen, the country of civilization, the Yemen that was led by two women, and it was one of the greatest countries in the world. We were led by a dictatorship regime, a corrupted regime. This regime was founded in killing others...My country has a lot of poverty, from a lot of diseases, from ignorance. And these are some of the reasons that led us to lead this revolution."

"We started our struggle from 2005, and...we organized a lot of protests, weekly protests, in a place we called the Square of Liberty...We knew and know that the freedom of speech is the door to democracy and justice."

"My beliefs were that men and women alike have to be in this struggle together, and we cannot safeguard our country just with one wing. ... Now our women are the leaders, not only political leaders, but also leaders that lead in every single front, and they are part of the main leaders of the revolution. And therefore, you can see that the rulers are afraid from women."

"...my people are facing difficulties. They are being killed in the streets. They are on the sidewalks for almost nine months now. As you know, they own more than 70 million machine guns. That’s their personal weapons...Personally, I’m not protected, because my people are not protected. And therefore, the international community have to provide protection, and the United States of America, as well. They have to take a clear stance with the Yemeni people."

"...We are in one world. We are one nation. And therefore, what’s common in between us, what should be common among us, is love and peace."

"The international community have to create pressure on Saleh. One, they have to establish an international commission so they can investigate the killing that is happening...Without that justice, and if they leave Saleh alone, there will be no security and peace, not only in Yemen and our region, but also around the world."

"[The killing of Gaddafi] means a lot. That means dictatorships is going down and is done, and there are a lot of scenarios for the end of those dictators...In Yemen, we will have our own scenario. We will not go in the direction of violence."

"[In response to a question about drone strikes:] I’m sure that the new Yemen, the civilized Yemen and the democratic Yemen, it will be a Yemen without terrorism, without extremism. And we know that we’re going to be the deepest path for democracy and for peace and international security."

"Since the start of this revolution, we were able to get rid of a lot of the issues and the problems that this regime created. ... We have the dream, and we have the ability. And we started to achieve a lot of our goals. And we will not stop here. We will build our country. And we’re not only talking about Yemen here. I’m talking about every nation or every people that are looking toward freedom."

"...we tell Saudi Arabia that they should stand with the Yemeni people. And anyone who doesn’t stand with our people, they are the losers. We know what it means to be free, and we will achieve it. And the interests of countries, it’s with the people and not with the regimes, because these regimes will be gone."

"We were against oppression, and then we elevated our struggle to demand our rights. We will go against all the dictators, and not only Saleh in Yemen, so we can spread peace."

"To begin, I am a citizen of the world. The Earth is my country, and humanity is my nation. This is my motto: What everyone has longed for and will be achieved when all of the people shall also celebrate this prize that every Yemeni, and every Arab, and every human being and every woman has also won beside me."

"Women have become at the forefront of these demonstrations and lines in protests — in the medical camps, in the security services, in the strategic planning for the revolution and the strategic planning for the civil democratic society after the revolution."

"We need the nation of equal citizenship. We need a nation that fights corruption, a nation, a state where law rules, a nation where those who abuse their authority are questioned. We want to retrieve our nation, and we want to become citizens in a new world."

"The people have tasted it and have made great sacrifices and will not give out ... We have blazed a path for ourselves … and we will win."

"Students’ role doesn’t end in the classroom. Student-led movements have always been a part in changing history and fulfilling peoples’ dreams of achieving freedom and dignity [interview after her speech]"

"The most important pretext for the ousting of President Morsi was the existence of division in Egypt....My support for the 30 June movement in opposition to Morsi changed after the military coup, which went against all the gains and values of the 25 January revolution...Clearly, the leaders of the military takeover have something to conceal from the watchful eyes of the world....I now feel I have a responsibility to warn the world of the fact that a fully fledged despotic regime is seeking to reinforce its foundations in the country."

"it has now become obvious that most of the state institutions, including the judiciary, the army, the security apparatus and most of the government departments, stood against him [Morsi]. They acted in a co-ordinated manner to foment a crisis aimed at impeding the president and forcing failure on him."

"Perhaps one of the few positive aspects of the coup is that it has discredited the claim that that that the state had been taken over by the Brotherhood under Morsi."

"The repercussions of the coup on nascent democracies in the Arab world will be destructive. People may soon lose faith in the democratic process, paving the way for the revival of extremist groups...The coup serves to strengthen the radicals, interrupting the course of peaceful change."

"The popular rallies at Rabaa al-Adawiya and other squares across Egypt will defeat despotism and terrorism in the long run. But in the meantime, any solution that fails to restore the public's confidence in the ballot box and falls short of alleviating the sense of victimhood in the Morsi camp will be doomed to failure."

"Soon after the military coup that deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy, I announced that I would join the pro-Morsy demonstration outside of Cairo's Rabaa al-Adaweya square...I wished to protest the killing, forcible disappearance, and jailing of coup opponents...I declared publicly that I was going to Rabaa al-Adaweya to defend the gains of the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution -- freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and the right of the people to select their rulers."

"The Egyptian officers informed me that I would be denied entry, and I was soon deported back to Yemen on the same plane on which I had arrived. The authorities gave me no clear answer why: They said that I knew the reason for my deportation better than them, and that my name had been blacklisted based on the request of a security body."

"Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to stand in person with the protesters outside Rabaa al-Adaweya square to echo their legitimate demands ... Egypt's current regime has ousted the first elected president in the country's history...There are limited options for those of us who care about Egypt's future: We can either side with civil values and democracy, or with military rule, tyranny, and coercion"

"Morsy was not only Egypt's democratically elected president, he is now emerging as the Arab world's Nelson Mandela...during Morsy's one-year reign, Egypt enjoyed freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate peacefully, and not a single one of his political opponents were jailed."

"Despite being subjected to killing, arrest, and oppression, Morsy's supporters have held fast to the democratic process and prevented Egypt from descending into civil war."

"I am not blind to the shortcomings of the previous government: Before the coup, I supported the June 30 rallies against Morsy....The military takeover aims to uproot the Muslim Brotherhood and its partners, replacing them through brute force with the losers of a democratic ballot"

"Democracy can't thrive under military rule — history is quite clear on this point ... The police state is back, and it is even worse than Hosni Mubarak's. What is happening in Egypt today is very scary: The coup could lead society to lose its faith in democracy, which will give terrorist groups a chance to breathe again...By blocking peaceful change and weakening the Islamist groups that participate in the political process, the coup leaders support this stance and do the terrorists a favor."

"All the ousted regimes, as well as the oppressive regimes that have hung on during the Arab Spring, have now blessed Egypt's coup...a blossoming democracy in Cairo can easily spread throughout the Arab world...Those who support freedom and democracy in the Middle East, however, should resist the new tyranny in Cairo with all their might."

"I visited Karman’s home earlier this year, while reporting a piece for The New Yorker. On her mantle sit the photographs of four people: Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; Nelson Mandela; and Hillary Clinton. The first three, of course, are apostles of non-violent change. Karman told me that if her movement had a playbook it was Mandela’s autobiography. Karman idolizes Clinton because she is a strong woman — “she is my role model” — but also because of Clinton’s support for her ... Early on in the protests, Saleh tried to silence Karman the way people do in societies dominated by men: by appealing to a male member of her family ... She is still in mortal danger. But the canvas tent where Karman makes her home is surrounded by thousands of others now, and by tens of thousands of Yemenis who responded to her call."

"Tawakkol Karman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 in recognition of her work in nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work in Yemen...Karman is a mother of three as well as a human rights activist, journalist, politician, and senior member of the Al-Islah political party...A journalist by profession and human rights activist by nature...In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, targeting systemic government repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice...Bold and outspoken, Tawakkol has been imprisoned on a number of occasions for her pro-democracy, pro-human rights protests...Fiercely committed to change, Tawakkol spends the majority of her time in a tent in Change Square, where she continues her peaceful protests for justice and freedom."

"Tawakkol Karman ... seems to have lost her grip on reality ... she does not seem to understand that she is now a global figure ... She employs a parochial mentality when dealing with her Facebook page, exhibiting no restraint in her discussion of Yemeni issues. Her views are influenced by her party, the fundamentalist Yemeni Congregation for Reform, known as Islah ... Every day, Karman suffers losses because of the inappropriate way she uses Facebook. One of the worst incidents took place after she was chosen to be a member of the technical committee to coordinate an inclusive national dialogue. ... Karman wanted to be the official spokesperson for the committee, but they told her that this will be determined by open elections which included another candidate, the women’s rights activist, Amal al-Basha ... It seems that the Nobel winner needs to reevaluate her modus operandi to avoid similar losses."

"[She] became the international public face of Yemen’s Arab Spring uprising. After weathering multiple arrests and assassination attempts, Karman was named a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent work advocating for women’s rights and democratic reform. She was the first Arab woman to receive the honor and the youngest laureate to date."

"...tribute to her unflinching zeal towards the betterment of women in society."

"realities of our own countries rather than catching up with the western economic models, [Bhatt urged] the people to follow a principle which ensures six basic necessities- food, shelter, clothing, primary education, primary healthcare and primary banking- are available within a 100 mile distance. If these necessities are locally produced and consumed, we will have the growth of a new holistic economy."

"Teachers do not care…It is not because teachers are badly paid and the teachers are organized but they do not teach. If we don’t respect them it is because we see them doing other business than teaching."

"…Inner peace is important, but I have always felt that living a daily life with peace is the end. So in reality individual peace and global peace are not separate. They are one and the same."

"…Poverty and violence are not God made, they are man made. Poverty and peace cannot coexist."

"Through women, what exists and is real, what is traditional, historical, modern and cultural, given the opportunity, is upgraded. That is what the challenge to bring peace is about."

"I grew up in the time around India’s independence, in the aura of a country fighting for its freedom. It was a heady and idealistic time, and we were all infected with a spirit of optimism, and the spirit of Gandhiji."

"We were rebuilding the nation, looking to a more just society. It was a time when many of us were going to the villages to live there. We were a generation that had no confusion in our minds as to how to do things. Gandhiji had shown the way. This atmosphere infused politics and the way we did things."

"...as I worked with the unionized labor, of the much larger labor force that was outside the purview of the protective labor laws, of any form of social security, access to justice, access to financial services, anything. That tugged at my heart. And those people were unorganized and had no strength to act to seek remedies."

"Women predominate in the lower strata of employment."

"[So], in 1972, we started SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association. SEWA in many respects is a microcosm of the general picture of the informal sector, in India and worldwide."

"SEWA is now the largest union in India, with a membership of around 1.2 million women."

"[SEWA] have been doing many different things, leading the SEWA movement which is about economic freedom for the poor, women, and self employed."

"I am Hindu, and my activism is very much framed within that context, of karma as meaning action."

"The country is moving in a different direction, times have changed. But for me Gandhiji’s values are still the frame, still alive and valid."

"SEWA is about political action, and that has always been at the heart of what we have done. It is about changing the balance of power in favor of the poor. That has meant constant tension, with big farmers, moneylenders, contractors, big traders, government, local panchayats, and so on."

"Injustice happens at many levels, from the grass roots to the top. And one of the keys of SEWA’s vision and action is linking them."

"Systems are needed, for example for management, accounting, skill development and MIS to serve the needs of the working poor."

"Microfinance is the best example of success in the kinds of systemic institutional areas."

"What we really are looking for is self reliance and that is how we should measure success. I don’t much like the word empowerment, but self-reliance is the foundation of SEWA’s approach,."

"Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher."

"All my life I have worked to change concepts, and that begins with how people see and understand the problems."

"She (Bhatt) has helped not only women in India but women in South Africa, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and inspired so many others to find their own way forward to overcome long legacies of inequality and unfairness. She has helped us imagine and then work toward a fairer world."

"So for her contribution to India and particularly the women of India, and to the global community, it is my honour to present the first Global Fairness Award to my friend, Ela Bhatt""

"The work that she has done through the Self-Employed Women's Association is not only about finding solutions to the problems of poverty. At its most basic level, Ela's work is about fairness, about giving every person the chance to achieve his or her dreams, to make the most of his or her God-given potential'no matter how rich or poor, no matter whether they work in a factory or a home or on the side of a road."

"Even in places where it is most stark, people still should be able to develop their ambitions and direct them toward building better lives. And Ela and SEWA have proven that,"

"Ela Bhatt has upended the old ways of thinking and compelled all of us to raise our collective ambitions about what we can do to."

"The numberless treatises of antiquities, philosophy, mathematics, natural and other history ... written originally in, or translated to our tongue are sufficient to lead us a great way into any science our curiosity shall prompt us to. The greatest difficulty we struggled with, was the want of a good art of reasoning, which we had not, that I know of, till that defect was supplied by Locke, whose Essay on Human Understanding makes large amends for the want of all others in that kind."

"Again, if Absolute Sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a family? Or if in a Family why not in a State; since no Reason can Be alle'd for the one that will not hold more strongly for the other?"

"An ill husband may deprive a wife of the comfort and quiet of her life, give occasion of exercising her virtue, try her patience and fortitude to the utmost, which is all he can do; it is herself only that can accomplish her ruin."

"Is it the being tied to One that offends us? Why this ought rather to recommend it to us, and would really do so, were we guided by reason, and not by humor and brutish passion. He who does not make friendship the chief inducement of his choice, and prefer it before any other consideration does not deserve a good wife, and therefore should not complain if he goes without one... The Christian institution of marriage provides the best that may be for domestic quiet and content, and for the education of children."

"If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men be the perfect Condition of Slavery?"

"Thus, whether it be wit or beauty that a man’s in love with, there are no great hopes of a lasting happiness; beauty, with all the helps of arts, is of no long date; the more it is , the sooner it decays; and he, who only or chiefly chose for beauty, will in a little time find the same reason for another choice."

"She must be a fool with a witness, who can believe a man, proud and vain as he is, will lay his boasted authority, the dignity and prerogative of his sex, on moment at her feet, but in prospect of taking it up again to more advantage; he may call himself her slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his life."

"The better our lot is in this world, and the more we have of it, the greater is our leisure to prepare for the next; we have the more opportunity to exercise that God-like quality, to taste that divine pleasure, doing good to the bodies and souls of those beneath us."

"To withdraw our selves as much as may be from Corporeal things, that pure Reason may be heard the better; to make that use of our Senses for which they are design’d and fitted, the preservation of the Body, but not to depend on their Testimony in our Enquiries after Truth."

"Travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we'd probably learn twice as much."

"The general ignorance of the visual arts, especially their theoretical bases, deplorable even in the so-called intellectual world; the artist’s well-founded despair of ever reaching the mythical “masses” with “advanced art”; the resulting ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world itself, with its resentful reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, critics, editors, and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the “real world’s” power structure—all of these factors may make it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts."

"An Eskimo custom offers an angry person release by walking the emotion out of his or her system in a straight line across the landscape; the point at which the anger is conquered is marked with a stick, bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage."

"Conceptual Art in the broadest sense was a kind of laboratory for innovations in the rest of the century. An unconscious international energy emerged from the raw materials of friendship, art history, interdisciplinary readings and a fervor to change the world and the ways artists related to it."

"The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years."

"The era of Conceptual art - which was also the era of the Civil Rights Movement,. Vietnam, the Women's Liberation Movement, and the counter-culture- was a real."

"Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or "dematerialized.""

"I don't understand quite a good deal of what is said by Art-Language, but I admire the investigatory energies, the tireless spade-work (not calling one one), the full commitment to the reestablishment of a valid language by which to discuss art and the occasional humour in their writings. The chaos in their reasons fascinates me, but it is also irritating to be unequipped to evaluate their work. I don't know how it is or if it is evaluated by adepts in philosophy as philosophy, but I find it infuriating to have to take them on faith."

"Talking about the particles, I know I don’t have any special theory of particles. It’s just the way it came out and that’s the way I want to do it. Also, there are advantages to particles: you can’t break them; they don’t break apart. They don’t have any rigid connections; there are no rigid connections to break. The particles are always shifting around a little bit and you have to kick them back into shape. It’s like tuning a piano every once in a while. I like the idea of something being permanent by being non-rigid, being absolutely non-rigid but not having a rigid form that can be broken. But a theory of particles, I don’t know. Maybe late one night after a few drinks I explained to Lucy Lippard a theory of particles. I’m sure I didn't remember the next day."

"This is a great day for the Yakamas -- to get the land returned back for access to our fishing right areas. The younger generation will continue to exercise their Creator-given right to our very important salmon. The U.S. government promised us with their honorable word to uphold their trust responsibility. All Yakamas will benefit with this accomplishment by the current Tribal Council officials."

"The fact that our government shouts "death sentence" and the National Commission for Women ex-chairperson follows it up by calling for castration of rapists just shows a warped belief in a weird linkage between increasingly barbaric and sensational punishments and greater liberation for womankind. If only they'd look at mundane nitty-gritties."

"All these new demands, death penalty for rape and long terms in prison for harassing women will only have the offenders roaming free because the burden of proving "beyond reasonable doubt" will become the victim's problem."

"Sitting in a metropolis like Delhi, it’s easy to pass a judgement that laws are being misused. But we should look at the larger reality where the laws are yet to reach the minimum standards of use."

"Section 497 is based on Old Testament values. It doesn't protect the rights of women, only protects the proprietorial rights of men over their wives' bodies."

"It's a routine thing women go through with cops. They treat women, particularly from the lower classes or those they think of as "loose", in a very humiliating, lecherous manner."

"Dancing and singing are legitimate professions, not new to women. Banning such bars, would violate the right of these women to earn a livelihood, as laid down under Article 21 of the Constitution, as well as the right to carry on a legitimate profession under Article 19."

"He does not seem to have understood the gravity of the offence. India's elite lauded the amendments to the IPC, widening the definition of rape, little realizing that they did not apply simply to lower-class men, but could affect them too. While there has been much clamour for the death penalty in cases of rape involving the lower classes, would the elite now like to apply this to themselves?"

"Not only is the sentence meted out to the young boys from impoverished background too harsh, but our fear is that it will set a bad precedent and serve to dilute the "rarest of rare" premise upon which a verdict of death penalty must hinge as per our criminal jurisprudence. While most countries are moving towards abolition of death penalty, this is a move in the reverse direction."

"How are all the details relevant to the case and the actual crime? When it is a case of an upper class woman, there is a titillating curiosity and over interest in her life. Her life becomes a free for all."

"The ‘love jihad’ campaign diligently perpetuates the myth of the insatiably lustful Muslim man. Hindu women, in contrast, are made out to be helpless damsels, prone to seduction. This venomous propaganda has been wreaking havoc in the lives of young couples, with women denied their agency to choose their marriage partners. Within this communally vitiated atmosphere, where every interfaith marriage is viewed as a political conspiracy and every effort is made to keep Hindu girls ‘pure’ from contamination from Muslim boys, can the political party fuelling such an atmosphere spearhead a campaign to enforce the UCC?"

"The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted ‘karroo’ bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with their long, finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.”"

"And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go; you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but I,’ said Lyndall, ‘will have nothing. I must learn.’”"

"Very tenderly the old man looked at him. He saw not the bloated body nor the evil face of the man; but, as it were, under deep disguise and fleshly concealment, the form that long years of dreaming had made very real to him."

"It is delightful to be a woman; but every man thanks the Lord devoutly that he isn’t one."

"We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World."

"This dirty little world full of confusion, and the blue rag, stretched overhead for a sky, is so low we could touch it with our hand."

"Marriage for love is the beautifulest external symbol of the union of souls, marriage without it is the uncleanliest traffic that defiles the world."

"Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don't see it—but there is."

"What need had he of experience? Experience teaches us in a millennium what passion teaches us in an hour."

"And so, it comes to pass in time, that the earth ceases for us to be a weltering chaos. We walk in the great hall of life, looking up and round reverentially. Nothing is despicable—all is meaning-full; nothing is small—all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The life that throbs in us is a beginning and end we know not. The life that throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too mighty for our comprehension, not too small. And so, it comes to pass at last, that whereas the sky was at first a small blue rag stretched out over us, and so low that our hands might touch it, pressing down on us, it raises itself into an immeasurable blue arch over our heads, and we begin to live again."

""And she said, in a voice strangely unlike her own: “I see the vision of a poor, weak soul striving after good. It was not cut short, and in the end it learnt, through tears and much pain, that holiness is an infinite compassion for others; that greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them; that”—She moved her white hand and laid it on her forehead—“happiness is a great love and much serving. It was not cut short; and it loved what it had learnt—it loved—and—”"

"“All things on earth have their price, and for truth we pay the dearest. We barter it for love and sympathy. The road to honour is paved with thorns; but on the path to truth, at every step you set your foot down on your heart.”"

"“Experience teaches us in a millennium what passion teaches us in an hour.”"

"“[O]nly the sea is like a human being . . .always moving, always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never rests; it is always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then it creeps back slowly without having reached, moaning. It is always asking a question and it never gets the answer.”"

"“When the curtain falls no one is ready”"

"“I am not in so great a hurry to put my neck beneath any man's foot; and I do not so greatly admire the crying of babies”"

"“If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?”"

"“The bees are very attentive to the flowers until their honey is done, and then they fly over them. I don't know if the flowers feel grateful to the bees, they are great fools if they do.”"

"“There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, 'Now deal us your hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.' The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.”"

"“So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and of the joy of the dreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth."

"“I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale of humanity [...]”"

"“The meanest girl who dances and dresses becomes something higher when her children look up into her face and ask her questions. It is the only education we have and which they cannot take from us”"

"“I think,' said Lyndall, 'that he is like a thorn-tree, which grows up very quietly, without any one's caring for it, and one day suddenly breaks out into yellow blossoms.”"

"“why am I so alone, so hard, so cold? I am so weary of myself! It is eating my soul to its core,--self, self, self! I cannot bear this life! I cannot breathe, I cannot live! Will nothing free me from myself?' She pressed her cheek agains the wooden post. 'I want to love! I want something great and pure to lift me to itself! Dear old man, I cannot bear it any more! I am so cold, so hard, so hard; will no one help me!”"

"“I have discovered that of all cursed places under the sun, where the hungriest soul can hardly pick up a few grains of knowledge, a girls' boarding-school is the worst. They are called finishing schools, and the name tells accurately what they are. They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate.”"

"“Why hate, and struggle, and fight? Let is be as it would.”"

"“For a little sould that cries oout aloud for continued personal existence for itseld and its beloved, there is no help. For the sould which know itself no more as a unit, but as part of the Universal Unit of which the Beloved also is part; which feels within itself the throb of the Universal Life; for that soul there is not death.”"

"“I have sought,” he said, “for long years I have laboured; but I have not found her. I have not rested, I have not repined, and I have not seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down worn out other men will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb; by the stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never know the name of the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and on my work; they will climb, and by my stair! They will find her, and through me! And no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.”"

"“On the path to truth, at every step, you set your foot down on your own heart.”"

"When Olive Schreiner, aged seventeen, wrote the South African Farm, some among her friends were disappointed she had not called more upon her imagination and described wild and thrilling adventures, as her country might have suggested. "Such works," she says in her Preface to this wonderful book, "are best written in Piccadilly or the Strand; there the gifts of creative imagination, untrammelled by contact with fact, may spread their wings. Those brilliant phases and shapes are not for her to portray. Sadly she must squeeze the colour from her brush. She must paint what lies before her.""

"The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner is often thought of as being the beginning of South African literature. She stood more or less alone."

"As I flew over the Shahyad monument, I saw that one corner was completely dark. A moment later I realized this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, women who had achieved one of the highest levels of emancipation in the Middle East. Here they were in the mournful black their grandmother had worn. My god, I thought, is this how it ends?"

"I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own."

"Persia’s backward conditions were relics of social traditions ... and the women for that matter weren’t ready to exchange the protection they had traditionally enjoyed for the unknowns of a new social status."

"It is equally obvious and it became clear ... that no ruler can legislate a social revolution. He can implement the outward form of social change, but he cannot legislate change in the minds of the people. Stable and lasting change has to evolve slowly and gradually over a period of many generations. What signaled the beginning of the end ... was the radical modernization program, which virtually affected every aspect of Iranian life ... [including] the sweeping emancipation of women, which moved as it were 13 centuries in the course of three decades."

"Carter didn't kill my brother with his own hand, but he overthrew him. If Nixon were President, my brother would still be on the throne."

"I don't need to pray. I have God in myside."

"I don't care when I die, when you die, you die. What I don't want is to die in my bed. To be killed in an accident or to be shot is my preferred way to die."

"You are very attractive, but the coat you're wearing makes me think you are either a very rich woman or a very rich man's mistress."

"Her eyes lit up and her resistance crumbled."

"I’ve come to believe that you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."

"One of the difficulties when you’re coming out of oppression is that you get a concept of the messiah. You have to get to that point that we are the leaders we’ve been looking for. We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. I don’t know what the next American revolution is going to be like, but we might be able to imagine it, if your imagination were rich enough."

"We wanted to become part of the people who took responsibility for the country."

"I became so active in the black power movement that FBI records of that time say that I was probably Afro-Chinese."

"People thought of revolution chiefly in terms of taking state power. But we’ve had revolutions, and we’ve seen how the states which they have created have turned out to be like replicas of the states which they opposed. You have to bring those two words together and recognize that we are responsible for the evolution of the human species. It’s a question of two-sided transformation and not just the oppressed versus the oppressor. We have to change ourselves in order to change the world."

"Let me make a challenge to you, OK? With people of color becoming the new American majority in many parts of the country, how are we going to create a new vision for this country, a vision of a new kind of human being, which is what is demanded at this moment? So that’s your challenge."

"when you look out and all you see is vacant lots, when all you see is devastation, when all you see—do you look at it as a curse, or do you look at it as a possibility, as having potential? And we here in Detroit had to begin doing that for our own humanity."

"when you have been very active all your life, and suddenly you’re very restricted and don’t have much mobility, it’s tough. And it’s tough when you’ve been married for 40 years to be living alone."

"They need to know that a revolution is to advance their humanity and to advance the humanity of the human race. They need to know that a revolution is to create solutions and not to get angry at the people. They need to know that a revolution is not just protests, it’s not just anger, it’s not just a search for power. It’s a search for real problems for how to be a human being. And I think that’s what’s unique about the American revolution, and that’s what’s unique about this country, because even though there is a lot of poverty, there’s a lot of inequality, there’s a lot of physical hardships, I think the most profound hardship of the American people is that they want to change, they want to change themselves, they want to change this world, and they don’t know how to do it. And revolution is the way to do it, but not the old kind of revolution. So, I think, in that sense, the reason that people are responding so positively is that to see the film does meet a need, a very profound need. I mean, this country is in such deep trouble spiritually, in every human sense. It’s not just the finances. It’s not just the joblessness. It’s—I believe in a kind of American exceptionalism, that whereas in other countries you face the material hardships first and they become central, in the United States it’s something that’s a hunger that’s much deeper, that we have to find our souls."

"The question, which is actually from one of my teachers, Grace Lee Boggs, that she would always ask when we showed up to sit down and talk with her is, What time is it on the clock of the world? And I like this question. It always makes me kind of deconstruct time, when I’m like, oh, we’re in these looping patterns, actually. And we’re in a pattern that feels familiar in these ways and new in these other ways."

"Throughout this book, Martínez reminds readers again and again of why we should balance the wisdom of experience with the fire of youth and honor both perspectives. So many great leaders have boldly embodied this ethic, from the recently departed such as Yuri Kochiyama, Grace Lee Boggs, and Cedric Robinson, to those who carry on like Jamala Rogers, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and Betita Martinez herself."

"Grace has made more contributions to the black struggle than most black people have."

"Grace’s legacy for us who are left here really is to consider that for each of us, we have our own responsibility to transform ourselves. As a transformative leader, it wasn’t that Grace wanted us to do as Grace did, but rather to explore ourselves to see what we could do to be better human beings, to stretch our own humanity, and to be involved in the social justice issues of our day."

"Grace Boggs is the inspiration, in many ways, for Freedom Dreams. You know, we go back to like 1992, and she started this debate with me about, you know, you need to read Dr. King, you need to pay attention to people’s needs beyond protest. Like, how do you build the society we’re trying to establish in time, in the present, as opposed to just continuing to fight for reform? And so, we had this ongoing debate, and she forced me to rethink some things. Even after Freedom Dreams came out, she had more critiques, of course. And so, I end the book with an epilogue that has a very substantial section on what is being built in Detroit right now as a result of the Boggs Center and the work that Grace and Jimmy Boggs did. And so, that’s a really important part of the story, saying that freedom dreamers are basically building that society of creating new human beings, new ways of being together that don’t fall into the same old trap of, you know, the Marxist seizing state power."

"When we think about Grace in the 20 century, she is very much an outsider. In the 21st century, she represents the uniting of people from different races and different backgrounds, in a way that is now defining America."

"Writing from bed is a time-honored disabled way of being an activist and a cultural worker. It's one the mainstream doesn't often acknowledge but whose lineage stretches from Frida Kahlo painting in bed to Grace Lee Boggs writing in her wheelchair at age 98. (preface)"

"there’s this new era of social justice movement about, “Yeah, we’re going to organize in the streets.” And let me tell you, I mean, I grew up hearing people like Grace Lee Boggs and all, everybody, that said, “Don’t wait for somebody to introduce things in the halls of Congress or wait ’til the White House wakes up. We transform our country by movement work outside of the halls of Congress and in the White House.” And so, believe in that, because that’s exactly what we’ve done."

"by 1966, '67, she's well known particularly in Detroit circles, but also nationally, as a black power figure."

"A massive rebirth is needed right now for much of the industrialized world-one that will justly transition us beyond the extractive dominance of fossil fuels and into a new way of being. Over the past few years I've found myself rereading the manifesto that Grace Lee Boggs and other women leaders wrote in 2005 that proclaimed, "Another world is necessary, another world is possible, another world has already started." In it they declare, "This universal crisis is not only a danger but a promise, an opportunity to advance ourselves and our societies to a new level, based on a new vision, new principles and values." With each new pipeline approved, with each new gas permit granted, world leaders show that they are not ready for this rebirth. But the Earth knows what's necessary and is continuing to send shock signals that we cannot keep on postponing this transition. How do we keep on rolling this rebirth along, even despite all that is politically, economically, environmentally against us?"

"We will one day think it as horrible to eat animals as we now think it horrible to eat each other."

"Hacking is the clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your IP server, your own personality, or the laws of physics."

"Give us bandwidth or kill us!"

"Girls need modems!"

"I'm a future-hacker; I'm trying to get root access to the future. I want to raid its system of thought."

"I hate this waaaah-I'm-a-poor-sensitive-weak-woman-protect-me shit. This kind of stuff generates more contempt for women. So fuck niceness!"

"The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future."

"Poor baby! She'll be a woman some day! Poor baby! A woman's lot is so hard!"

"The closing paragraphs of this book were written in the late summer of 1914, when the armies of every great power in Europe were being mobilised for savage, unsparing, barbarous warfare—against one another, against small and unaggressive nations, against helpless women and children, against civilisation itself. How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women's militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace—so-called, and civilisation, and orderly government as the background for heroism such as the world has seldom witnessed. The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness. Time alone will reveal what reward will be allotted to the women. (Foreword)"

"Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case. (Ch 1)"

"One of my earliest recollections is of a great bazaar which was held in my native city of Manchester, the object of the bazaar being to raise money to relieve the poverty of the newly emancipated negro slaves in the United States.... Young as I was—I could not have been older than five years—I knew perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation. From infancy I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession. Broadly speaking, the propertied classes were pro-slavery, but there were many exceptions to the rule. Most of those who formed the circle of our family friends were opposed to slavery, and my father... was always a most ardent abolitionist. (Ch. 1)"

"Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was so great a favourite with my mother that she used it continually as a source of bedtime stories for our fascinated ears. Those stories, told almost fifty years ago, are as fresh in my mind to-day as events detailed in the morning's papers. Indeed they are more vivid, because they made a much deeper impression on my consciousness. I can still definitely recall the thrill I experienced every time my mother related the tale of Eliza's race for freedom over the broken ice of the Ohio River, the agonizing pursuit, and the final rescue at the hands of the determined old Quaker. Another thrilling tale was the story of a negro boy's flight from the plantation of his cruel master... throughout my childhood, whenever I rode in a train, I thought of that poor runaway slave escaping from the pursuing monster. These stories, with the bazaars and the relief funds and subscriptions of which I heard so much talk, I am sure made a permanent impression on my brain and my character. They awakened in me the two sets of sensations to which all my life I have most readily responded: first, admiration for that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone the soul of civilisation is saved; and next after that, appreciation of the gentler spirit which is moved to mend and repair the ravages of war. (Ch. 1)"

"The rest of the story reveals one of those ghastly blunders which justice not infrequently makes. Although the shooting was done without any intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three of them were found guilty and hanged.... I was transfixed with horror, and over me there swept the sudden conviction that that hanging was a mistake—worse, a crime. It was my awakening to one of the most terrible facts of life—that justice and judgment lie often a world apart. I relate this incident of my formative years to illustrate the fact that the impressions of childhood often have more to do with character and future conduct than heredity or education. I tell it also to show that my development into an advocate of militancy was largely a sympathetic process. I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation of social injustice. My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal."

"The education of the English boy, then as now, was considered a much more serious matter than the education of the English boy's sister. My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls' school, but beyond the facts that the head mistress was a gentlewoman and that all the pupils were girls of my own class, nobody seemed concerned. A girl's education at that time seemed to have for its prime object the art of "making home attractive"—presumably to migratory male relatives. It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a particular obligation to make home attractive to my brothers."

"[O]ne night when I lay in my little bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. It was a custom of my father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every night before going themselves to bed. When they entered my room that night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose to feign slumber. My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I cannot know exactly what thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me, but I heard him say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad." My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn't want to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents' footsteps pass on toward the next child's bed. I thought about my father's remark for many days afterward, but I think I never decided that I regretted my sex. However, it was made quite clear that men considered themselves superior to women, and that women apparently acquiesced in that belief. (Ch. 1)"

"The following year (1886) found us living in London, and, as usual, interesting ourselves with labour matters and other social movements. This year was memorable for a great strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories. I threw myself into this strike with enthusiasm, working with the girls and with some women of prominence, among these the celebrated Mrs. Annie Besant. The strike was a successful one, the girls winning substantial improvements in their working conditions. (Ch. 2)"

"It was a time of tremendous unrest, of labour agitations, of strikes and lockouts. It was a time also when a most stupid reactionary spirit seemed to take possession of the Government and the authorities. The Salvation Army, the Socialists, the trade-unionists—in fact, all bodies holding outdoor meetings—were made special objects of attack. As a protest against this policy a Law and Liberty League was formed in London, and an immense Free Speech meeting was held in Trafalgar Square... I was present at this meeting, which resulted in a bloody riot between the police and the populace. The Trafalgar Square Riot is historic, and to it Mr. John Burns owes, in large part, his subsequent rise to political eminence. Both John Burns and Cunningham Graham served prison sentences for the part they played in the riot, but they gained fame, and they did much to establish the right of free speech for English men. English women are still contending for that right."

"The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors ... bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time ... I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world ... Of course the babies are very badly protected ... These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant. (Book I, Ch. 2)"

"The campaign of 1907 began with a Women's Parliament, called together on February 13th in Caxton Hall, to consider the provisions of the King's speech, which had been read in the national Parliament on the opening day of the session, February 12th. The King's speech, as I have explained, is the official announcement of the Government's programme for the session. When our Women's Parliament met at three o'clock on the afternoon of the thirteenth we knew that the Government meant to do nothing for women during the session ahead.... I presided over the women's meeting, which was marked with a fervency and a determination of spirit at that time altogether unprecedented. A resolution expressing indignation that woman suffrage should have been omitted from the King's speech, and calling upon the House of Commons to give immediate facilities to such a measure, was moved and carried. A motion to send the resolution from the hall to the Prime Minister was also carried. The slogan, "Rise up, women," was cried from the platform, the answering shout coming back as from one woman, "Now!" With copies of the resolution in their hands, the chosen deputation hurried forth into the February dusk, ready for Parliament or prison, as the fates decreed. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"Fate did not leave them very long in doubt. The Government, it appeared, had decided that not again should their sacred halls of Parliament be desecrated by women asking for the vote, and orders had been given that would henceforth prevent women from reaching even the outer precincts of the House of Commons. So when our deputation of women arrived in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey they found themselves opposed by a solid line of police, who, at a sharp order from their chief, began to stride through and through the ranks of the procession, trying to turn the women back. Bravely the women rallied and pressed forward a little farther. Suddenly a body of mounted police came riding up at a smart trot, and for the next five hours or more, a struggle, quite indescribable for brutality and ruthlessness, went on. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"The horsemen rode directly into the procession, scattering the women right and left. But still the women would not turn back. Again and again they returned, only to fly again and again from the merciless hoofs. Some of the women left the streets for the pavements, but even there the horsemen pursued them, pressing them so close to walls and railings that they were obliged to retreat temporarily to avoid being crushed. Other strategists took refuge in doorways, but they were dragged out by the foot police and were thrown directly in front of the horses. Still the women fought to reach the House of Commons with their resolution. They fought until their clothes were torn, their bodies bruised, and the last ounce of their strength exhausted. Fifteen of them did actually fight their way through those hundreds on hundreds of police, foot and mounted, as far as the Strangers' Lobby of the House. Here they attempted to hold a meeting, and were arrested. Outside, many more women were taken into custody. It was ten o'clock before the last arrest was made, and the square cleared of the crowds. After that the mounted men continued to guard the approaches to the House of Commons until the House rose at midnight. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"I want to call attention to the self-restraint which was shown by our followers on the night of the 13th, after we had been arrested. Our rule has always been to be patient, exercise self-restraint, show our so-called superiors that we are not hysterical; to use no violence, but rather to offer ourselves to the violence of others. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"That is all I have to say to you, sir. We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"My first act on reaching Holloway was to demand that the Governor be sent for. When he came I told him that the Suffragettes had resolved that they would no longer submit to being treated as ordinary law-breakers. In the course of our trial two Cabinet Ministers had admitted that we were political offenders, and therefore we should henceforth refuse to be searched or to undress in the presence of the wardresses. For myself I claimed the right, and I hoped the others would do likewise, to speak to my friends during exercise, or whenever I came in contact with them. The Governor, after reflection, yielded to the first two demands, but said that he would have to consult the Home Office before permitting us to break the rule of silence. We were accordingly allowed to change our clothing privately, and, as a further concession, were placed in adjoining cells. This was little advantage to me, however, since within a few days I was removed to a hospital cell, suffering from the illness which prison life always inflicts on me. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"I soon had the joy of seeing my daughter and the other brave comrades, and walking with them in the dismal courtyard of the prison. Single file we walked, at a distance of three or four feet from one another, back and forth under the stony eyes of the wardresses. The rough flags of the pavement hurt our feet, shod in heavy, shapeless prison boots. The autumn days were cold and cheerless, and we shivered violently under our scanty cloaks. But of all our hardships the ceaseless silence of our lives was worst. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"At the end of the second week I decided I would no longer endure it. That afternoon at exercise I suddenly called my daughter by name and bade her stand still until I came up to her. Of course she stopped, and when I reached her side we linked arms and began to talk in low tones. A wardress ran up to us, saying: "I shall listen to everything you say." I replied: "You are welcome to do that, but I shall insist on my right to speak to my daughter." Another wardress had hastily left the yard, and now she returned with a large number of wardresses. They seized me and quickly removed me to my cell, while the other suffrage prisoners cheered my action at the top of their voices. For their "mutiny" they got three days' solitary confinement, and I, for mine, a much more severe punishment. Unrepentant, I told the Governor that, in spite of any punishment he might impose on me, I would never again submit to the silence rule. To forbid a mother to speak to her daughter was infamous. For this I was characterised as a "dangerous criminal" and was sent into solitary confinement, without exercise or chapel, while a wardress was stationed constantly at my cell door to see that I communicated with no one. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"It was two weeks before I saw any of my friends again, and meantime the health of Mrs. Drummond had been so seriously impaired that she was released for hospital treatment. My daughter also, I learned, was ill, and in desperation I made application to the Board of Visiting Magistrates to be allowed to see her. After a long conference, during which I was made to wait outside in the corridor, the magistrates returned a refusal, saying that I might renew my application in a month... My anxiety sent me to bed ill again, but, although I did not know it, relief was already on its way. I had told the visiting magistrates that I would wait until public opinion got within those walls, and this happened sooner than I had dared to hope. Mrs. Drummond, as soon as she was able to appear in public, and the other suffrage prisoners, as they were released, spread broadcast the story of our mutiny, and of a subsequent one led by Miss Wallace Dunlop, which sent a large number of women into solitary confinement. The Suffragettes marched by thousands to Holloway, thronging the approaches to the prison street. Round and round the prison they marched, singing the Women's Marseillaise and cheering. Faintly the sound came to our ears, infinitely lightening our burden of pain and loneliness. The following week they came again, so we afterwards learned, but this time the police turned them back long before they reached the confines of the prison. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"I called upon the women of the meeting to join me in this new militancy, and I reminded them anew that the women who were fighting in the Suffragette army had a great mission, the greatest mission the world has ever known—the freeing of one-half the human race, and through that freedom the saving of the other half. I said to them: "Be militant each in your own way. Those of you who can express your militancy by going to the House of Commons and refusing to leave without satisfaction, as we did in the early days—do so. Those of you who can express militancy by facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers' meetings, when you remind them of their[ falseness to principle—do so. Those of you who can express your militancy by joining us in our anti-Government by-election policy—do so. Those of you who can break windows—break them. Those of you who can still further attack the secret idol of property, so as to make the Government realise that property is as greatly endangered by women's suffrage as it was by the Chartists of old—do so. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"I say to the Government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare, but if you dare I tell you this, that so long as those who incited to armed rebellion and the destruction of human life in Ulster are at liberty, you will not keep me in prison. So long as men rebels—and voters—are at liberty, we will not remain in prison, first division or no first division." (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"I ask my readers, some of whom no doubt will be shocked and displeased at these words of mine that I have so frankly set down, to put themselves in the place of those women who for years had given their lives entirely and unstintingly to the work of securing political freedom for women; who had converted so great a proportion of the electorate that, had the House of Commons been a free body, we should have won that freedom years before; who had seen their freedom withheld from them through treachery and misuse of power. I ask you to consider that we had used, in our agitation, only peaceful means until we saw clearly that peaceful means were absolutely of no avail, and then for years we had used only the mildest militancy, until we were taunted by Cabinet Ministers, and told that we should never get the vote until we employed the same violence that men had used in their agitation for suffrage. After that we had used stronger militancy, but even that, by comparison with the militancy of men in labour disputes, could not possibly be counted as violent. (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"Our battles are practically over, we confidently believe. For the present at least our arms are grounded, for directly the threat of foreign war descended on our nation we declared a complete truce from militancy. What will come out of this European war—so terrible in its effects on the women who had no voice in averting it—so baneful in the suffering it must necessarily bring on innocent children—no human being can calculate. But one thing is reasonably certain, and that is that the Cabinet changes which will necessarily result from warfare will make future militancy on the part of women unnecessary. No future Government will repeat the mistakes and the brutality of the Asquith Ministry. None will be willing to undertake the impossible task of crushing or even delaying the march of women towards their rightful heritage of political liberty and social and industrial freedom. (Book III, Ch. 9)"

"(Do you credit Mrs. Pankhurst with having trained you in the militant tactics you subsequently introduced into the American campaign?) AP: That wasn’t the way the movement was, you know. Nobody was being trained. We were just going in and doing the simplest little things that we were asked to do. You see, the movement was very small in England, and small in this country, and small everywhere, I suppose. So I got to know Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, quite well. I had, of course, a great veneration and admiration for Mrs. Pankhurst, but I wouldn’t say that I was very much trained by her."

"The militant English suffrage leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, came to see me in Connecticut and scolded me soundly for lending my name, energy and work to a "man's party." She had the narrow feminist idea, which I never accepted, of working for women alone. She felt that women should not work for any political party until they got the vote."

"Emmeline Pankhurst, whose advocacy of such militant tactics as hunger strikes probably hastened passage of the British women's vote, claims in her memoirs to have met Anthony and been greatly influenced by hearing her speak."

"There has been no other woman like Emmeline Pankhurst. She was beautiful; her pale face, with its delicate square jaw and rounded temples, recalled the pansy by its shape and a kind of velvety bloom on the expression. She dressed her taut little body with a cross between the elegance of a Frenchwoman and the neatness of a nun. She was courageous; small and fragile and no longer young, she put herself in the way of horses' hooves, she stood up on platforms under a rain of missiles, she sat in the darkness of underground jails and hunger-struck, and when they let her out because she had starved herself within touching distance of death, she rested only for a day or two and then clambered back on to the platforms, she staggered back under the horses' hooves."

"Up the Noran Water In by Inglismaddy, Annie's got a bairnie That hasna got a daddy. Some say it's Tammas's An' some say it's Chay's; An' naebody expec'it it, Wi' Annie's quiet ways."

"This man set the flame of his native genius under the cumbering whin of the untilled field; Lit a fire in the Mearns to illumine Scotland, clearing the sullen soil for a richer yield."

"Sae smoor yersel', my man, Pit oot yer licht, Grey hair that's tow To a lassie's lowe Is an unco sicht."

"Laughter and gibes and scorn they brave for her: their pounds, their silver, and their pence they give; their time, their talent and their youth for her that she may live."

"They agonise in sordid tenements, with children stabled worse than sheep or kye. O, how can grace or peace or health abide such poverty?"

"I mind o' the Ponnage Pule On a shinin' mornin', The saumon fishers Nettin' the bonny brutes — I' the slithery dark o' the boddom O' Charon's Coble Ae day I'll faddom my doots."

"But where this passionate self will go, God knows, Who knows whence the lightning comes, and whither it goes."

"While I am not teetotal, a drunk woman I find revolting and Burns orgies detestable."

"Criticism in Scotland, of books as well as plays, is often bedevilled because we all know each other too well. The clique can cast its chill over its rivals; the claque delude with false praise."

"I am not asked out to drinking parties and have never been in a Rose Street pub. I can't be a poet."

"I mind o' the Ponnage Pool, The reid brae risin', Morphie Lade, An' the saumon that louped the dam, A tree i' Martin's Den Wi' names carved on it; But I ken na wha I am."

"Bide the storm ye canna hinder, Mindin’ through the strife, Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty Lichts the grey o’ life."

"The man that mates wi’ Poverty An’ clasps her tae his banes, Will faither lean an’ lively thochts, A host o’ eident weans."

"Under an arch o’ bramble Saftly she goes, Dark broon een like velvet, Cheeks like the rose."

"Saddam gave us a lot of things. The development of the country ... but I think what he took away from us in the meantime, was our very souls. We got into a stage where we were fearing each other, where husbands and wives didn't talk to each other, where parents were afraid to express anything in front of their kids because the teachers often asked the kids, 'what does daddy think of uncle Saddam? What does your mummy think of uncle Saddam?.' And there are horror stories of parents being executed because of the child."

"I woke up in the middle of the night with the sound of heavy explosion. It was deep at night. I do not remember what time it was. I just remember the sound was so heavy and so very shocking. Everything in my room was shaking -- my heart, my windows, my bed, everything. I looked out the windows and I saw a full half-circle of explosion. I thought it was just like the movies, but the movies had not conveyed them in the powerful image that I was seeing full of bright red and orange and gray, and a full circle of explosion. And I kept on staring at it until it disappeared. I went back to my bed, and I prayed, and I secretly thanked God that that missile did not land on my family's home, that it did not kill my family that night. Thirty years have passed, and I still feel guilty about that prayer, for the next day, I learned that that missile landed on my brother's friend's home and killed him and his father, but did not kill his mother or his sister. His mother showed up the next week at my brother's classroom and begged seven-year-old kids to share with her any picture they may have of her son, for she had lost everything."

"I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it."

"I grew up with the colors of war -- the red colors of fire and blood, the brown tones of earth as it explodes in our faces and the piercing silver of an exploded missile, so bright that nothing can protect your eyes from it. I grew up with the sounds of war -- the staccato sounds of gunfire, the wrenching booms of explosions, ominous drones of jets flying overhead and the wailing warning sounds of sirens. These are the sounds you would expect, but they are also the sounds of dissonant concerts of a flock of birds screeching in the night, the high-pitched honest cries of children and the thunderous, unbearable silence. "War," a friend of mine said, "is not about sound at all. It is actually about silence, the silence of humanity.""

"I have learned not only that the colors and the sounds of war are the same, but the fears of war are the same. You know, there is a fear of dying."

"We have been so consumed with seemingly objective discussions of politics, tactics, weapons, dollars and casualties. This is the language of sterility."

"We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women."

"There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means."

"They are women who are standing on their feet in spite of their circumstances, not because of it. Think of how the world can be a much better place if, for a change, we have a better equality, we have equality, we have a representation and we understand war, both from the front-line and the back-line discussion."

"Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet, says, "Out beyond the worlds of right-doings and wrong-doings, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' no longer makes any sense." I humbly add that out beyond the worlds of war and peace, there is a field, and there are many women and men [who] are meeting there. Let us make this field a much bigger place. Let us all meet in that field."

"It is a misfortune of the Muslim society that a Muslim Gandhi who would insist on Muslims cultivating love of justice is yet to be born in it... I said some time ago that a Muslim Gandhi is yet to be born. It might perhaps be helpful if I explain this remark. Gandhi was not a historical accident. He represented the high watermark of the Hindu renaissance and embodied in his life and work some of its highest impulses and achievements. He symbolized the universalistic humanist outlook towards which this renaissance was steadily working."

"It seems to me that in spite of his close contact with Gandhi, Badshah Khan failed to understand the wisdom of his great leader. When Gandhi thought of the problems of the Hindus he could not do so without also thinking of the interests of the Muslims; when he thought of the problems of India, he could not forget those of the world. With Badshah Khan it is the other way round. When he thinks of the Hindus, he cannot forget that he is a Muslim - a Khudai Khidmatgar, no doubt, but a Muslim nonetheless; when he thinks of the Muslims, he cannot forget that he is a Pathan."

"Unfortunately, Muslim society in India has not yet produced its own Gandhi. Indeed, it will not be able to do so till the ground is prepared by a generation of men who subject the religion and culture of the Muslims to ruthless scrutiny in the light of modern values. Badshah Khan is a great and good Muslim, and also a follower of Gandhi. But he is no Gandhi himself. Therein lies the cause of his failure."

"The Muslim Majilis Mushawarat, which is the united front of Muslim organizations in India, includes... educated Muslims... and orthodox Muslims... The election manifesto of the Mushawarat ... contained a 9-point charter of demands which can only be interpreted as asserting that Muslim Indians constituted a 'sovereign' society."

"The creation of Pakistan is not the end of this problem. H.S. Suhrawardy said in 1946 that Pakistan was 'not the last but only the latest demand' of Indian Muslims.... He recommended the creation of a number of 'Muslim-majority pockets' in India. The birth of the Mallapuram district is therefore only a sign of further demands to come. .... The relaxation, on the eve of a mid-term poll, of the service rules enjoining monogamy on Central Government servants whose religion permitted polygamy was effected by the Government of India under the pressure of these organizations."

"Leaders of secular parties... have so far made no serious effort to understand the true nature of Muslim politics in India."

"It is quite true that partition far from proving to be a solution to the Muslim problem has only aggravated it. But it is simply not true that there was a happy solution waiting round the corner only if partition had been avoided. For the Muslims demanded parity as the price for remaining in a politically united India and surely this was an impossible demand."

"We have to insist on a common personal law for all citizens of India."

"“Hindu society has produced many communalists. Admitted. But it has also produced men like Mahatma Gandhi who went on a fast unto death to save the Muslims of Bihar from large-scale butchery. It has produced men like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had the Bihari Hindus bombed from the air when they did not respond to the Mahatma’s call. These have not been isolated men in Hindu society, as Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and M.C. Chagla have been in Muslim society. The Mahatma was a leader whom the whole Hindu society honoured. Pandit Nehru has been kept as Prime Minister over all these years by a majority vote of the same Hindu society. “Now let me give you a sample of the leadership which Muslim society has produced so far, and in an ample measure. The foremost that comes to my mind is Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Immediately after partition, there was a shooting in Sheikhupura in which many Hindus who were waiting for repatriation in a camp, were shot down. There was a great commotion in India, and Pandit Nehru had to take up the matter in his next weekly meeting with Liaqat Ali in Lahore. The Prime Minister of Pakistan had brought the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura with him. The officer explained that the Hindus had broken out of the camp at night in the midst of a curfew, and the police had to open fire. Pandit Nehru asked as to why the Hindus had broken out of the camp. The officer told him that some miscreants had set the camp on fire. Pandit Nehru protested to Liaqat Ali that this was an amazing explanation. Liaqat Ali replied without batting an eye that they had to maintain law and order. This exemplifies the quality of leadership which Muslim society has produced so far. This…”"

"Hamid Dalwai, one rare liberal Indian Muslim who ironically had more followers among Hindus than his own co-religionists, was even more scathing in Muslim Politics in Secular India: “Indian Muslims are, as a rule, liberal only when liberal Hindus blame communalist Hindus.”"

"Twenty years ago I had been invited to a seminar on Hurdles To Secularism... There were four or five Muslim participants present in that seminar.... They were invited to speak next. But they all smiled and said that they had nothing to add to what their ‘Hindu brethren’ had already said so ‘loudly and so lucidly’. And then all of a sudden I saw some fireworks from the same silent and satisfied Islamic fraternity. They had all stood up, shaking with uncontrollable rage, and were shouting at the same time, “He is lying!” They were pointing their fingers at the gentleman who had been invited to speak by the president, and who had said only a few sentences. ... This was the late Hamid Dalwai. I had heard of him. But this was the first time I saw him. He was a tall man with a slight stoop, a smiling face, and a rather relaxed self-possession. He was saying, “All that has been said about Hindu communalism today is nothing new. We have heard it for the nth time. The intention of the working paper of this seminar, however, was to highlight for the first time what has so far been ignored by all progressive people who swear by secularism. What I want to expose today is Muslim communalism which has already divided the motherland, and which is still strong enough to poison our body-politic…” It was at this point that the Muslim gentlemen had stood up and started shouting... All hell now broke loose as the Islamic fraternity stood up again, and started shouting that they had not come to the seminar to be insulted by “a hired hoodlum of the RSS fascists”. JP could restrain them no more, and declared the proceedings closed with a note of anguish in his voice."

"Quality men are not afraid of quality women."

"Men put roadblocks in front of women as a way of hiding their inefficiencies."

"Emphasis is placed on the strengthening of parliamentary institutions through proactive measures to endow the parliament with greater accountability and oversight powers."

"The Parliaments upcoming workshop will communicate and recognize the importance of the parliamentarians observations and conclusions on the future of food."

"food insecurity and malnutrition is not only an ongoing African problem, it is a global issue that needs to be dealt with in an efficient, proactive manner."

"The outcomes of the workshop will be to help strengthen, improve and properly align the objectives of the Alliance with that of the Technical Cooperation Project document, which will be the guiding tool for the implementation"

"The parliamentarians also underscored the importance of parliamentary dialogue in countries, regions and globally, in order to share good practice and experiences in ensuring food security and adequate nutrition."

"I believe the proposed workshop is exactly what they would deem an “effective response” and “proactive measure” in the strive for a food-secure world."

"Such sectoral coordination will help in addressing food security and nutrition in a holistic manner, which in turn, will help maximize limited resources and gains. Partnership with other institutions has also helped PAP access data, which is critical for inform decision-making, debate, advocacy, and lobbying."

"'Women's Day' is a link in the long, solid chain of the women's proletarian movement. The organised army of working women grows with every year. Twenty years ago the trade unions contained only small groups of working women scattered here and there among the ranks of the workers party... Now English trade unions have over 292 thousand women members; in Germany around 200 thousand are in the trade union movement and 150 thousand in the workers party, and in Austria there are 47 thousand in the trade unions and almost 20 thousand in the party. Everywhere – in Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland – the women of the working class are organising themselves. The women's socialist army has almost a million members. A powerful force! A force that the powers of this world must reckon with when it is a question of the cost of living, maternity insurance, child labour and legislation to protect female labour. There was a time when working men thought that they alone must bear on their shoulders the brunt of the struggle against capital, that they alone must deal with the 'old world' without the help of their womenfolk. However, as working-class women entered the ranks of those who sell their labour, forced onto the labour market by need, by the fact that husband or father is unemployed, working men became aware that to leave women behind in the ranks of the 'non-class-conscious' was to damage their cause and hold it back. The greater the number of conscious fighters, the greater the chances of success. What level of consciousness is possessed by a woman who sits by the stove, who has no rights in society, the state or the family? She has no 'ideas' of her own! Everything is done as ordered by the father or husband..."

"There are individuals – a mere handful in the history of mankind – who, while themselves being the product of an imminent catastrophic change, leave their mark upon an entire epoch. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is one such giant mind, one such giant will... However mighty such giants of history may be, the universal-general principle that they symbolise and embody dissolves all the narrowly individual. The ordinary measuring rod of the qualities, failings and passions characteristic of the people of that age is not applicable to them. It is not a question of the personal characteristics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but what he symbolises... He has gathered to himself like a magnet everything in the revolution that is expressive of will, power, ruthless destruction and constructive persistence. Everyone who values what the workers' revolution brings with it in its cleansing whirlwind cannot but value and cherish its symbol, its embodiment – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."

"One must write not only for oneself. But for others. For those far-away, unknown women who will live then. Let them see that we were not heroines or heroes at all. But we believed passionately and ardently."

"Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography. What should be emphasized? Just what is of general interest? It is advisable, above all, to write honestly and dispense with any of the conventional introductory protestations of modesty. For if one is called upon to tell about one's life so as to make the events that made it what it became useful to the general public, it can mean only that one must have already wrought something positive in life, accomplished a task that people recognize. Accordingly it is a matter of forgetting that one is writing about oneself, of making an effort to abjure one's ego so as to give an account, as objectively as possible, of one's life in the making and of one's accomplishments."

"By looking back while prying, simultaneously, into the future, I will also be presenting to myself the most crucial turning points of my being and accomplishments. In this way I may succeed in setting into bold relief that which concerns the women's liberation struggle and, further, the social significance which it has. That I ought not to shape my life according to the given model, that I would have to grow beyond myself in order to be able to discern my life's true line of vision was an awareness that was mine already in my youngest years. At the same time I was also aware that in this way I could help my sisters to shape their lives, in accordance not with the given traditions but with their own free choice to the extent, of course, that social and economic circumstances permit. I always believed that the time inevitably must come when woman will be judged by the same moral standards applied to man. For it is not her specific virtue that gives her a place of honor in human society, but the worth of the useful mission accomplished by her, the worth of her personality as human being, as citizen, as thinker, as fighter. Subconsciously this motive was the leading force of my whole life and activity. To go my way, to work, to struggle, to create side by side with men, and to strive for the attainment of a universal human goal (for nearly thirty years, indeed, I have belonged to the Communists) but, at the same time, to shape my personal, intimate life as a woman according to my own will and according to the given laws of my nature. It was this that conditioned my line of vision."

"I have succeeded in structuring my intimate life according to my own standards and I make no secret of my love experiences anymore than does a man. Above all, however, I never let my feelings, the joy or pain of love take the first place in my life inasmuch as creativity, activity, struggle always occupied the foreground."

"I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity."

"When I was appointed as Russian envoy to , I realized that I had thereby achieved a victory not only for myself, but for women in general and indeed, a victory over their worst enemy, that is to say, over conventional morality and conservative concepts of marriage. ... What is of a wholly special significance here is that a woman, like myself, who has settled scores with the double standard and who has never concealed it, was accepted into a caste which to this very day staunchly upholds tradition and pseudo-morality. Thus the example of my life can also serve to dispel the old goblin of the double standard also from the lives of other women. And this is a most crucial point of my own existence, which has a certain social-psychological worth and contributes to the liberation struggle of working women."

"I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings. After all I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love with its many disappointments, with its tragedies and eternal demands for perfect happiness still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy, fruitless and, in the final analysis, utterly worthless. We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labor power which was dissipated in barren emotional experiences. It is certainly true that we, myself as well as many other activists, and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal ...work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur."

"I wanted to be free. I wanted to express desires on my own, to shape my own little life."

"Already as a small child I criticized the injustice of adults and I experienced as a blatant contradiction the fact that everything was offered to me whereas so much was denied to the other children. My criticism sharpened as the years went by and the feeling of revolt against the many proofs of love around me grew apace."

"I revolted against this marriage of convenience, this marriage for money and wanted to marry only for love, out of a great passion."

"I stood close to the materialist conception of history, since in early womanhood I had inclined towards the realistic school."

"I could not lead a happy, peaceful life when the working population was so terribly enslaved."

"Not a single one of the men who were close to me has ever had a direction-giving influence on my inclinations, strivings, or my world-view. On the contrary, most of the time I was the guiding spirit. I acquired my view of life, my from life itself, and in uninterrupted study from books."

"My Marxist outlook pointed out to me with an illuminating clarity that women's liberation could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system."

"The vehement struggle between the two factions of the broke out anew: the on the one side, the on the other. In 1908 I belonged to the Menshevik faction, having been forced thereto by the hostile position taken by the Bolsheviks towards the Duma, a pseudo-Parliament called by the in order to Pacify the rebellious spirits of the age. Although with the Mensheviks I espoused the point of view that even a pseudo-Parliament should be utilized as a tribute for our Party and that the elections for the Duma must be used as an assembling point for the working class. But I did not side with the Mensheviks on the question of coordinating the forces of the workers with the Liberals in order to accelerate the overthrow of absolutism. On this point I was, in fact, very left-radical and was even branded as a "" by my Party comrades. Given my attitude towards the Duma it logically followed that I considered it useless to exploit the first bourgeois women's congress in the interest of our Party. Nevertheless I worked with might and main to assure that our women workers, who were to participate in the Congress, emerged as an independent and distinct group. I managed to carry out this plan but not without opposition. My Party comrades accused me and those women-comrades who shared my views of being "feminists" and of placing too much emphasis on matters of concern to women only. At the time there was still no comprehension at all of the extraordinarily important role in the struggle devolving upon professional women. Nevertheless our will prevailed."

"It must be admitted that, although I possessed a certain degree of ambition, like every other active human being, I was never animated by the desire to obtain "a post." For me "what I am" was always of less importance than "what I can," that is to say, what I was in a position to accomplish. In this way I, too, had my ambition and it was especially noticeable there where I stood with my whole heart and soul in the struggle, where the issue was the abolition of the slavery of working women."

"The question rises whether in the middle of all these manifold, exciting labors and Party-assignments I could still find rime for intimate experiences, for the pangs and joys of love. Unfortunately, yes! I say unfortunately because ordinarily these experiences entailed all too many cares, disappointments, and pain, and because all too many energies were pointlessly consumed through them. Yet the longing to be understood by a man down to the deepest, most secret recesses of one's soul, to be recognized by him as a striving human being, repeatedly decided matters. And repeatedly disappointment ensued all too swiftly, since the friend saw in me only the feminine element which he tried to mold into a willing sounding board to his own ego. So repeatedly the moment inevitably arrived in which I had to shake off the chains of community with an aching heart but with a sovereign, uninfluenced will. Then I was again alone. But the greater the demands life made upon me, the more the responsible work waiting to be tackled, the greater grew the longing to be enveloped by love, warmth, understanding. All the easier, consequently, began the old story of disappointment in love, the old story of in ".""

"To me the war was an abomination, a madness, a crime, and from the first moment onwards–more out of impulse than reflection–I inwardly rejected it and could never reconcile myself with it up to this very moment."

"Such is life's irony."

"Looking back one perceives only a massive operation, struggle, and action. In reality there were no heroes or leaders. It was the people, the working people, in soldiers' uniform or in civilian attire, who controlled the situation and who recorded its will indelibly in the history of the country and mankind. It was a sultry summer, a crucial summer of the revolutionary flood-tide in 1917!"

"The issue was to wage a struggle against the war, against coalescence with the liberal bourgeoisie, and for the power of the , the Soviets."

"Then came the great days of the . became historic. The sleepless nights, the permanent sessions. And, finally, the stirring declarations. "The Soviets take power!" "The Soviets address an appeal to the peoples of the world to put an end to the war." "The land is socialized and belongs to the peasants!""

"When one recalls the first months of the Workers' Government, months which were so rich in magnificent illusions, plans, ardent initiatives to improve life, to organize the world anew, months of the real romanticism of the Revolution, one would in fact like to write about all else save about one's self."

"I never gave a thought to any kind of danger, being all too engrossed in matters of an utterly different character."

"The Revolution was in full swing. The struggle was becoming increasingly irreconcilable and bloodier, much of what was happening did not fit in with my outlook. But after all there was still the unfinished task, women's liberation. Women, of course, had received all rights but in practice, of course, they still lived under the old yoke: without authority in family life, enslaved by a thousand menial household chores, bearing the whole burden of maternity, even the material cares, because many women now found life alone as a result of the war and other circumstances."

"In the autumn of 1916 when I devoted all my energies to drawing up systematic guidelines for the liberation of working women in all areas, I found a valuable support in the first President of the Soviets, Sverdlov, now dead. Thus the first Congress of Women Workers and Women Peasants could be called as early as November of 1918; some 1147 delegates were present. Thus the foundation was laid for methodical work in the whole country for the liberation of the women of the working and the peasant classes. A flood of new work was waiting for me. The question now was one of drawing women into the people's kitchens and of educating them to devote their energies to children's homes and day-care centers, the school system, household reforms, and still many other pressing matters. The main thrust of all this activity was to implement, in fact, equal rights for women as a labor unit in the national economy and as a citizen in the political sphere and, of course, with the special proviso: maternity was to be appraised as a social function and therefore protected and provided for by the State."

"In all the social relations which I had during the three years of my work in Norway, I never once experienced the least trace of aversion or mistrust against woman's . To be sure, the healthy, democratic spirit of the greatly contributed to this. Thus the fact is to be confirmed that my work as official Russian representative in Norway was never, and in no wise, made difficult for the reason that I belonged "to the weaker sex.""

"The work began with great zeal and the most roseate hopes. A splendid summer and an eventful winter marked the year of 1923! The newly resumed trade relations were in full swing: Russian corn and Norwegian herring and fish, Russian wood products and Norwegian paper and cellulose."

"My life was as crammed with strenuous work and highly interesting experiences alike."

"If I have attained something in this world, it was not my personal qualities that originally brought this about. Rather my achievements are only a symbol of the fact that woman, after all, is already on the march to general recognition. It is the drawing of millions of women into productive work, which was swiftly effected especially during the war and which thrust into the realm of possibility the fact that a woman could be advanced to the highest political and diplomatic positions. Nevertheless it is obvious that only a country of the future, such as the Soviet Union, can dare to confront woman without any prejudice, to appraise her only from the standpoint of her skills and talents, and, accordingly, to entrust her with responsible tasks. Only the fresh revolutionary storms were strong enough to sweep away hoary prejudices against woman and only the productive-working people is able to effect the complete equalization and liberation of woman by building a new society."

"I stand on the threshold of new missions and life is making new demands upon me. No matter what further tasks I shall be carrying out, it is perfectly clear to me that the complete liberation of the working woman and the creation of the foundation of a new sexual morality will always remain the highest aim of my activity, and of my life."

"Within the Russian Party itself, the first organized opposition to the policies of both Lenin and Trotsky was led by a woman-Alexandra Kollontai. Alexandra was not an Old Bolshevik, but she had joined the Bolshevik Party even before Trotsky had done so and much earlier than I. During these first few years of the Revolution she was a frequent source of both personal and political annoyance to the Party leaders. On more than one occasion the Central Committee had wanted me to substitute for her in the leadership of the women's movement, thus facilitating the campaign against her and isolating her from the women of the masses. Fortunately, I understood this intrigue and refused these offers, emphasizing that no one could do this work so well as she, and trying to augment her prestige and create sympathy for her whenever possible. By the Ninth Congress of the Russian Party, the last vestiges of trade-union autonomy and workers' control in industry was swept away to be replaced by the control of the political had become the leader of the "Workers' Opposition," a protest missars over the trade unions and the workers' soviets. Kollantai movement against the bureaucratic suffocation of the labour unions and the democratic rights of the workers. As there was no possibility, even at that time, of publicly criticizing the Central Committee or of placing an unofficial opinion before the Party rank and file, she was courageous enough to have a pamphlet secretly printed for distribution to the delegates at the Party Convention. I have never seen Lenin so angry as when one of these pamphlets was handed to him at the Convention-in spite of the fact that "opposition" within the Party itself was still supposed to be legitimate. Taking the platform, he denounced Kollontai as the Party's worst enemy, a menace to its unity. He went so far in his attack as to make allusions to certain episodes in Kollontai's intimate life that had nothing whatever to do with the issue. It was the kind of polemic which did no credit to Lenin, and it was on this occasion that I realized the lengths to which Lenin would go in the pursuit of his strategic aims, his opposition to a party opponent. I admired Kollontai for the calm and self-control with which she answered Lenin's attack. Among the examples she quoted of the methods which were used by the Central Committee against Party "rebels" was the attempt of the "Central Committee to send Angelica Balabanoff to Turkestan to eat peaches." Like many other rebellious members of the Party, she was sent away soon after on a diplomatic mission. For old revolutionists like Kollontai it was a punishment to be separated from the field of revolutionary activity, but after years in Norway, Mexico, and Sweden as Soviet ambassador, she seemed to become reconciled to her position and to fall completely into line."

"Kollontai was never a brilliant Marxist scholar or an innovative theoretician as was her friend Rosa Luxemburg, for example. She "discovered" Marx in a copy of Communist Manifesto which she picked up in a bookstore in Germany during the cooling off period forced on her by her parents. It quickly replaced her populism, which had been shallow and emotional, and seemed to pull her previous ideas together in an intellectually satisfying form-a common experience for many Marxist converts."

"Alexandra Kollontay and Angelica Balabanoff were within easy reach, as they were living in the National. I sought out the former first. Mme Kollontay looked remarkably young and radiant, considering her fifty years and the severe operation she had recently undergone. A tall and stately woman, every inch the grande dame rather than the fiery revolutionist. Her attire and suite of two rooms bespoke good taste, the roses on her desk rather startling in the Russian greyness. They were the first I had seen since our deportation. [...] She leaned back in her arm-chair and I began speaking of the harrowing things that had come to my knowledge. She listened attentively without interrupting me, but there was not the slightest indication in her cold, handsome face of any perturbation on account of my recital. "We do have some dull grey spots in our vivid revolutionary picture," she said when I had concluded. "They are un-avoidable in a country so backward, with a people so dark and a social experiment of such magnitude, opposed by the entire world as it is. They will disappear when we have liquidated our military fronts and when we shall have raised the mental level of our masses." I could help in that, she continued. I could work among the women; they were ignorant of the simplest principles of life, physical and otherwise, ignorant of their own functions as mothers and citizens. I had done such fine work of that kind in America, and she could assure me of a much more fertile field in Russia. "Why not join me and stop your brooding over a few dull grey spots?" she said in conclusion; "they are nothing more, dear comrade, really nothing more." People raided, imprisoned, and shot for their ideas! The old and the young held as hostages, every protest gagged, iniquity and favouritism rampant, the best human values betrayed, the very spirit of revolution daily crucified-were all these nothing but "grey, dull spots," I wondered! I felt chilled to the marrow of my bones."

"No American socialist-feminist successfully integrated the anarchist-feminist analysis of domestic oppression into a socialist framework...Nevertheless, a socialist framework existed, in the work of Aleksandra Kollontai. Kollontai, a Russian Marxist revolutionary who participated in the birth of the Bolshevik state, wrote her most extensive analysis of the Woman Question while in exile in Western Europe in the years immediately preceding World War I." Following Bebel and Engels, Kollontai argued that the first requisite for women's emancipation was productive work outside the confines of the domestic circle. However, participation in the work force would not free women unless there were also changes in the industrial system. Ultimately, of course, the workers must overthrow capitalism, Kollontai declared. But, more immediately, socialists should work for shorter hours, less dangerous working conditions, paid maternity leaves, nursery facilities in all factories, and scheduled breaks from work so that mothers could breast feed their babies. Not all socialists agreed with Kollontai on the above issues. Most men and some women refused to countenance the urging of special reforms for women because they believed it undermined the solidarity of the proletariat. But Kollontai further extended her analysis of female oppression to include an attack on the emotional dependence of women upon men."

"Barbara Clements has shown that for Kollontai "woman's inferiority was imbedded in the pattern of erotic love, the most private of human relationships." Socialism for her, therefore, was more than the overthrow of capitalism as an economic system. It promised the creation of a new order in which men and women could live together and love in harmony and in community. Clements has demonstrated Kollontai's unique place within Marxism: "Other contemporaries, most eloquently Virginia Woolf but also feminists such as the Pankhursts, knew the price of female emancipation, but of the Marxists, only Kollontai gave it a place within the ideology. Into a socioeconomic theory that valued rationality as the road to social liberation, Kollontai introduced an emotional understanding of woman alone in an isolating world." Kollontai's emphasis on psychological and emotional liberation was remarkably similar to American anarchist-feminism, but she differed in her insistence on integrating these issues into an uncompromising materialist analysis. She believed that "solitude and women's struggle for independence [were] economically determined and therefore ... soluble. She remained resolutely an ideologue and an optimist.""

"Kollontai's analysis in the pre-World War years did not find its way into the work of American socialist-feminists, and it is not clear that they would have accepted her views had they been exposed to them. Nevertheless, her integration of the most important aspects of anarchist-feminism into socialist ideology offered a tantalizing possibility for the creation of a truly feminist radicalism. That the promise remains to be fulfilled does not detract from her accomplishment."

"Throughout the history of the socialist movement there has, therefore, been a strand of feminist critique from within. Many feminists shared in the vision of a just society, but criticised the ways in which communist parties sought to bring it about. Amongst the Bolsheviks, Inessa Armand and Alexandra Kollontai were early critics of their party's policies and practice, and they, along with anarchist feminists such as Emma Goldman, laid some of the early groundwork in identifying socialism's failures."

"It was a great privilege to work so closely with these wonderful women of our movement...I was very much impressed too with the brilliant and handsome Alexandra Kollontai, who had been active in the woman's movement even in pre-revolutionary days. She had been for a time People's Commissar of Social Welfare. When I first met her, she was one of the leaders of the Workers' Opposition, taking the line that the interests of the trade unions were opposed to those of the Soviet state and the Party. Lenin, to whom she was deeply devoted, convinced her of the fallacy of her position, and she abandoned her oppositionist stand, becoming a loyal supporter of the Party's position. She became Minister Plenipotentiary to Norway, the first woman ambassador in the world, was for a time ambassador to Mexico and is today Soviet Ambassador to Sweden."

"The rain starts with a single drop."

"Imagine your son becomes your guardian, no matter my capabilities as a woman, I am still enslaved to somebody else. Freedom for me is to live with dignity, and if my dignity and freedom is controlled by a man, I will never be free."

"While people are celebrating on Sunday we shouldn't forget the people who fought for lifting this ban are in jail."

"I am so happy I want to be there. I know Saudi Arabia will never be the same again, women will have easy access to transportation and that means they will be more part of the workforce."

"Women driving is just the first step - we have a long way to go."

"Disability is not a hindrance to reach the sky"

"The world is equally ours cease all you can get from it"

"Treat us the way you wish to be treated"

"What does it mean when people say I cannot walk by myself, I cannot travel by myself? I have a mouth to talk, I have a brain to think, I can walk, and I have a cane to find my way around. Then why can I not travel by myself? I was like a bird in a cage, not allowed to come out without an escort. But now my life has been transformed."

"Where were all these blind people? Why didn’t we see them walking on our roads? I decided I must be the one to make a difference."

"I envision a society without any physical or psychological barriers towards the blind – a barrier-free environment where the blind can walk freely, can travel, can work, think for themselves, and live proud and dignified lives like other citizens. Society thinks that we can only sing sweet songs, only become teachers and telephone operators in the bank. But we can do more. We can dance, we can fire juggle, we can do martial arts, we can become managers and directors of companies. But society is constantly interpreting what we can do and what we can’t. This has to change very soon."

"why don’t we root the positive in each and everyone’s life instead of searching the negatives in them”? Why don’t we love and accept others with their strengths and weakness?Why don’t we break the barriers and traditions that are followed blindly, which doesn’t help the community in which we are living? Why don’t we smile and acknowledge others at least for a second, which can cause a tremendous change in others lives?"

"I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because I can think and fully practice my religion (like men). Also, I’m in debt to my daughter to offer her an honorable life."

"I will win. Not immediately, but definitely."

"Lately, I appeared in some foreign media channels, which resulted in more attacks against me, and the number of threats of murder or physical harm against me have increased due to the creation of ugly hashtags by instigators, for the purpose of inciting and mobilizing followers against me; this does not represent a tolerant society at all. In these interviews, I spoke about my experience and what I went through personally, and I always ended what I said with my optimism towards the future of the Kingdom and its youth, but - unfortunately - this part was usually omitted during the editing stages of said interviews. What the majority does not know is that, for the past 4 years, I have refused to appear in interviews with foreign media channels, because I knew of the threat that they pose to individuals and for fear of being used as a media tool wrongfully, as well as the tendency of some reporters to paint an ugly picture of Saudi Arabia by exploiting and cutting out parts of what is being said by its citizens - especially those who were part of the Kingdom's scholarship program - without any attempt to show the full picture in a fair and professional manner."

"Respective authorities would not allow in those whom they know will slander the Kingdom and directly insult its citizens."

"I remain very optimistic about a bright future for my country and its citizens."

"We have to all realise that criticising some phenomena in our home country does not equate to hating it, wishing evil upon it nor is it an attempt to shake its balance, it's the total opposite. Any Saudi citizen might be upset by some incidents that occur in the Kingdom, but that is only a direct sign of one's interest in the betterment of one's own country and one's hope to see Saudi Arabia as a global leader."

"Throughout the past few years, every time I committed an action or was subjected to a series of attacks, I had never felt the need to justify myself, this all changed today; today I felt the importance of clarifying many things due to the harsh and unfair criticism I am facing this time; criticism that has reached the point of questioning my loyalty to my country, which is completely unacceptable. Our home country is big enough not to impose one nature on all spectrums of its society."

"I sincerely pray for my country and for all of its citizens, even those who have made much effort to harass my family and I."

"I am, in my own homeland, convicted and imprisoned for the crime of being a human rights defender, a feminist and an opponent of the death penalty. [But] not only have my imprisonment and my recent 16-year sentence not made me feel any regret, they have actually strengthened my convictions and commitment to defending human rights more than ever before."

"I am a 44-year-old woman condemned to 22 years in prison by the Islamic Republic of Iran and I know very well that this is not the end of the story, I have no doubt that those who provided the ink for penning such rulings and those who used it to write them, as well as the noble people of my country, all know I have committed no crime or sin to deserve such a harsh punishment. I have faith in the path I have chosen, the actions I have taken, as well as my beliefs. I am determined to make human rights a reality [in Iran] and have no regrets. If those who claim to be spreading justice are firm on their judgment against me, I am also firm on my faith and beliefs. I will not waiver under tyrannical punishments that will limit my freedom to the four walls of the prison cell. I will endure this incarceration, but I will never accept it as lawful, human or moral, and I will always speak out against this injustice."

"Our intent for this gathering was to protest some of the plans by members of the Parliament which are targeting women’s bodies and psyche. Plans such as the ‘Plan on Protection of Promoters of Virtue and Preventers of Vice’ and the ‘Plan to Protect Chastity and Hijab’ have issues and vocabulary that may be abused in the Iranian society and turned into excuses for violence [against women]."

"They are only deceitful words that make a mockery of justice when a judicial system detains, convicts and punishes people according to the biased and malicious opinions of security-military agencies and denies prisoners their legal rights."

"Killing, imprisoning or denying the rights of a human being is not injustice against one person; it enchains and kills a whole society."

"The execution of people like Navid Afkari and Ruhollah Zam in the past year, have been the most ambiguous executions in Iran. Issuing the death penalty for Ahmadreza Djalali is one of the most erroneous sentences and the reasons for the issuance of these death sentences need to be carefully examined. These people have been sentenced to death after being held in solitary confinement and subjected to horrific psychological and mental torture, that is why I do not consider the judicial process to be fair or just; I see keeping defendants in solitary confinement, forcing them to make untrue and false confessions that are used as the key evidence in issuing these sentences. That’s why I am particularly worried about the recent arrests in Sistan and Baluchistan and Kurdistan, and I hope that anti-death penalty organisations will pay special attention to the detainees because I fear that we will be facing another wave of executions over the coming year."

"I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and the tyranny suffered by our universities, intellectuals, and the media. Like many others in our universities, I felt compelled to join the struggle for freedom. What we experience is a decades-old tyranny, that cannot tolerate freedom of speech and thought. In the name of religion, it restricts and punishes science, intellect, and even love. It labels as a threat to national security and toxic to society whatever is not compatible with its political and economic interests. It considers punishing unwelcome ideas as a positive thing. It does not tolerate differences of opinion; it responds to logic not by logic, discussion or dialog, but by suppression. By tyranny I mean a ruling power that tries to make only one voice—the voice of a ruling minority in Iran—dominant, with no regard for pluralism in the society. By tyranny I mean a judiciary that disregards even the Islamic Republic’s own constitution, and sentences intellectuals, writers, journalists, and political and to long , without due process and trial in a court of law. ... By tyranny I mean power-holders who believe they stand above the law and who disregard justice and the urgent demands of the human conscience."

"As a civil activist, I am one of the thousands of the victims of such horrible tortures. I have come to this conclusion: the aim of solitary confinement is brain-washing, so that prisoners, deprived of normal living conditions, lose their unique human characteristics, their train of thought and ideas, and their physical and psychological health."

"Tyranny does not impose itself only in the . This tyranny uses every possible leverage at the disposal of the state to institutionalize discrimination on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and ideological orientation, particularly against women. By sustaining patriarchal dominance, drafting and enforcing misogynistic laws, and even by fabricating a false culture in contradiction with the norms of the society, it deprives women of their human and civil rights and seeks to prevent them from . Therefore, when a woman like me decides to break their dictated norms, she must suffer prison and separation from her children, as an intimidating lesson for other women."

"Contemplating such questions as the dialectical relations between being and becoming has inspired and strengthened my beliefs. You are not hearing here some random ideas of a passionate student or a distressed prisoner, but reflections rooted in the experience of a woman physicist who happens to have also advocated for equal rights and human rights, and who as a result was subjected to threats, deprivation, arrests, continuous prosecutions, and finally sentenced to a total of 23 years of imprisonment, 16 years of which has to be served based on the ruling laws in Iran. The harsh treatment and excessive sentence to which I have been subjected were not due to any underground violent or terrorist activity on my part, but– as admitted by the judges of this very system–because of my insistence on the rights of civil society and of human rights. My case, then, clearly portrays the unjust, brutal and illegal practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

"Without universities independent of government control, the natural process of acquiring knowledge and developing thought will be thwarted, if not rendered impossible."

"I am not hopeless nor have I lost my motivation. We cannot stop trying. I still hope and deeply believe that the tireless efforts of our civil society activists will eventually bear fruit. I am awaiting the moment I can rejoin my colleagues in these activities once I am released. The path to democracy in Iran lies not through violence, war, or military action by a foreign government, but through organizing and strengthening civil society institutions. The government knows this only too well. It is fearful of non-governmental civil society organizations precisely because of its undemocratic nature."

"As a human rights defender, like millions of Iranians, I hate the death penalty; I despise discrimination and injustice against women; I protest against the imprisonment and torture of political and civil rights activists in solitary confinement; and I will not be silent in the face of human rights violations. In order to institutionalize human rights and achieve peace between the people and the state, I shall endure my deprivation of freedom and rights, even though separation from my children is nothing less than death for me. I am a woman and a mother, and with all my and maternal sensibilities, I seek a world free from violence and injustice, even if I have suffered injustice and violence tens of times."

"Thoughts and dreams don’t die. Belief in freedom and justice does not perish with imprisonment, torture or even death and tyranny do not prevail over freedom, even when they rely on the power of the state. Sitting here in the prison, I am deeply humbled by the honor you have bestowed on me and I will continue my efforts until we achieve peace, tolerance for a plurality of views, and human rights."

"I am so pleased for her. It makes me cry. She did so much for all of us in Evin. Narges is an inspiration and a pillar to the women in the female ward in Evin for her fearless fight against violation of women’s rights, use of solitary confinement and execution in the judicial system in Iran. This award belongs to every single Iranian woman who, one way or another, has been and remain to be a victim of injustice in Iran."

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023 to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all. Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. … In awarding her this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour her courageous fight for human rights, freedom, and democracy in Iran. This year’s Peace Prize also recognises the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against the theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women. Only by embracing equal rights for all can the world achieve the fraternity between nations that Alfred Nobel sought to promote. The award to Narges Mohammadi follows a long tradition in which the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Peace Prize to those working to advance social justice, human rights, and democracy. These are important preconditions for lasting peace."

"Trump is an unreflective beneficiary of every sort of white privilege on offer, from his inherited fortune to his mass-media celebrity to his ability to lie with utter impunity about his career, his finances, and his easily documented record of public statements. If Barack Obama had committed but one of the transgressions Trump reveled in during his 2016 presidential run—deriding John McCain's war record, to take a comparatively minor instance—he would have suffered a torrent of righteous white moralizing that would have been unprecedented even in a country renowned for its righteous white moralizing. And if he'd been caught on tape bragging about a celebrity-enabled history of sexual assault—well, suffice it to say that it would have been a high-tech lynching on a scale that Clarence Thomas could scarcely begin to imagine."

"After examining the doctrinal manifestations of this single-axis framework, I will discuss how it contributes to the of in feminist theory and in politics. I argue that Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. These problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated. Thus, for feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse to embrace the experiences and concerns of Black women, the entire framework that has been used as a basis for translating “women’s experience” or “the Black experience” into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast."

"The refusal to allow a multiply-disadvantaged class to represent others who may be singularly-disadvantaged defeats efforts to restructure the distribution of opportunity and limits remedial relief to minor adjustments within an established hierarchy. Consequently, “bottom-up” approaches, those which combine all discriminatees in order to challenge an entire employment system, are foreclosed by the limited view of the wrong and the narrow scope of the available remedy. If such “bottom-up” intersectional representation were routinely permitted, employees might accept the possibility that there is more to gain by collectively challenging the hierarchy rather than by each discriminatee individually seeking to protect her source of privilege within the hierarchy. But as long as doctrine proceeds from the premise that employment systems need only minor adjustments, opportunities for advancement by disadvantaged employees will be limited. Relatively privileged employ- ees probably are better off guarding their advantage while jockeying against others to gain more. As a result, Black women — the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination — are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves."

"Black women can experience discrimination in any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional. ... I am suggesting that Black women can experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from those experienced by white women and Black men. Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-discrimination — the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women — not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women. Black women’s experiences are much broader than the general categories that discrimination discourse provides. Yet the continued insistence that Black women’s demands and needs be filtered."

"Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category."

"If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community’s needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. In order to include Black women, both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes (for example, the oppression of Blacks is significant when based on race, of women when based on gender). The praxis of both should be centered on the life chances and life situations of people who should be cared about without regard to the source of their difficulties."

"It is not necessary to believe that a political consensus to focus on the lives of the most disadvantaged will happen tomorrow in order to recenter discrimination discourse at the intersection. It is enough, for now, that such an effort would encourage us to look beneath the prevailing conceptions of discrimination and to challenge the complacency that accompanies belief in the effectiveness of this framework. By so doing, we may develop language which is critical of the dominant view and which provides some basis for unifying activity. The goal of this activity should be to facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups for whom it can be said: “When they enter, we all enter.”"

"Critical legal studies scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989 to describe how different power structures interact in the lives of minorities, especially black women, causing "compound and overlapping" discrimination. For Crenshaw, a key idea was that each group needed to go beyond critique to consistently explain its own experiences and create its own theories, "so it's incorporated within feminism and within anti-racism." The term immediately gained a toehold in the field of feminist and critical studies, but for the most part, Jewish women's position was excluded from consideration in relation to the interlocking issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality that framed this discourse."

"As Kimberlé Crenshaw has emphasized, women need to "tell their stories, to document, explain, and theorize about the interlocking themes, meanings, and oppressions of their lives, restoring what has been invisible and erased so as to articulate "what difference the difference makes.""

"Aymar Jean Christian of Northwestern University historically contextualizes and updates the notion of intersectional storytelling in his recent book Race and Media: Critical Approaches. “Most creators are ‘intersectional,’ meaning they identify with multiple communities marginalized by their race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, disability, or citizenship status,” he writes. He argues that the framework of intersectionality was developed throughout the 20th century by women writers of color like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Those early intersectional writers sought to describe “the interlocking nature of oppression and the specificity of being both Black and woman (and often queer).”"

"Kim Crenshaw's work has helped us to center on the burdens placed on people based on their social locations, which create new suffering."

"When it comes to climate action, it's abundantly clear that we will not build the power necessary to win unless we embed justice-particularly racial but also gender and economic justice-at the center of our low-carbon policies. Intersectionality, the term coined by black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is the only path forward. We cannot play "my crisis is more urgent than your crisis"-war trumps climate; climate trumps class; class trumps gender; gender trumps race."

"The shift that's occurred this time around "wasn't by happenstance," Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an activist and a writer, told me, nor is it only the product of video evidence. "It has been the work of generations of Black activists, Black thinkers, and Black scholars"-people like Angela Davis, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Michelle Alexander, and others-"that has gotten us here. Six years ago, people were not using the phrase 'systemic racism' beyond activist circles and academic circles. And now we are in a place where it is readily on people's lips, where folks from CEOs to grandmothers up the street are talking about it, reading about it, researching on it, listening to conversations about it.""

"To Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the Combahee River Collective, and Audre Lorde for your lessons on intersectionality and the beauty of Black girl magic. This book would not be possible without you."

"The most powerful thing young students with neither money nor power can do, is to do activism and use journalists and their cameras. When people learn about the problems and discuss them, things start to change."

"The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. [...] We live in a patriarchal system where the is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality."

"Feminists often tried to be men: they cut their hair, did not use makeup, walked like men, hid their breasts, used men's clothing... they became men and we thought that was a dangerous path for feminism. [...] We are not ashamed of our bodies. We are proud that we are women, that we are different from men. This is the greatest thing we have achieved with Femen, we have put the woman in the centre of feminism."

"It was great to come so close to Putin and say 'fuck you' straight to his face, almost two years before other Ukrainians understood what he was doing to the country."

"I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. [...] I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail."

"They can kill you in one second, you understand that you are a very very small person. But in the same time one thinks: you are a small person that can make such a big point that even Russia will send their after you!"

"The people should always control the politicians' decisions, but after the they relaxed and believed the president would change things. Because of wrongful decisions of Poroshenko and Putin, yes both of them, we now have a crisis, and a war that nobody believed could become so big and difficult to handle."

"Going into this system means you cannot be against it. It's good to keep a non-governmental free organisation without money from the government, and without having to play the political games. Just to be free and to have the possibility to discuss and control each decision of the from the streets... It's the best and most powerful place to be."

"Femen is the feminist, the girl with the Ukrainian sign, the flowers in the hair, the naked boobs with painted slogans, and in comfortable boots to run and make action in front of the enemy on the streets."

"I'm very happy about what we did, what we do, and what we will do. That's why I again say to women from all over the world, and especially from Luxembourg: Let's be together, and let's fight together!"

"While so much is said of the inferior intellect of woman, it is by a strange absurdity conceded that very many eminent men owe their station in life to their mothers."

"Trammeled as women have been, by might and custom, there are still many shining examples, which serve as beacon lights of what may be attained by genius, labor, energy, and perseverance combined."

"Although so much is said against the unfitness of woman for public life, it can be seen, from Semiramis to Victoria, that she has a peculiar fitness for governing. In poetry, Sappho was honored by the title of the tenth Muse. Helena Lucretio Corano, a Venetian lady, who lived in the seventeenth century, was a woman of such rare scientific attainments, that the most illustrious persons, in passing through Venice, were more anxious to see her than all the curiosities of the city. She devoted herself, with intense perseverance, to literary pursuits; was made a Doctor, and received the title of Unalterable; and, with all, combined an unostentatious humility. She was but thirty-eight, when she died. Mary Cunitz, a native of Silesia, was one of the greatest geniuses of the sixteenth century. She understood many languages[,] was skilled in history, poetry, painting, music, and medicine; and these were but amusements. She particularly applied herself to Mathematics, and especially to Astronomy. She was ranked as one of the most able astronomers of her time, and formed astronomical tables, that acquired for her a great reputation. Another lady of the seventeenth century, Anne Maria Schureman, succeeded admirably in sculpture, engraving, and music. She was also learned in various languages; but in miniature painting she particularly excelled. Constantia Grierson, an Irish girl, of poor parentage, was celebrated for her literary attainments, although she died at the early age of twenty-seven. With the learning, energy, and perseverance of Lady Jane Grey, Mary, and Elizabeth, all are familiar. Mrs. Montague is spoken of by Cowper, as standing at the head of all that is called learned, and, that every critic veiled his bonnet at her superior judgment. Joannie Baillie has been termed the female Shakspeare [sic]. Miss Caroline Herschell shares the fame of her brother, as an astronomer, having herself discovered planets and comets. The greatest triumphs of the present age, in the drama, music, and literature, have been achieved by females, among whom may be mentioned Miss Cushman, Jenny Lind, Miss Chesebro, Miss Carey, Miss Fennimore Cooper, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. Stowe, and Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Mrs. Somerville’s renown has long been spread over both hemispheres, as one of the first astronomers of the present age. With this, she combines various literary acquirements; and to those who think them incompatible with feminine duties, it can be shown that she discharged, in an eminent degree, every social and family requirement."

"To those who say women do not desire their rights, or think they have them already, I would say, converse with any intelligent woman on the subject, and you will not find them indifferent. Woman feels deeply, keenly, her degradation, but is bound by the iron hand of custom which so long has exercised tyrant rule over her. An ignorant woman is virtually in the same condition as the peasant who thinks it right that a king shall rule over him; and to keep him content, he is made to believe it would be blasphemy and treason in him to call in question this right."

"The question is, how can this mental and moral lethargy, which now binds the generality of women, be shaken off? They are educated to a state of entire dependence; taught before marriage, to expect a support from their fathers, and after, from their husbands; to suppress their convictions, if contrary to those of their fathers, brothers and husbands, and to allow others to act for them. This state of listlessness follows as a natural consequence."

"Self-reliance is one of the first lessons to be taught our daughters; they should be educated with our sons, and equally with them taught to look forward to some independent means of support: either to one of the professions, or the business best fitted to exercise their talents. Marriage has been looked to as the acme of hope, by women; and why? Because all lucrative and honorable means of support have been seized by men, and women have been driven to marriage, as a necessity. To what more fertile cause can be attributed the uncongeniality frequently existing between married parties? Women have been instructed in showy accomplishments, while literature has been nearly cast aside, as unnecessary; men have been educated not to expect companionship in their wives. At the proposition of equal education and rights, man starts up and says, if women are admitted as equals, you ruin domestic harmony. If a woman is permitted to think for herself, forsooth, she may disagree in her views with her husband, and family peace may be destroyed. A fig for such reasoning!"

"Were refined, intelligent conversation in the home circle appreciated, club-rooms, secret societies, taverns, and stores, where man’s leisure is generally spent, would be less frequented; for where all are educated, it is a disgrace to be ignorant, and time now wasted, would be spent in improvement."

"Being placed in a position compelling them to act, has caused many persons to discover talents in themselves they were before unaware of possessing. Great emergencies produce great leaders, seemingly fitted by Providence, while it is but the arousing of some energy, hitherto dormant."

"Those who fear woman’s incapacity to cope with the trials of life, should consider what is now actually thrust upon her by existing customs."

"In all governments, it would be the dictate of policy, for the governed to submit to what the governors decree, provided they decree nothing inconsistent with their natural rights; but as soon as any government stretches its powers so far as to destroy the natural rights, to which the members of a community are entitled, these last are justified, by all the laws of God and man, in opposing such a government. We claim, as a natural right, the same privilege of acting as we think best, which is accorded to the other half of mankind – right bestowed upon us by God, when he created man in his own image, after his own likeness, both male and female, and gave them equal dominion"

"Although our country makes great professions in regard to general liberty, yet the right to particular liberty, natural equality, and personal independence, of two great portions of this country, is treated, from custom, with the greatest contempt; and color in the one instance, and sex in the other, are brought as reasons why they should be so derided; and the mere mention of such, natural rights is frowned upon, as tending to promote sedition and anarchy."

"After marriage, the husband and wife are considered as one person in law, which I hold to be false, from the very laws applicable to married parties."

"A woman’s personal property, by marriage becomes absolutely her husband’s, which, at his death, he may give away from her; while at her death she has no such power, or any power, of disposing of his personal property."

"A shame on such laws! a SHAME on such men."

"The present laws are deleterious to the moral sensibilities of both husband and wife. Woman has no inducement to prudence and industry, and she is obliged seemingly to acquiesce in the wishes of her husband, however repugnant to her, as the only means of obtaining, in even a small degree, her own; or she is allowed to follow her own plans and views as a favor, and not from the lack of power to compel her to do otherwise."

"In the present posture of our national affairs, when the instruments of power, although professedly in the hands of the people, are, in reality, lodged in the hands of a moiety, thereby forming an Aristocracy, rather than a Republic – what are we to expect, but that one portion of the nation will be sunk in ignorance and grovelling [sic] submission."

"We are invited to acquire a knowledge of government, not only by many immediate benefits, but by a multitude of future ones; and who can say it will not end in the full maturity of public happiness? Nothing is a stronger proof how natural the love of liberty is to mankind, than the efforts made to attain it. Let wives cast aside the thought that their highest duty consists in gratifying their husbands palates, by some delicacy; or listening with smiling countenance, to what he may please to relate of the day’s occurrences, while placidly darning his stocking, with no higher ambition than to have it well done. I do not, by any means depreciate these necessary employments, in their proper place; but they should not be the chief business of their lives. The duty to please, devolves equally on both parties. Remember your duty to God, and your own sex, as well as to man. Let us make such use of our talent, as to receive the plaudit of our Maker, of well done, good and faithful servant."

"We need not expect the concessions demanded by women will be peaceably granted; there will be a long moral warfare, before the citadel yields; in the meantime, let us take possession of the outposts. The public must be aroused to a full sense of the justice of our claims. Beside the duty of educating our children, so as to make the path of right, easy to their feet, is that of discussion, newspaper articles, petitions: all great reforms are gradual. Fear not any attempt to frown down the revolution already commenced; nothing is a more fertile aid of reform, than an attempt to check it; work on!"

"As early as the sixth century a council at Macon (585) fifty-nine bishops taking part, devoted its time to a discussion of this question, ‘Does woman possess a soul ?’…… Until time of Peter the Great, women were not recognized as human beings in that great division of Christendom known as the Greek church, the census of that empire counting only males, or so many ‘souls’ -no woman named. Traces of this old belief have not been found wanting in our own country within the century. As late as the Woman’s Rights Convention in Philadelphia, 1854, an objector in the audience cried out : ‘Let women first prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it.’"

"The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundred women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of fire for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of those persecutors and which grew in their imagination from a false belief in woman’s extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as to original sin."

"It is computed from historical records that nine millions of persons were put to death for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred years, and this estimate does not include the vast number who were sacrificed in the preceding centuries upon the same accusation. The greater number of this incredible multitude were women."

"Boiling heretics and malefactors alive, commonly in oil but occasionally in water, was practised throughout Europe until a comparatively late period."

"Massachusetts was not the only, colony that treated witchcraft as a crime. Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia possessed similar enactments. Witchcraft was considered and treated as a capital offense by the laws of both Pennsylvania and New York, trials taking place in both colonies not long before the Salem tragedy......... Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York, eight of the thirteen colonies recognized witchcraft as a capital crime."

"While the sale of daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India, a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the smallest present therefor. In mediaeval England the daughter was held as a portion of the father property to be sold to the highest bidder."

"For a long period after the reformation, English women were not permitted to read the Bible, a statute of the Eighth Henry prohibiting ‘women and others of low degree’ from its use."

"An examination of history proves that in Christian Russia as in Christian England the husband could release himself from the marriage bond by killing his wife, over whom under Christian law he had power of life and death. Her children, as to-day in Christian England and America, are not under her control; she is to bear children but not to educate them, for as under Catholic and Protestant Christianity, women are looked upon as a lower order of beings, of an unclean nature."

"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it."

"The church and civilization are antipodal; one means authority, the other freedom; one means conservatism, the other progress; one means the rights of God as interpreted by the priesthood, the other the rights of humanity as interpreted by humanity. Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men."

"The State, agent and slave of the Church, has so long united with it in suppression of woman’s intelligence, has so long preached of power to man alone, that it has created an inherited tendency, an inborn line of thought toward repression."

"The Women's National Liberal Union was a short-lived, self-styled "radical woman's society" that came into existence in 1890 under the direction of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a suffragist and friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Gage believed that "existing woman suffrage societies have ceased to be progressive," since they chose to concentrate narrowly on winning the vote, ignoring other issues that she considered crucial to the achievement of sexual equality. The purpose of the Women's National Liberal Union was to provide a feminist forum to consider the issues of marriage and divorce reform, show sensitivity to the plight of working-class women, and counter the influence of religion on women. (Gage believed that the churches, both Protestant and Catholic, were the primary oppressors of women.)...Unfortunately, the Women's National Liberal Union did not long outlast its first convention; Gage was unable to muster sufficient support from within the mainstream feminist movement...From the mid-seventies onward, organized feminism had become increasingly decorous. Matilda Joslyn Gage, after all, was forced to go outside the organized movement to find a platform for her anticlerical views, and the venerable but always irreverent Elizabeth Cady Stanton found herself out-flanked and outvoted by her more conventional sisters."

"William Blackstone's declaration respecting the civil death of married women haunted many other outstanding leaders in the woman movement of the middle period. Although Matilda Joslyn Gage tried to meet it by a curious display of logic, she regarded it as a statement of the law. "After marriage," she declared in 1852, "the husband and wife are considered as one person in law, which I hold to be false from the very laws applicable to married parties. Were it so, the act of one would be as binding as the act of the other;...were it so, a woman could not legally be a man's inferior. Such a thing would be a veritable impossibility. One-half of a person cannot be made the protection or direction of the other half. Blackstone says 'a woman may indeed be attorney for her husband, for that implies no separation from, but rather a representation of, her lord. And a husband may also bequeath anything to his wife by will; for it cannot take effect till the coverture is determined by his death." After stating at considerable length the reasons showing their unity, the learned commentator proceeds to cut the knot, and show they are not one, but are considered as two persons, one superior, the one inferior, and not only so, but the inferior in the eye of the law as acting from compulsion"...At the Woman's Rights Convention held in Syracuse the following year, 1853, Mrs. Gage recurred to the subject and spoke as if equity and legislation had made no changes in the "disabilities" of married women at common law. She affirmed that "the legal disabilities of women" are numerous; that they are only known to those who bear them; that they "are acknowledged by Kent, Story, and many other legal authorities." Without directing attention to those pages of Kent and Story which set forth at length the equitable principles by which common-law rules could be and often were nullified, Mrs. Gage went on with her oration: "A wife has no management in the joint earnings of herself and her husband; they are entirely under control of the husband, who is obliged to furnish the wife merely the common necessaries of life; all that she receives beyond these is looked upon by the law as a favor, and not held as her right. A mother is denied the custody of her own child; a most barbarous and unjust law, which robs her of the child placed in her care by the great Creator himself. A widow is allowed the use merely of one-third of the real estate left at the husband's death; and when her minor children have grown up she must surrender the personal property, even to the family Bible, and the pictures of her dear children. In view of such laws the women engaged in this movement ask that the wife shall be made heir to the husband to the same extent that he is now her heir...."The present law of divorce is very unjust; the husband, whether the innocent or the guilty party, retaining all the wife's property, has also the control of the children unless by special decree of the court they are assigned to the mother.""

"I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own — to meet with people more unhappy than myself (for I knew there were thousands of such). I did not exaggerate my own trial; I only knew that my heart ached night and day, and that the only solace possible would seem to be to find other hearts which ached night and day, and with more reason than mine. I had no clear idea beyond that, no plan for helping others; my sole wish was to plunge into the heart of some human misery, and to say (as I now knew I could) to afflicted people, "I understand. I, too, have suffered.""

"We read of strong men bowed down with woe, weeping as women weep, turning homewards in the hear-sickness of unavailing search, or with a certainty worse than suspense."

"It is well that we should understand clearly the illegal character of the Acts we oppose. I have been the more deeply impressed with the importance of this aspect of the matter, by reading the almost universal and powerful testimony of our great lawyers and historians to the danger of introducing, in any single instance, a lax, vicious, or unjust principle into our criminal code, and to the moral and social evils which such an introduction necessarily involves. Niebuhr, De Tocqueville, Guizot, Hallam, Lieber, Creasy, Mackintosh, Blackstone, and a host of others, have again and again pointed out that upon the justice and purity of the penal legislation of a country the political wellbeing of that country mainly depends. [...] ...when it comes to a matter of such awful seriousness as that of a woman’s honour, involving loss of character, which character is often, to a poor woman, her sole earthly property, her only possession and capital; involving, moreover, the penalties of personal assault, of a nature inadmissible hitherto in law even in the case of proved outrageous guilt; of imprisonment and of public registration as an infamous person; when it comes to this, I say, it is an awful thing to put the accusation in the power of the executive — that executive being the secret police, paid by the State, for the sole business of detecting and hunting down suspected or unchaste women. Again, the evil is aggravated by the fact that no other witness to the guilt of the woman is required, except the government spy, and that he, by this law, is not required to bring forward any overt act on the part of his prisoner, or one iota of positive proof, but is only required to believe and swear that the woman has a certain purpose or intention."

"Hearing, one day, that a poor young girl of her acquaintance had been enticed to a fashionable house of ill-fame, she ran to the place, entered the house, and claimed the girl. She found there several gentlemen of the Court, whom she rebuked with a severity, the justice of which they confessed by sudden and precipitate flight; she then took the young girl by the hand and led her from the abode of shame."

"We all feel now that the time is come when we must appeal to the judgement of the public, so as to bring the condemnation of public opinion to bear upon these men, seeing that our laws give us no hold whatever upon them, and are not likely to do, so long as our legislators continue to refuse us the small boon we ask — legal protection for the young up to the age of 16."

"Those who have read the Pall Mall Gazette are aware that a "Secret Commission" was formed of persons who had sufficient courage and Christian charity to "descend into hell" for the salvation of the victims of organized vice, and for the exposure and rebuke of the crimes perpetuated in that "Inferno." ... In the course of our terrible researches, we came daily across immoral agents who were offering innocent little girls for sale. We intercepted some such, and in the good purpose and motive of proving the facility of with which such children can be bought for diabolical purposes, we ourselves bought children."

"Mr. Justice Lopes: Why did you refuse information to the police? Butler: I always refuse information to the police. (Laughter) Lopes: That quite answers my question, I admit. (Laughter) I hope if you always refuse information to the police, you do not refuse it to the law. Butler: No, I do not. (Laughter)"

"It is a fact, that numbers even of moral and religious people have permitted themselves to accept and condone in man what is fiercely condemned in woman."

"I was in Ireland during that famine year. As a young girl I had no conception of the full meaning of the misery I saw around me, yet it printed itself upon my brain and memory. I can recollect being awakened in the early morning by a strange sound like the croaking or chattering of many birds. Some of the voices were hoarse and almost extinguished by the faintness of famine; and on looking out of my window I recollect seeing the garden and fields in front of the house completely darkened with a population of men, women, and children squatting, in rags; uncovered skeleton limbs protruding everywhere from their wretched clothing, and clamorous, though faint voices uplifted for food..."

"This one object and work of my life (the promotion of purity) is now sought to be be discredited for the first time by well-known leaders of women's movements. It is openly opposed by Lady Henry Somerset, who has, as you are aware, put forward a scheme for the regulation of male and female irregularity which goes beyond the Contagious Diseases Act formerly in force in England in immorality and indelicacy. [...] There is war now between women and women, and we are coming into searching and sifting times — times in which our personal likings and even strong friendships may have to give way before the winnowing blast which shall separate the wavering from the steadfast in this righteous work."

"I saw the whole intent and purpose of our grand Constitution was to assure to each man, and equally to each woman, the full recognition of individual rights... I used to pass whole nights without sleep, thinking and mourning over the whole question."

"She won enormous support over the years from individual politicians, radicals and medical people, but also became the target of violent hatred. There were several lucrative brothels in Liverpool and those who profited did not take kindly to Butler's interference in their trade. She was once pelted with cow dung by pimps at a rally she was addressing. Another time, a group of men smashed the windows of a hotel where she was staying, trying to get to her and threatening to set it on fire."

"In 1880 Butler turned her attention to child prostitution, and was instrumental in the campaign to raise the age of consent from 12 to 16 to protect girls from sexual abuse."

"If I were black and young, no steamer could revolve its wheels fast enough to convey me to the dark continent. I should go where my color was the correct thing, and leave these pale faces to work out their own destiny."

"A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind. I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from .......... to sixteen years."

"Look about you: the products of labor are on every hand; you could not maintain for a moment a well-ordered life without them; every object in your room has in it, for discerning eyes, the marks of ingenious tools and the pressure of labor’s hands. But is it not the cruelest injustice for the wealthy, whose lies are surrounded and embellished by labor’s work to have a superabundance of the money which represents, the aggregate of labor in ay country, while the laborer is kept so steadily at work that he has no time to acquire the education, and refinements of life that would make him and his family agreeable companions to the rich and cultured. The reason why I am a Socialist comes in just here."

"I would take, not by force, by by the slow process of lawful acquisition, through a better legislation, as the outcome of a wiser ballot in the hands of men and women, the entire plant that we call civilization, all the has been achieved on this continent in the four hundred years since Columbus wended his way hither, and make it the common property of all the people, requiring all to work with their hands to give them the finest physical development, but not to become burdensome in any case, and permitting all to share alike in the advantages of education and refinement. I believe this to be perfectly practical, and, indeed, that any other method is simply a relic of barbarism."

"I believe that competition is doomed. The trust, whose single object is to abolish competition, has proved that we are better without tan with it and the moment corporations control the supply of any product, they combine. What the Socialist desires is that the corporation of humanity should control all production. Beloved comrades, this is the frictionless way; it is the higher way; it eliminates the motives for a selfish life; it enacts into our everyday living thee this of Christ’s gospel. Nothing else will do it; nothing else can bring the glad day of universal brotherhood."

"It's (socialism) is God’s way out of the wilderness and into the promised land. It is the very marrow of Christ’s gospel. It is Christianity applied."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"The feminist compilers were no less present-minded. The most ambitious work from their ranks was published in 1893 by Frances L Willard, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and Mary A. Livermore, a reformer and woman's rights leader…The editors considered the 19th century to be the century of opportunities for women and set out to compile "this rosary of nineteenth century achievement... the self-conscious celebratory tone of the essays and the selection of persons to be included reveal the authors' didactic intent. This volume celebrates women active in religious, welfare and educational work, the kind of women honored in the cultural programs of the women's clubs then springing up in every community in the United States. The omissions are equally telling: there is not one African-American woman listed, and all the famous women to whom any touch of "scandal," such as a divorce, adhered were excluded. Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Frances Kemble, Margaret Fuller did not pass the "respectability" test and were omitted."

"An early example of the now familiar pattern of the white liberal, accused of racism by black friends, grew out of this anti-lynching campaign and involved Frances Willard, the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, whose earlier abolitionist convictions and interracial work were a matter of record. Mrs. Willard was hesitant and equivocal on the issue of lynching and defended the Southern record against accusations made by Ida B. Wells on her English speaking-tour. Severe attacks on her in the women's press and a protracted public controversy helped to move Mrs. Willard to a cautious stand in opposition to lynching. Black women continued to agitate this issue and to confront white women with a moral challenge to their professed Christianity."

"If their own blood relatives discarded, betrayed, forgot and harmed them, then they are our children, our sisters our mothers that we will mourn, we will remember, we will honour their memory and we will not forget!""

"Some anti-fascist protesters, the so-called "Antifa," use pepper spray against the marchers, including me."

"Change is possible, and I know, hope is very difficult to hold on to. But hope in this time, is actually, an act of defiance, it's an act of resistance. I refuse to dehumnaize those people who dehumanize me. Because, otherwise there is really no difference between us and people like them."

"To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves."

"In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less."

"Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex."

"This world taught woman nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public, and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools, and said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility & then called her weak."

"When a just cause reaches its flood-tide, as ours has done in that country, whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power."

"We met a curious dilemma. On the one hand a great many men voted in the negative because women in Great Britain had made too emphatic a demand for the vote. Since they made that demand it is reported that 10,000,000 men have been killed, wounded or are missing through militant action, but all of that is held as naught compared with the burning of a few vacant buildings."

"Evidently the logic that these American men followed was: Since some turbulent women in another land are unfit to vote, no American woman shall vote. There was no reasoning that could change the attitude of those men. On the other hand the great majority of the men who voted against us, as well as the great majority of the members of Legislatures and Congress who oppose this movement, hold that women have given no signal that they want the vote. Between the horns of this amazing dilemma the Federal amendment and State suffrage seem to be caught fast."

"So those of us who want to learn how to obtain the vote have naturally asked ourselves over and over again what kind of a demand can be made. We get nothing by "watchful waiting" and if we are turbulent we are pronounced unfit to vote."

"we may ask what have women done? Again I may say that New York is a fair example because it is the largest of the States in population and has the second city in size in the world and occupies perhaps the most important position in any land in which a suffrage referendum has been taken. Women held during the six months prior to the election in 1915, 10,300 meetings. They printed and circulated 7,500,000 leaflets or three-and-a-half for every voter. These leaflets weighed more than twenty tons. They had 770 treasuries in the State among the different groups doing suffrage work and every bookkeeper except two was a volunteer. Women by the thousands contributed to the funds of that campaign, in one group 12,000 public school teachers. On election day 6,330 women watched at the polls from 5:45 in the morning until after the vote was counted. I was on duty myself from 5:30 until midnight. There were 2,500 campaign officers in the State who gave their time without pay. The publicity features were more numerous and unique than any campaign of men or women had ever had. They culminated in a parade in New York City which was organized without any effort to secure women outside the city to participate in it, yet 20,000 marched through Fifth Avenue to give some idea of the size of their demand for the vote."

"Without getting scientific or psychological or historical about it, it's long been my judgment that women have been at the forefront of social change. When we first got the vote, we used it to clean up the sweat shops, to clean up the horrors of child labor, and so on. Then we got sidetracked. Instead of carrying forth Carrie Chapman Catt's notion that women should organize as a political movement, the movement became nonpartisan and followed the League of Women Voters route."

"However badgered by political winds, the suffrage women in NAWSA were committed to winning a federal amendment. Under the presiding genius of Carrie Chapman Catt, an extraordinary campaign to secure congressional approval of the Nineteenth Amendment and its state-by-state ratification was started in 1913 with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Catt's "winning plan," as it was called, was a precise strategy with specific goals and dates, legislative details on individual men and their voting patterns in Congress and in every state. Catt and NAWSA also launched a drive to build an extensive network of state and local suffrage organizations. Coincident with Wilson's inauguration, thousands of women massed in Washington, D.C., for an impressive march up Pennsylvania Avenue. Although attacked by a mob of white men, the women proceeded undaunted."

"NAWSA now redoubled its efforts for the legislative battles in the respective states where ratification required a three-fourths majority. After the final victory in August 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt summarized the meaning of their labor and the suffrage victory: "It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean before the end was allowed in America. How much of time and patience, how much work, energy and aspiration, how much faith, how much hope, how much despair went into it. It leaves its mark on one, such a struggle. It fills the days and rides the nights. Working, eating, drinking, sleeping it is there. Not all women in all the States of the Union were in the struggle. There were some women in every State of the Union who knew nothing about it. But most women in all the States were at least on the periphery of its effort and interest when they were not in the heart of it. To them all its success became a monumental thing.""

"there was considerable anti-Semitic sentiment among Protestant suffrage leaders...Carrie Chapman Catt on the strange, “un-American” practices and behavior of immigrant Jews in her home state of New York."

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"My feminism is the feminism of Puerto Rican writer Clotilde Betances Jaeger, who, in 1929 responded to the racist comment of Carrie Chapman Catt that Latin American women were not helping to build peace, by stating that while peace was a central principle for Latin American and Caribbean women, it was based on freedom from US imperialism."

"In 1940, at the World's Fair held in New York City, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, addressing a receptive audience, declared that it is woman's main task to stop war. The goal could not be reached immediately, she admitted, but she expressed confidence that women could abolish war, for the reason that they are devoid of the war spirit. More than this, she maintained that "men have made all the wars in history," thus in eight words clearing women of all war guilt. With that innocence it appeared logical that women, historic and present, were inclined to peace by their very make-up and were under no necessity to cleanse their hearts and minds of a propensity to violence. Being pacific by nature and devoid of all war guilt, they could and should lead the way to peace. Though more militant than Mrs. Catt as a leader in the suffrage movement, Alice Paul was no less certain that war sprang from men's nature and that women were under obligation to put a stop to wars."

"The American feminist leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, tried to publicise the persecution of Jewish feminists in 1937. But when Rosa Manus was deported to a death camp by the Nazis in 1942, Catt circulated a letter to friends and acquaintances in the movement claiming that she was the first of us all to suffer and to die for our cause', ignoring her fate as a Jewess entirely."

"Whatever content there is in feminist , it has been put there by the efforts of the middle strata, especially the less well off, to move up socially. To do this, however, they sought merely to expand the existing , and never went so far as to challenge the status quo. Thus, while petty-bourgeois feminism may always have aimed at establishing between the sexes, the consciousness it represented has remained utopian in its desire for and struggle to bring about a partial this it believed could be done without disturbing the foundations on which it rested .. .In this sense, petty-bourgeois feminism is not feminism at all; indeed it has helped to consolidate class society by giving camouflage to its internal contradictions."

"I received an email for a casting call from Aeromexico specifying that they don't want anyone dark-skinned. Tsss."

"Trolls did what they do. All kinds of harassment: death threats, rape threats, everything.But after terrorist attacks from then on, they would post my picture. Whenever anything happens in Europe, they do it.The first time it happened, it was disturbing but now I feel bulletproof. It was something new, something I didn’t know they did. Luckily nobody who knows me thought it was real."

"I broke Mexican internet."

"Every time there is an attack I am sure there will be a few pictures of me around. The last time it happened I knew that a picture was being shared before I knew about the attack. I think there's a few people controlling a lot of accounts. Their attacks are coordinated and sometimes they make sense and you might get a feeling about how they're connected to the political situation in Mexico. Sometimes it's just hate."

"In Mexico, a striking majority of station guardians and policemen are men and they dissuade you from reporting harassment.If you go and tell them, many would tell you "think twice, are you sure that was harassment?", "do you really want to spend half a day at a police station to report it?""

"thanks to @plaqueta [De Anda’s Twitter handle] a lot of women are now aware of Article 23 of the Civic Culture Law"

"I know you do not make the laws but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do."

"Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights."

"The time to assert a right is the time when that right is denied."

"I have been suffering for the last two days on account of [my brother] Henry’s boy [slave] having run away, because he was threatened with a whipping … and yet … I am constantly told that the situation of slaves is very good, much better than that of their owners … No wonder poor John ran away at the threat of a flogging, when he has told me more than once that when Henry last whipped him he was in pain for a week afterwards. I don’t know how the boy must have felt, but I know that the night was one of agony for me; for it was dreadful not only to hear the blows, but the oaths and curses Henry uttered went like daggers to my heart. And this was done too, in the house of one who is regarded as a light in the church.... I was directed to go to Henry and tenderly remonstrate with him ...I said that would be treating him worse than he would treat his horse.He now became excited, and replied that he considered his horse no comparison better than John, and would not treat it so … I felt so much overcome as to be compelled to seat myself or rather to fall into a chair before him, but I don’t think he observed this ..."

"The ground upon which you [abolitionists] stand is holy ground; never—never surrender it. If you surrender it, the hope of the slave is extinguished, and the chains of his servitude will be strengthened a hundred fold … But remember you must be willing to suffer the loss of all things – willing to be the scorn and reproach of professor and profane. You must obey our great master’s injunction: “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that, have nothing more that they can do.”"

"But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright …"

"I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers; Are you willing to enslave your children? You start back with horror and indignation at such a question. But why, if slavery is no wrong to those upon whom it is imposed? Why, if as has often been said, slaves are happier than their masters, free from the cares and perplexities of providing for themselves and their families? Why not place your children in the way of being supported without your having the trouble to provide for them, or they for themselves? Do you not perceive that as soon as this golden rule of action is applied to yourselves that you involuntarily shrink from the test; as soon as your actions are weighed in this balance of the sanctuary that you are found wanting? Try yourselves by another of the Divine precepts, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Can we love a man as we love ourselves if we do, and continue to do unto him, what we would not wish any one to do to us? Look too, at Christ's example, what does he say of himself, "I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." Can you for a moment imagine the meek, and lowly, and compassionate Saviour, a slaveholder? Do you not shudder at this thought as much as at that of his being a warrior? But why, if slavery is not sinful?"

"If a law commands me to sin I will break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly. The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."

"My mind is composed & I cannot but feel astonished at the total change which has passed over me during the last 6 months. Then I delighted in going to meeting 4 & 5 times every week, but now my Master says “be still” & I would rather be at home, for I find that every stream from which I used to drink the refreshing waters of salvation is dry & that I have been led to the fountain itself. Once, Oh how precious were the means of grace to my soul with how much power did sermons come home to my heart, but now I sometimes wish I could close my ears to the preacher’s voice and retire into the closet of my heart & old converse with him who speaks as never man spake. And it is possible I would ask myself tonight, is is possible that today is the last time I expect to visit the Presbyterian Church, the last time I expect to teach my interesting class in Sabbath School and it is right that I should separate myself from a people whom I have loved so tenderly & who have been the helpers of my joy, is it right to give up instructing those dear children whom I have so often carried in the arms of faith & love to a throne of grace."

"I have seen it! I have seen it! I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing. I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influence and its destructiveness to human happiness. I have never seen a happy slave."

"Do you ask, then, "What has the North to do?" I answer, cast out first the spirit of slavery from your own hearts, and then lend your aid to convert the South. Each one present has a work to do, be his or her situation what it may, however limited their means or insignificant their supposed influence. The great men of this country will not do this work; the church will never do it. A desire to please the world, to keep the favor of all parties and of all conditions, makes them dumb on this and every other unpopular subject."

"As a Southerner, I feel that it is my duty to stand up here tonight and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it! I have seen it! I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing: I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influences and its destructiveness to human happiness. It is admitted by some that the slave is not happy under the worst forms of slavery. But I have never seen a happy slave."

"What if the mob should now burst in upon us, break our meeting, and commit violence upon our persons? Would that be anything compared with what the slaves endure? No, no; and we do not remember them "as bound with them," if shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their sake."

"Many persons go to the South for a season, and are hospitably entertained in the parlor and at the table of the slaveholder. They never enter the huts of the slaves; they know nothing of the dark side of the picture, and they return home with praises on their lips of the generous character of those with whom they had tarried. Or if they have witnessed the cruelties of slavery, by remaining silent spectator they have naturally become callous-an insensibility has ensued which prepares them to apologize even for barbarity. Nothing but the corrupting influence of slavery on the hearts of the Northern people can induce them to apologize for it; and much will have been done for the destruction of Southern slavery when we have so reformed the North that no one here will be willing to risk his reputation by advocating or even excusing the holding of men as property."

"How wonderfully constituted is the human mind! How it resists, as long as it can, all efforts to reclaim it from error! I feel that all this disturbance is but an evidence that our efforts are the best that could have been adopted, or else the friends of slavery would not care for what we say and do. The South knows what we do. I am thankful that they are reached by our efforts. Many times have I wept in the land of my birth over the system of slavery. I knew of none who sympathized in my feelings; I was unaware that any efforts were made to deliver the oppressed; no voice in the wilderness was heard calling on the people to repent and do works meet for repentance, and my heart sickened within me. Oh, how should I have rejoiced to know that such efforts as these were being made."

"I fled to the land of Penn; for here, thought I, sympathy for the slave will surely be found. But I found it not. The people were kind and hospitable, but the slave had no place in their thoughts."

"I will lift up my voice like a trumpet, and show this people their transgression, their sins of omission towards the slave, and what they can do towards affecting Southern mind, and overthrowing Southern oppression."

"We may talk of occupying neutral ground, but on this subject, in its present attitude, there is no such thing as neutral ground. He that is not for us is against us"

"If the arm of the North had not caused the Bastille of slavery to totter to its foundation, you would not hear those cries. A few years ago, and the South felt secure, and with a contemptuous sneer asked, "Who are the abolitionists? The abolitionists are nothing?""

"To work as we should in this cause, we must know what slavery is. Let me urge everyone to buy the books which have been written on this subject and read them, and then lend them to your neighbors. Give your money no longer for things which pander to pride and lust, but aid in scattering "the living coals of truth upon the naked heart of this nation"-in circulating appeals to the sympathies of Christians in behalf of the outraged and suffering slave."

"But it is said by some, our "books and papers do not speak the truth." Why, then, do they not contradict what we say? They cannot. Moreover, the South has entreated, nay, commanded us, to be silent; and what greater evidence of the truth of our publications could be desired?"

"Women of Philadelphia! Allow me as a Southern woman, with much attachment to the land of my birth, to entreat you to come up to this work. Especially let me urge you to petition. Men may settle this and other questions at the ballot box, but you have no such right. It is only through petitions that you can reach the legislature."

"Men who hold the rod over slaves rule in the councils of the nation; and they deny our right to petition and remonstrate against abuses of our sex and our kind."

"It was remarked in England that women did much to abolish slavery in her colonies. Nor are they now idle."

"Let the zeal and love, the faith and works of our English sisters quicken ours; that while the slaves continue to suffer, and when they shout deliverance, we may feel the satisfaction of having done what we could."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

"I came into the study of history through my work on a biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimké... I was fascinated with the lives and characters of these two women, who had not had a biography written about them since 1885... They spoke to me in a very personal way and I wanted to transmit what I received from these women of another century to readers of my day."

"When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as 1838 Angelina Grimké and Abby Kelley, who were the first women orators I ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti-slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby condemned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty."

"The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sarah Grimké and Abby Kelley went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition."

"The widening of women’s sphere is to improve her lot. Let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff — if it sneer, let it sneer — but we will go emulating the example of the sisters Grimké and Abby Kelly. When they first lectured against slavery they were not listened to as respectfully as you listen to us. So the first female physician meets many difficulties, but to the next the path will be made easy."

"Some of her best friends protested [Grimké speaking in mixed gatherings of men and women]. It was not "proper," nor "right," for a woman to attempt to instruct a man. But Angelia Grimke had gone far beyond the point where propriety weighted when it was a question of humanity. She held that "Whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.""

"Then first she saw that outward forms are no part of Christ’s religion, which she was to be an inward life, – the love of all beings, the wishing and willing of good to all, the law of love, the golden rule, impartial and universal, to be wrought out in loving acts."

"Article 1. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility."

"Marriage is a tomb of trust and love. The married woman can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth which does not belong to them. The woman who is unmarried has only one feeble right; ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her children the impossibility on my part to try to give my sex an honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men to attain glory for dealing with this matter; but while we wait, the way can be prepared through national education, the restoration of morals, and conjugal conventions."

"Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question, you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign over empire to oppress my sex? Your strength? Your talents?"

"Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated - in a century of enlightenment and wisdom - into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it."

"We may be a small party and a small country but we can stand tall if we stand together and if we stand up for our principles. Real independence means collectively lifting our people out of poverty leaving no-one behind, building a future based on hope not on fear."

"I believe in equality. I think steps should be taken to reduce the imbalance we have in society, so I favour the redistribution of wealth for example. But what I do say is that the bar is quite low. What's considered to be radical politics today was seen as mainstream 20 years ago. Plaid Cymru is a left party and I would argue that the views that I hold reflect the views of the members of Plaid Cymru."

"Within Plaid Cymru, we have a strong internal democracy which reflects how much we rely on the party membership as a grassroots body. The side effect of this is that measures to promote women are not always at their strongest, but must be balanced out with local party control. Over the years we have also seen that this is true outside of Plaid Cymru as well, as tensions between local party democracy and central party machines have been apparent in other parties."

"[Only Plaid Cymru can] further the Welsh national interest at the heart of Europe... More than one in 10 jobs are directly dependent on our membership of the EU - that's 150,000 reasons to vote Plaid Cymru."

"Do not forget what is at stake at this election. Do not forget all that will be put at risk if dangerous right-wing isolationist Europhobia is victorious. Our businesses rely on £5bn worth of trade with our EU partners every year. Our country has benefited from investment in our infrastructure and communities, with more on the horizon. More than one in 10 jobs are directly dependent on our membership of the EU - that's 150,000 reasons to vote Plaid Cymru in this May's election."

"The EU is too important to be discarded"

"First minister, last night you participated in the first major public debate on the future for Wales within the European Union. You went head-to-head with the voice of the far right. Do you think your performance helped or hindered the Welsh campaign on the EU?"

"It is not possible in 2016 to simply pull up the drawbridge and retreat to an idyllic isolation. And even if it were, surely that isn't the kind of country we want Wales to be. [I want a] decentralised, partnership of equals as the basis for the new Europe."

"We will continue to work together in the spirit of constructive collaboration to promote the benefits of EU membership for Wales and to campaign for Remain"

"Leaving the EU would risk our hard-won gains including rights at the workplace, access for businesses to the single market and would diminish our contribution to global challenges such as climate change and conflict resolution."

"I've been quite surprised by how so many people have been able to be persuaded around this question of fear of immigration. We've got a week now to try to persuade as many people as possible that it is in Wales' best interests to Remain as a part of the European Union."

"The Welsh Government should develop and prepare an official Welsh negotiating position for EU withdrawal"

"Brexit provides an opportunity for the nations to take more power and responsibility from the UK. The referendum result shows how Westminster rule has left many communities behind. It should in no way be interpreted as a vote to centralise more power in London. No self-respecting country should be timid or ashamed of governing itself. It's disheartening to see such a negative attitude from some in Welsh politics."

"We know that with the uncertainties arising from the decision to leave the EU, the Welsh Government now needs to look at alternative ways of improving the economies of areas in Wales that have been left behind by successive UK and Welsh Governments. We propose that this work is started in the areas that are set to lose out the most from the changes to the structural funds that will occur as a result of the decision leave the EU."

"I fear we've ended up in this situation because of irresponsible politicians trying to use rhetoric against immigration in order to make political points, for example for Brexit. But we've opened a can of worms now and we are potentially in quite a dangerous situation."

"Plaid Cymru accepts the referendum result"

"Questions of immigration and the single market were not on the ballot paper at the EU referendum. I've been speaking to a number of key players in the Welsh economy and they're all telling me that tariffs and being outside the EU's regulatory regime would be damaging to them."

"Wales voted Leave, but it does not mean that the Welsh government should sit back and let Brexit take its course"

"[The High Court ruling] should not be seen as an opportunity to overturn the result. It gives an opportunity for the 48% of voters who backed Remain to have an input and pursue a soft Brexit."

"Our exit from the EU will be one of the most pivotal moments in our history and it is vital that both governments get it right."

"I've got quite a thick skin... but I don't think we should just accept threats of rape or shootings"

"We have to recognise the vote and people voted to leave. So what we do now is discuss the best kind of Brexit possible for Wales; the least worst option, if you like."

"Now, that [the Norwegian model] would enable us to retain an element of freedom of movement"

"The most important outcome for Wales from any negotiations is to be in the single market. By upping the ante on migration, Mr Corbyn and the Labour party risk giving Theresa May the political cover needed for a hard Brexit. If the speech makes rejecting the principle of freedom of movement a priority, then it will help the Tories make a case for leaving the single market, which would be disastrous for the Welsh economy. Labour, despite being the UK opposition, cannot be trusted to know what is best for the Welsh economy."

"The challenge we all face now is ensuring that as we prepare to leave the EU we secure the best possible deal for Wales. Together, we intend to rise to that challenge."

"[Mr Davis was] left in no doubt over the importance of single market participation"

"While Wales may have voted to leave, no one voted to give the Tories a blank cheque to wreck the Welsh economy by dragging us out of the single market and jeopardising 200,000 jobs,"

"There are countries that are outside of the EU but inside the single market, like Norway."

"After much consideration, I'm not standing as MP for the Rhondda. Confident that @Plaid_Cymru will have very strong candidate."

"The National Assembly is an important institution to us a party. It is vital that the leader is in that institution."

"There can be no greater priority for our party right now than upholding the Welsh national interest during the months ahead as the UK government begins the process of leaving the European Union."

"Plaid Cymru believes that decisions about Wales are best made in Wales and the way in which this hard Brexit is being pursued highlights exactly why. If the UK Government's Brexit negotiation also leads to the Welsh national interest being overlooked, support will grow for greater control of our own affairs in Wales."

"Wales cannot afford to pay the price for a hard Brexit."

"It's time to move on from the 2016 referendum and focus on what a good deal for Wales could look like"

"Be it on tourism, farming, higher education or jobs, we are determined to overcome the threats and seek out and seize upon the opportunities which may come with leaving the EU."

"Things have moved on. We've moved on from the referendum. We've moved on from talking about membership of the single market."

"[We have a] positive Brexit plan focused on protecting the 200,000 jobs in Wales that rely on tariff-free access to the EU single market"

"[The] police needed to be given sufficient resources to do that job properly"

"I'm not Natalie, I'm Leanne"

"If you live here and you want to be Welsh then as far as we are concerned, you are Welsh and your rights will be defended by the Party of Wales"

"All forms of political violence are the same. USA, Barcelona, everywhere. They are ideology-driven & we have to understand that to stop it."

"What we know about the Tories is that they want to reduce the amount of money that government spends. So my fear is that Brexit will be used as an opportunity by them to reduce the amount of investment we get in Wales."

"If, in the worst possible scenario, we leave the European Union without a deal, people must have the opportunity to reject that disastrous outcome, either through a public vote, or through parliamentary democracy."

"[I ask you to] clarify whether you know of, or have access to, any UK government analysis of Brexit's impact on the Welsh economy"

"If the prime minister wants to stay in so many EU institutions, why leave the single market which she admitted will put barriers in place over trade?"

"I am seeing more misogyny now than I have ever seen in my political life. This seems to be a phenomena of today. It seems to come out online, on social media, but it seems to be reflecting something else that is going on in society."

"Labour is pursuing a Brexit that aligns more with the Conservatives than the white paper co-authored with Plaid Cymru"

"A lack of confidence is a barrier. I've lost count of the times I have felt uncomfortable when Welsh speakers turn to English because of me. But more than anything, I feel angry. Angry that I have lost something so valuable - something I deserve to have and something my grandfather had."

"Nuclear power has been a difficult issue for Plaid Cymru. We are opposed to nuclear power but have been forced to weigh concerns against the need to attract well-paid jobs to our rural areas. These concerns have created a compromise position of not opposing the replacement of existing nuclear plants. This has pitched people with concerns about the language and environment against each other."

"We still have a socialist leading Plaid Cymru, we still have independence as one of our priority areas. The question of social justice and inequality are still going to remain important aspects of Plaid Cymru's core message. I think the election of Adam Price means that people want to continue with a large element of what I put forward."

"There is no such thing as a niche issue in Wales"

"[I have concerns] about the democratic implications of another [EU] vote"

"I don't think that we should just embark upon these questions lightly because people will rightly ask what is the point of voting again in any future referendum or indeed election. So, there is a real concern about democracy but also there's a concern about democracy if we do crash out of the European Union and it's not just a concern for democracy, it's also a concern for the economy, for the future for young people, for a whole raft of economic issues."

"It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA."

"[he would be glad to] go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher."

"I was up in Liverpool a fortnight ago where Alec McFadden, one of our organisers, launched the Sack Esther McVey Day, on her birthday. There was a whole group in the audience that completely kicked off quite critical of the whole concept, because they were arguing "Why are we sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?""

"I would swim through vomit to vote against this bill. And listening to some of the nauseating speeches in support of it, I might have to."

"Inevitably in this century we will have open borders. We are seeing it in Europe already. The movement of peoples across the globe will mean that borders are almost going to become irrelevant by the end of this century so we should be preparing for that and explaining why people move."

"It's time to turn this debate around, drive out politics of despair and offer a vision for Britain in Europe."

"I think people out there in the real world, our constituents, just want us to get on with the job of getting the best deal possible for them"

"We have to respect the decision that was made in the referendum ... otherwise, to be frank, we undermine all confidence in our democratic process."

"When Britain leaves the European Union, free movement of labour and people will then come to an end"

"We should not pretend the referendum result can be undone."

"This means we must not try to re-fight the referendum or push for a second vote and if Article 50 needs to be triggered in Parliament Labour will not seek to block or delay it."

"We will be cut off from our biggest trading partner. We will be cut off from the skills and contribution that EU nationals have made to our economy and society."

"Our objective is tariff-free access to the market"

"That has been our objective since immediately after the referendum. The structures - whether we are in or out - are a secondary matter. We are not ruling anything out but what we are saying is that we are the fifth largest economy in the world and we have a special status in both our relationship with the EU and the rest of the globe and we feel we can get a deal that achieves tariff-free access."

"We voted for the implementation of Article 50 because we respect the referendum result. But we cannot have this situation where government becomes unaccountable on the implementation of one of the most important decisions for a generation."

"There are enough sensible people in the House of Commons to say 'this cannot happen, we cannot damage our country in this way'."

"If the government says 'well a customs union for a couple of years or maybe customs union until we decide there won't be one,' well actually, that doesn't give the stability for investment for anyone"

"My fear is that if we did have another referendum, we might get the same or similar result and the country will still be divided. Somehow we have got to try and bring the country back together again."

"Therefore now in the national interest we have got to come together and secure a compromise. If we can't do that, well yes, we have to go back to the people."

"The values of Catholicism are the inherent values of the Labour Party and the inherent values of socialism..."

"My view is that you'd put the deal to the people, but you'd have to also have the option of the status quo. Deep in my heart, I'm still a Remainer, but I've got to try and bring together effectively what is a British compromise."

"I think he's reckless and I think he's unstable and I will move heaven and Earth to stop a no-deal Brexit."

"If Jeremy got hit by the No 57 bus, or whatever it is, there's the next generation coming through. And the reality is the next leader should be a woman. It's high time to have a woman."

"We can't say to people 'Labour wants you to share in the running of your workplace, your community and your environment, but we don't trust you to have the final say over Brexit.'"

"I'd like them to vote Remain, but that's part of the debate we've got to have"

"John McDonnell, the nearest to a hero in both books. McDonnell worked tirelessly and pragmatically. He wanted to win, knowing that unity and a semblance of coherence were fundamental preconditions for victory. He kept up a dialogue with the so-called moderates and spoke out publicly on both anti-Semitism and the Salisbury poisonings, to the point where he and Corbyn did not talk for several months."

"For nearly twenty years lynching crimes, which stand side by side with Armenian and Cuban outrages, have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 to 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hung or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been that the government could not interfere in a state matter. Postmaster Baker’s case was a federal matter, pure and simple. He died at his post of duty in defense of his country’s honor, as truly as did ever a soldier on the field of battle. We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home. Italy and China have been indemnified by this government for the lynching of their citizens. We ask that the government do as much for its own."

"If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities."

"The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the press contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press. The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and they lack means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts. The race must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals, and thus enable them to do much in the way of investigation."

"the lyncher has become so bold, he has discarded his mask and the secrecy of night, has left the out-of-the-way village and invaded the jails and penitentiaries of our largest cities, and hung and tortured his victims on the public streets."

"A fifteen year old girl in Rayville, Louisiana, suspected of poisoning a white family is promptly hung on that suspicion; three reputable citizens of Memphis, Tenn., were taken from the jail and shot to death for prospering too well in business and defending themselves and property; one of the journals which was a member of your organization has been silenced by the edict of the mob which declared there shall be no such thing as “Free Speech” in the South. Within the past two weeks, honest, hardworking, land owning men and women of the race have been hung, shot, whipped and driven out of communities in Texas and Arkansas for no greater crime than that of too much prosperity. Indeed one almost fears to pick up the daily paper in which it is an unusual thing not to see recorded some tale of outrage or blood, with the Negro always the loser. The President of the United States announces himself unable to do anything to stay this “Reign of Terror,” and the race in the localities in which these outrages occur are nearly always unable to protect themselves; the local authorities will not extend to them the protection they demand. The President and Congress have been petitioned, race indignation has vented itself in impassioned oratory and public meetings. But denouncing the flag as dirty and dishonored which does not protect its citizens, and repudiating the national hymn because it is a musical lie, has not stopped the outrages. Politics have been eschewed, civil rights given up, (rights which are dearer than life itself) and even life itself has been sacrificed on the altar of Southern hate, and still there is no peace. The assassin’s bullet and ku-klux whip is still heard and the sight of the hangman’s noose with an Afro-American dangling at the end, is becoming a familiar object to the eyes of young America."

"If indeed “the pen is mightier than the sword,” the time has come as never before that the wielders of the pen belonging to the race which is so tortured and outraged, should take serious thought and purposeful action. The blood, tears and groans of hundreds of the murdered cry to you for redress; the lamentations, distress and want, of numberless widows and orphans appeal to you to do the only thing which can be done — and which is the first step toward revolution of every kind — the creation of a healthy public sentiment."

"If it could be established, a fearlessly edited press is one of the crying necessities of the hour. Such a journal, edited in the midst of such conditions as exist in the South, can better give the facts, than out of it, or than the press dispatches will do. True, such a one might have to be on the hop, skip and jump but the seed planted even though the sower might not tarry to watch its growth, can never die. At present only one side of the atrocities against a defenceless people is given, and with all the smoothing over is a bad enough showing."

"How many such have gone down to a violent death without anything to chronicle the true facts in their case, will never be known. Besides, a respectful, yet firm demand for race rights is absolutely necessary among those whom they live, and through no agency can it so well be heard as the newspaper."

"This is the greatest need of all among the masses of the South — the need of the press as an educator. Children of a larger growth, the masses of our people have never been taught the first rudiments of an education, much less the science of civil government. The vast army who make the industrial wealth of the South to-day have had neither the experience of slavery nor the training of the school-room, to teach them some valuable lessons, yet they are citizens in name, making history every day for the race. Some of them are seemingly content with their lot, but it is the contentment of ignorance in which the white landlord strives to keep them, by pandering in all ways to the most depraved instincts, and especially by the aid of liquor can exert the influence."

"The Afro-American needs to be taught the power of union, to realize his own strength; how to utilize that strength to secure to himself his inherent rights as did the plebeians of Rome. He makes the money of the South, but has never been taught that a husbanding of resources will cease to enrich gigantic corporations at his own expense. Intelligently directed, by exercise of this power alone, the race can do much to bring about a change in race condition. The sudden withdrawal of the labor force of any one community, paralyzes the industry of that community."

"The race as such must be taught the value of emigration, both to relieve the congested condition which obtains, and to better their own condition by coming in contact with newer ideas, higher standards and people who have the desire to be something. They must be led to go out in the boundless west where they will develop the manhood which lies dormant with nothing to call it into exercise. The Afro-American must be taught that there is one potent, never-failing method of dealing with prejudice; when you touch a white man’s pocket, you touch his heart and his prejudices all melt away. Before the almighty dollar he worships as to no other deity, and through this weakness, a taking away of this idol, the Afro-American can effect a bloodless revolution."

"A religious staying off of the growing evil of the race — the excursion business — will do more to overthrow the odious Jim Crow laws of our statute books than all the railroad suits which are prosecuted."

"So imperative is the necessity for leading the race up to the clear heights of thought, then down into the valley of action, that if persecuted and driven from one place, we must set up the printing press in another and continue the great work till the evils we suffer are removed or the people better prepared to fight their own battles. Laboring to fill our columns with matter beneficial and calculated to stimulate thought, and cultivate race reading, the next move is to take all legitimate steps to circulate our journals among the people we hope to benefit. Many of our best journals adopt the first plan while ignoring the second. They do not seem to grasp the truth that they must not only champion race rights, but cultivate a taste for reading among the people whose champions they are."

"To read the white papers the Afro-American is a savage that is getting away from the restraint of the inherent fear of the white man which controlled his passions, and from whom women and children now flee as from a wild beast. This impression has gained ground from the white papers, and has blasted race reputation in many quarters. The Afro-American journal has not troubled itself to counteract that opinion — those of the South because they dare not in many cases, and those of other sections seeming to care not. But not only the reputation of individuals but that of the race is involved. The clearing of this odium attached to the race name is not only the duty of one section but belongs to all, and the National Press Association should no longer sit idly waiting for the garbled accounts of the Associated Press, which it in turn gives the world."

"So frequent and serious has the grave charge of rape become, there should be full investigation of every such accusation which is considered sufficient excuse for the most diabolical outrage and torture."

"For years this association has met and concentrated itself with talking, and we returned to our respective homes with no tangible or practical work in hand — until the thinking portion of the race has classed press conventions with all other race conventions which meet, resolve and dissolve. If in face of daily occurrences we can still do only this, the charge against us is not without foundation. The time for action has come. Let the association tax itself to hire a detective, who shall go to the scene of each lynching, get the facts as they exist in each case of outrage — especially where the charge of rape is made — furnish them to the different papers of the association and those so situated shall publish them to the world."

"Gentlemen of the National Press Association, you have the press — what will you do with it? Upon your answer depends the future welfare of your race. Can you stand in comparative idleness, in purposeless wrangling, when there is earnest, practical, united work to be done?"

"The birth of letters was witnessed on the Dark Continent, but centuries of intervening darkness have removed most of the traces of fabled lore, wealth and prowess of the ancient Egyptians, Carthaginians and Ethiopians."

"Unfavorable as were these conditions in the latter part of 1761, just before the birth of American freedom, arose our first contribution to literature. So strange were the conditions under which this race flower throve, we were not surprised at the doubt of her contemporaries as to whether she wrote the poems credited to her."

"The realm of fiction yet remains undisturbed by the Afro-Americans as a positive factor in a permanent way. This is much to be regretted, because he occupies so large a position, as a negative force. With slavery for a subject, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe gave America its strongest work of fiction, but the Afro-American there represented, though true in its delineation to the life it represented, does not represent the Afro-American of to-day. Our best literary friends have failed to do it, so ineradicable is prejudice; it is not in their power to understand that the Afro-American is a man with all the attributes of manhood. They have viewed us with a white man’s glasses so long, seeing only the ignorant and humble side, there seems no other perspective for them. Thus it is that to the world at large the conviction is widespread that we are a menial, servile, happy-go-lucky race, given to petty thievery or humble, forgiving and submissive, as was “Uncle Tom.” The literature of the day has so portrayed us. The greatest [claim] to literary merit of the new corps of Southern writers is their skill in portraying the plantation and servant side of race character by the aid of negro dialect."

"The few contributions we have made to literature have not seemed to stem the tide of prejudice, nor have the efforts of Cable and Donelly changed the place in literature given to us by Mrs. Stowe, Joel Harris, Opie Reid. Nowhere do we find spread to the world’s gaze a work that portrays Afro-American life in its true likeness. Twenty-five years of freedom have furnished novel coloring and strange situations out of which to evolve a strong, vigorous sketch of Afro-American life at its best, and illustrate the genius which has dominated the rapid progress. The splendid mental and literary equipment of some of our finest scholars; the fragments of verse and prose of which we catch fleeting glimpses now and then, encourages the hope that from the race will yet come forth the masterpiece which, measured by the literature of the world, shall stamp its author a genius and at the same time elevate the Afro-American in literature."

"During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and soul. It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body."

"In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed."

"By an amendment to the Constitution the Negro was given the right of franchise, and, theoretically at least, his ballot became his invaluable emblem of citizenship. In a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people," the Negro's vote became an important factor in all matters of state and national politics. But this did not last long. The southern white man would not consider that the Negro had any right which a white man was bound to respect, and the idea of a republican form of government in the southern states grew into general contempt. It was maintained that "This is a white man's government," and regardless of numbers the white man should rule. "No Negro domination" became the new legend on the sanguinary banner of the sunny South, and under it rode the Ku Klux Klan, the Regulators, and the lawless mobs, which for any cause chose to murder one man or a dozen as suited their purpose best. It was a long, gory campaign; the blood chills and the heart almost loses faith in Christianity when one thinks of Yazoo, Hamburg, Edgefield, Copiah, and the countless massacres of defenseless Negroes, whose only crime was the attempt to exercise their right to vote."

"The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him the protection which should have maintained that right."

"The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is. "What can I do to help the cause?" The answer always is, "Tell the world the facts." When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it. The object of this publication is to tell the facts, and friends of the cause can lend a helping hand by aiding in the distribution of these books. When I present our cause to a minister, editor, lecturer, or representative of any moral agency, the first demand is for facts and figures. Plainly, I can not then hand out a book with a twenty-five cent tariff on the information contained. This would be only a new method in the book agents' art. In all such cases it is a pleasure to submit this book for investigation, with the certain assurance of gaining a friend to the cause. There are many agencies which may be enlisted in our cause by the general circulation of the facts herein contained. The preachers, teachers, editors and humanitarians of the white race, at home and abroad, must have facts laid before them, and it is our duty to supply these facts. The Central Anti-Lynching League, Room 9, 128 Clark St., Chicago, has established a Free Distribution Fund, the work of which can be promoted by all who are interested in this work. Anti-lynching leagues, societies and individuals can order books from this fund at agents' rates. The books will be sent to their order, or, if desired, will be distributed by the League among those whose cooperative aid we so greatly need. The writer hereof assures prompt distribution of books according to order, and public acknowledgment of all orders through the public press."

"It is a well established principle of law that every wrong has a remedy. Herein rests our respect for law. The Negro does not claim that all of the one thousand black men, women and children, who have been hanged, shot and burned alive during the past ten years, were innocent of the charges made against them. We have associated too long with the white man not to have copied his vices as well as his virtues. But we do insist that the punishment is not the same for both classes of criminals. In lynching, opportunity is not given the Negro to defend himself against the unsupported accusations of white men and women. The word of the accuser is held to be true and the excited bloodthirsty mob demands that the rule of law be reversed and instead of proving the accused to be guilty, the victim of their hate and revenge must prove himself innocent. No evidence he can offer will satisfy the mob; he is bound hand and foot and swung into eternity. Then to excuse its infamy, the mob almost invariably reports the monstrous falsehood that its victim made a full confession before he was hanged."

"Therefore, we demand a fair trial by law for those accused of crime, and punishment by law after honest conviction. No maudlin sympathy for criminals is solicited, but we do ask that the law shall punish all alike. We earnestly desire those that control the forces which make public sentiment to join with us in the demand. Surely the humanitarian spirit of this country which reaches out to denounce the treatment of the Russian Jews, the Armenian Christians, the laboring poor of Europe, the Siberian exiles and the native women of India-will not longer refuse to lift its voice on this subject. If it were known that the cannibals or the savage Indians had burned three human beings alive in the past two years, the whole of Christendom would be roused, to devise ways and means to put a stop to it. Can you remain silent and inactive when such things are done in our own community and country? Is your duty to humanity in the United States less binding?"

"The belief has been constantly expressed in England that in the United States, which has produced Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, James Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier¹5 and Abraham Lincoln there must be those of their descendants who would take hold of the work of inaugurating an era of law and order. The colored people of this country who have been loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun this crusade. To those who still feel they have no obligation in the matter, we commend the following lines of Lowell on "Freedom.""

"Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect."

"No class of American citizens stands in greater need of the humane and thoughtful consideration of all sections of our country than do the colored people, nor does any class exceed us in the measure of grateful regard for acts of kindly interest in our behalf."

"Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, two women who helped shape the main contours of the civil-rights movement in the United States in the twentieth century."

"The crucial event in the career of Ida Wells was the lynching of three Black men in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 9, 1892. Although she knew all the victims, one of them, Thomas Moss, was a particularly close friend. A series of racist provocations by white Memphis businessmen, who were trying to force the Black proprietors of a local grocery store out of business, finally culminated in the triple slayings. At the time of the lynching, Wells owned and edited the only Black newspaper in town, the Memphis Free Speech. In the weeks following the lynching she wrote successive editorials demanding that the murderers be arrested and tried. When the white-owned newspapers responded by alleging that Black men were lynched because they raped white women, Ida B. Wells replied with an editorial coup de grâce that almost cost her life. She wrote: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will over-reach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.""

"Reporting on mob violence in New Orleans, Ida B. Wells-Barnett looked to capture the wild freedom and impunity that white rioters felt in engaging in violent assaults and disobeying the various calls to maintain order. Writing on the practices of lynching and mob violence, Wells-Barnett stressed how white democracy gave ordinary Americans the opportunity to break the law with impunity. Du Bois aptly characterizes this era of mob violence as "a sort of permissible Roman holiday for the entertainment of vicious whites." Pointing to the fact that in the span of four days, more than a thousand African Americans in New Orleans were injured and fifteen were killed, Wells-Barnett writes, “During the entire time the mob held the city in its hands and went about holding up street cars and searching them, taking from them colored men to assault, shoot, and kin, chasing colored men upon the public square... breaking into the homes of defenseless colored men and women and beating aged and decrepit men and women to death, the police and the legally-constituted authorities showed plainly where their sympathies were, for in no case reported through the daily papers does there appear the arrest, trial and conviction of one of the mob for any of the brutalities which occurred. The ringleaders of the mob were at no time disguised.... The murderers still walk the streets of New Orleans, well known and absolutely exempt from prosecution."

"To look at Ida B. Wells, the Black woman who was the single most important figure in the development of the campaign against lynching. To encourage, for example, an awareness of this woman who traveled all over the country, sometimes nursing her baby on stage, organizing throughout the Black community, in villages and towns. Ida Wells was responsible for Black people realizing that we can stand up and say that we were not going to allow the Ku Klux Klan to deliver tens of thousands of brothers and sisters into the hands of lynch mobs."

"Dear Miss Wells: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven-yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance. Very truly and gratefully yours, Frederick Douglass"

"More than a century ago, the legendary muckraking African American journalist Ida B. Wells risked her life when she began reporting on the epidemic of lynchings in the Deep South...She wrote: Georgia heads the list of lynching states." Some things never change: the American Bar Association has singled out Georgia's racial disparities in capital-offense sentencing, saying that it has allowed inadequate defense counsel and been "virtually alone in not providing indigent defendants sentenced to death with counsel for state habeas proceedings.""

"I have long said and claimed Ida B. Wells-Barnett as my spiritual godmother. She was honestly the first example of a Black woman doing the type of journalism that I wanted to do, which should tell you how undiverse or nondiverse the field of investigative reporting is, that I didn’t actually know living examples of Black women investigative reporters when I was young. So, she was a pioneering investigative journalist who really brought the scourge of lynching to a global audience. She would go into towns where a Black man or woman had just been lynched, and she would interview people, and she would document. And she was actually one of the early data reporters, because she started to collect data on how many lynchings were occurring, what were the reasons given for those lynchings, and then what did her reporting show. She also was a true intersectional woman. She was a suffragist and had to fight both for women’s rights to vote and against the racism within the suffragist movement. She was a civil rights activist. She was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where she had to fight against gender discrimination as a Black woman. And so, in so many ways, she was just this pioneering woman who fought for civil rights and equal rights across many fronts. And she was a woman who was largely reviled by white media. And I have in my Twitter bio that I’m a nasty — a slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress, because that’s what The New York Times, where I work, called Ida B. Wells while she was engaging in her anti-lynching crusade. So I take great strength from knowing that the attacks on me and the attacks on my work are really just part of a lineage of what happens when Black women and Black women journalists dare to challenge power and challenge authority. So, to receive the acknowledgment for this work about the Black experience on the same day that Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who like so many Black journalists never received the acknowledgment that they deserved, was just deeply gratifying, because I do my work in service of them."

"I am not arguing that guns should be banned. Rather, I absolutely agree with journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells when she exhorted, "a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give." Thankfully, the Second Amendment protects this right. My point is that no sane person can argue with a straight face that heroin use is inherently more dangerous than gun use. At the very least, this should raise the question, Why is it that guns can be legally purchased but heroin cannot?"

"The position of women has been debated in socialist and communist circles, but even there it is usually left as a question. And black women specifically? They have never been a primary subject of the American Left, always falling somewhere in the cracks between the Negro Question and the Woman Question. As we've seen, key interventions by the likes of Ida B. Wells or Claudia Jones attempted to disrupt color- and class-struggle-as-usual, but few leftists paid attention."

"As an investigative journalist, Ida B. Wells acted as a documentarian of those atrocities, risking her own life many times over to force Americans to recognize the scourge of lynching. "If the Southern people in defense of their lawlessness, would tell the truth and admit that colored men and women are lynched for almost any offense, from murder to a misdemeanor, there would not now be the necessity for this defense," she wrote in her book The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States. "But when they intentionally, maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story." Wells devoted her life to sharing those stories, and as her career went on, she also became involved in a number of other social, political, and cultural organizations aimed at uplifting her community."

""It was a Declaration of Economic Independence, and the first united blow for economic liberty struck by the Negroes of the South!" Wells later wrote of the landowners' reaction to Black sharecroppers' efforts to unionize and bargain for higher prices. "That was their crime and it had to be avenged." Her masterful report on her findings in Elaine, The Arkansas Race Riot, helped cement the massacre and its legacy in the public consciousness, but the work of properly commemorating the Elaine Twelve themselves continues to this day."

"It is fascinating to notice that in the Montgomery boycott the various strands and origins of the idea of nonviolent resistance fused into a newly invigorated practice and theory of immense power. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., although he credited his formulation of "massive non-cooperation" to Thoreau, had been exposed to pacifist thought during his studies under the pacifist Allen Knight Chalmers, who was a Gandhian. Another long-time pacifist, Bayard Rustin, secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation since 1935, and later secretary of the War Resisters League, was one of the chief tacticians and organizers of the Montgomery boycott. It was he who counseled the use of nonviolent means at the outset of the boycott. Finally, probably unknown to most of the actors in the drama, there was a precedent for a bus boycott by a black community in the example of the 1892 Memphis, Tennessee, boycott of streetcars by the black community to protest a lynching. This boycott was actively supported by Ida B. Wells-Barnett and was, according to her account, highly effective."

"The importance of sexism as a means of enforcing racism can also be seen in the way racist double standards were used in the post-Civil War period to keep freedmen and later all southern Blacks in subordinate status despite the end of slavery. The rise of violence against black males and the sharp increase in lynchings, always excused as being "in defense of white womanhood," served to intimidate the free black community in the post-Reconstruction period and again at the turn of the century, when Blacks in the South were virtually disfranchised. It was African-American women in their clubs, and especially Ida B. Wells, who first uncovered the workings of this sexist-racist double standard and who exposed the falsity of the charge that white women needed protection from black men."

"Ida B Wells' constant theme was to expose lynching as an integral part of the system of racial oppression, the motives for which were usually economic or political. She hit hard at the commonly used alibi for lynchings, the charge of "rape," and dared bring out into the open the most taboo subject of all in Victorian America-the habitual sexual abuse of black women by white men. Thus, she expressed what was to become the ideological direction of the organized movement of black women-a defense of black womanhood as part of a defense of the race from terror and abuse."

"An early example of the now familiar pattern of the white liberal, accused of racism by black friends, grew out of this anti-lynching campaign and involved Frances Willard, the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, whose earlier abolitionist convictions and interracial work were a matter of record. Mrs. Willard was hesitant and equivocal on the issue of lynching and defended the Southern record against accusations made by Ida B. Wells on her English speaking-tour. Severe attacks on her in the women's press and a protracted public controversy helped to move Mrs. Willard to a cautious stand in opposition to lynching. Black women continued to agitate this issue and to confront white women with a moral challenge to their professed Christianity."

"They just renamed a road in Chicago after Ida B. Wells, [and] that’s powerful. You see that, and you’re like, “Well, who’s Ida B. Wells?” If you didn’t know, you’re going to learn. It’s going to be a reminder of that history."

"In the 1970s we were rediscovering women whose lives had been dropped out of history or distorted, like Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickinson, Marie Curie, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Hannah Senesch, Ethel Rosenberg."

"When Miss Wells, a journalist of the South, exiled for daring to use the prerogative of free speech in defence of her own race, fled to the South, it was Mr. Fortune who espoused her cause, and made it possible for her to continue the good work so nobly begun. We admire Miss Wells for her undaunted courage, we laud her zeal in so worthy a cause, we ecourage her ambition to enlighten the mind and touch the heart by a thrilling and earnest recital of the wrongs heaped upon her oppressed people in the South. We extend to her a cordial welcome, we offer her our hearty support. In suppressing Miss Wells paper, the Free Speech, tyranny has wrought a good work of which it little dreamed. The fetters placed upon truth in the South are here transformed into weapons against itself. We congratulate ourselves upon having two such efficient and zealous workers as Miss Wells and Mr. Fortune to address us tonight. The harvest truly is great but the labourers are few."

"Cultural products which present foreign wars as the heroic effort of a master race to ennoble mankind are, to the degree they are successful as art, objectively in the interests of imperialists, who are people who make foreign wars against other races for profit."

"Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands."

"Cultural products which present women who do not want to be household slaves or universal mothers or sex objects as bitches or sexual failures objectively aid male supremacy."

"In our times, to refrain from mentioning genocide, racism, cultural schizophrenia, sexual exploitation, and the systematic starvation of entire populations is itself a political act. ... As our bankrupt civilization draws to its close, and as the violence of the powerful against the weak, of the rich against the poor, of the few against the many, becomes more and more apparent, until it becomes impossible to watch a news broadcast and remain unaware of it for a second — as this situation becomes exacerbated, to refrain from mentioning it becomes more and more clearly a political act, an act of censorship or cowardice."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"A lot of the young women in the peace movement were really just pushed around by SDS (the student organization). That is, Meredith Tax or Marge Piercy were pushed around by these guys, these young fellows in these student movements, who were really not shallow because they were very smart, but callow and full of male beans and ambition and so forth. And accustomed to or forced to play a certain role. I think the women's movement has done a lot for men, a tremendous lot for them. For men who paid attention it has taken some of the burden of machoism off their backs, which is a terrible burden to bear. If you think about it, it's horrible. It's horrible to have to be that kind of person in order to be a person."

"It sometimes seems to me, with a mixture of admiration and despair, that almost any question one may raise about castles has already been raised, and answered, and often definitively answered, by this remarkable woman in her remarkable book, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, and the main reason why the study of early castles and their origins in this country has not got very much further since her day is that she did not leave us very much further to go."

"It is quite enough to pay taxes when you are not represented, let alone pay a fine if you object to this arrangement."

"I shall put the case somewhat from the standpoint of the militant suffragettes themselves, trying to give some idea of the philosophy and ethical principles underlying the militant propaganda and, above all, with the hope of making clear to American readers some of the radical differences between English and American conditions."

"The militants hold that they are at war with the British government, basing their right to rebel on the axioms that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

"As our colonial ancestors felt that a decent regard for the opinions of mankind should impel those in a state of rebellion to declare their reasons, so the suffragettes have repeatedly endeavored to set before the world the grievances for which they are suffering."

"The grounds for revolt may be classified, roughly, as follows: The miserable status of English women; the impossibility of obtaining attention for, much less redress of, their grievances by constitutional methods; the historic precedents established by the use of force by the British people whenever the progress of freedom has been blocked by the British government; the insincerity and brutality shown by the present Liberal government in dealing with the women's agitation as compared with the leniency shown to male political offenders both past and present; the determination of the newspapers to stifle the movement by persistently excluding suffrage news and propaganda from their columns."

"In the United States, though the great majority of women are still disfranchised and many of the unjust laws inherited from England continue to disfigure our statute books, the suffragists are absolutely peaceful. We owe this, not to American women, but to American men. In every country it is the men who should be held chiefly responsible for the tone and conduct of the suffrage movement, as the government is in their hands, authority and power are theirs, and they are able to make the task of the feminist comparatively easy and pleasant."

"In England the militant movement is like a slave insurrection; it presents characteristics of the uprising of a servile class; the bitterness of those who have been treated unjustly, the determination of the down-trodden to rise and at all hazards to themselves to conquer respect and consideration for their sex; and the arming of the one part of the community — women — against the other part. If the word "slave," applied to contemporary English women seems an exaggeration, let me say that our colonial ancestors considered taxation without representation tyranny."

"That the negro mother had no control of her child seemed to Abolitionists a potent argument for emancipation. Today the English woman, if married, is not the legal parent of her child. The father is the parent and has the right to prescribe the child's education, religious training and medical attendance; he may take it away from the mother and may by will appoint a guardian without her consent. The position of a married woman is in many ways wretched: though her husband is supposed to support her, there is no legal machinery by which a woman can enforce this law... a man may disinherit his wife and leave her penniless with destitute children whom the law compels her to support."

"The divorce laws are unequal, practically encouraging immorality on the part of the husband, as it is not a ground for securing a divorce from him unless coupled with cruelty or desertion."

"At the request of the American Academy of Political and Social Science she made a survey of the English Suffrage movement. She was Founder and President of the Pennsylvania Limited Suffrage Society and was active with the National Woman’s Party. At its Draftee Parade on September 4, 1917, she was arrested at the age of 44 and sentenced to 60 days at the Occoquan Workhouse. On August 6, 1918, she was again arrested at the Lafayette statue in D.C. At the trial on August, 15, 1918, for “holding a meeting on public grounds” the arrestees refused to participate in their trial."

""....I grew up in a world where feminism was all around me like a beacon of hope cutting through the opposing ideas I was being taught at home...."

"“...celebrate the women who have defied socialcensure and the state to remove the hijab...""

""...No Hijab Day is a day to support brave women across the globe who want to be free from the hijab. Women who want to decide for themselves what to wear or what not to wear on their heads. Women who fight against either misogynist governments that will imprison them for removing their hijab or against abusive families and communities that will ostracize, abuse and even kill them."

"...It will be difficult for Western women who wore hijab on Hijab Day, at the Women’s March,...not feel shame....how you’ve betrayed women, We all deserve freedom...not just you....STOP supporting our subjugation #FreeFromHijab"

"....Maybe they should read the whole Quran as well. It would be impossible for anyone with the slightest bit of empathy to read the Quran and—at the end of it—say that: “Islam is a religion of peace.” But people are generally good, and, if Muslims sat down with the Quran, translated it into their own language and read it, they would be horrified. They would not want to identify with whatever religion teaches these kinds of atrocious things. But most of them don’t even know what that book says. ..."

""...“What I was not prepared for was the tsunami of just hate and pushback and disdain that would come from people I thought were my people: people that believed in enlightenment values, Western values, and liberal values...”"

"....Many apologists for Islam have claimed “Muslims are the true feminists” or “Islam is a religion of peace,” and it is certainly possible to have Muslims who are feminists, and the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people. Many verses in the Quran and Hadith support women and peace. But Yasmine’s story reveals that anyone pushing those narratives without acknowledging that much of Islamic doctrine does the opposite is either ignorant or dishonest...."

"In Unveiled, Yasmine Mohammed... putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticizing the doctrine of Islam is a form of bigotry."

"In 1863, deep in the Civil War's magnitude, Abraham Lincoln declared a day of gratitude Shared by one heart and one voice of America. A proclamation for a nation in a nightmare, This Thanksgiving dared Americans To chime their thanks at a time when many believed They had no thanks to give."

"To be American is to be a kin To a courageous hope: The trust that even if just for a moment We can, we must, close rank as people, One heart, one voice, one mind, created equal."

"When day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what "just is" isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished."

"We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division."

"We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us."

"This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, "How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? " Now we assert, "How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?""

"We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright."

"We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it."

"Amanda Gorman...is the author of the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (2015). She attended New Roads in Santa Monica and Harvard University, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in sociology. Her art and activism focus on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. In 2014 Gorman was named the first Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and in 2017 was named the first US National Youth Poet Laureate. She has performed at...the Obama White House, the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, and on CBS This Morning. She has received a Genius Grant from OZY Media, as well as recognition from Scholastic Inc., YoungArts, the Glamour magazine College Women of the Year Awards, and the Webby Awards. She has written for the New York Times newsletter The Edit and penned the manifesto for Nike's 2020 Black History Month campaign."

"Amanda Gorman made history Wednesday as the youngest known inaugural poet. The 22-year-old Los Angeles resident delivered her poem "The Hill We Climb" at President Joe Biden's inauguration in Washington, D.C. "I wanted it to be a message of hope and unity. And I think that Wednesday for me really just underscored how much that was needed," she said. "But to not turn a blind eye to the cracks that really need to be filled." In 2017, Gorman became the first National Youth Poet Laureate. The Harvard graduate plans to release a children's book of poems later this year. Like Mr. Biden, Gorman has struggled with a speech impediment throughout her life, making poetry a "lifeline" for her. Also like Mr. Biden, she has a long-term goal of running for president."

"Among the firsts in Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” is the concept of democracy that it assumed. Democracy, according to the twenty-two-year-old poet, is an aspiration—a thing of the future... Both times the poem raises “democracy,” Gorman pairs the word with “delay,” which tells us that democracy is a thing expected, anticipated—not a thing that we have built, or possessed, but a dream. This is not the way that politicians or even political theorists usually use the word “democracy,” but it is one way that philosophers have used it. Jacques Derrida, the French deconstructionist, used the term “democracy to come.” Democracy, he wrote, was always forged and threatened by contradictory forces and thus is always “deferred,” always out of reach even in societies that adopt democracy as their governing principle. Gorman’s poem is, explicitly, a text about the future. She exhorts Americans to look not at “what stands between us / But what stands before us.” She says, at the beginning, that “we know, to put our future first,” and she ends with a verse of promises and challenges as rousing as any ever written."

"In the end the court said we share your concerns, but the law is weak, we can't do anything."

"It is now an established fact that there is a complete lack of fear of law in the minds of criminals and instead the laxity of the system emboldens them to commit gruesome crimes against women and girls in the country."

""The tragedy of life is not death, the tragedy of life is what dies in one when still alive"."

"“My slogan, Ntitonaibornagol, meaning ‘a young, strong girl’, resonated well with the electorate. We spoke to the community: You sired both boys and girls, took both of us to school, and here we are now. You have been giving opportunities to boys; we now humbly request you to give girls a chance, so you can see what we can turn out to be.”"

"“Individual passion and drive are crucial for success.”"

"Politics is a platform where you lead, where you transform, where you engage with other people to make the society better."

"If we do not have peace in our country, if we cannot be one people, then everything we aspire and we work for if futile."

"There are a lot of things it’s hard to do by yourself. Play tennis, for example. Or ride a tandem bike. Or end gender inequality. “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go strong, go together."

"Well I knew I couldn’t give up. I held this strong conviction, and still do, on so many levels, that my life must have been saved for a reason all those years ago. I also knew that my desire to create change in the world was inextricably linked to the dreams and the hopes that I had for my own family, community and continent. So I knew that I had to be part of the solution in trying to create a better world and make a difference to the lives of others. And so I persevered against all odds."

"I am only alive because of a simple bowl of porridge from the United Nations that saved my life when I came close to dying from hunger as a child – so the Zero Hunger agenda is truly personal to me, hunger remains the leading cause of death in the world, and I am determined to play my part in ensuring that we reach every child and family in need -- especially on my own continent of Africa."

"My decision to work at the UN was driven by my need to uplift the lives of others the way I had been uplifted. When I moved to the UK, the images of Africa I saw on television did not align with my lived experience. I was galvanised to combat these entrenched misperceptions of the place where I was born and raised, the place I am proud to claim as my continent of origin."

"That night my activism found a new target: to bring to the world a new understanding of the modern African continent — its youthful potential; its beauty, and most of all, the powerful African philosophy of ubuntu, which sheds light on what it means to be human, and how we can better treat each other for the betterment of us all."

"As the lights of the city glittered around me, I took a deep breath, thought of my gogo (grandmother) and my mother and all the powerful Africans I knew and know, and reminded myself: I am a girl from Africa."

"I believe that our potential should not be limited by where we are born or our dreams diminished by our circumstances. This is the world I am working to create through my work with the United Nations, which hopefully, in turn, inspires other young girls to dream bigger. My mission is…To uplift others."

"I am because we are, and because we are, you are.”"

"“Our potential should not be limited by where we are born, nor our dreams be diminished by our current circumstances.”"

"Time and again Elizabeth has proven her unique ability to focus public attention and trigger stakeholder action for the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Corinne Woods, UNWFP Director of Communications, Advocacy and Marketing. “WFP is honored to add her voice and experience to our own, amplifying the plight of the 690 million people around the world who don’t know where their next meal is coming from."

"Elizabeth Nyamayaro, an advocate for women’s rights and economic development, is the driving force behind the HeForShe campaign, a UN Women’s initiative and global solidarity movement that seeks to engage men as advocates for gender equality. Nyamayaro grew up in rural Zimbabwe where she met a UNICEF aid worker who altered the course of her life – she has since become the senior advisor to the Executive Director of UN Women, worked at the forefront of Africa’s development agenda for more than a decade, worked with UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and founded Africa IQ, a social impact organization promoting Africa’s sustainable economic growth and development."

"Nyamayaro holds a noble goal for the future of humanity: to end gender inequality for good."

"Female reproductive organs are hidden parts of the body, located down there. But that should not mean that issues affecting them should be hidden or looked down upon, or swept under garments. Let’s put menstruation on the agenda and openly discuss it to its logical conclusion."

"I have a deep love for my country and I am passionate about women claiming their power through self-care. This can only happen if we start to build a today and tomorrow that is full of empowered women and healthy girls as well as responsible boys and men. Girls and women should not regret their gender. Let us support them to manage their periods with dignity."

"I envision a Zimbabwe where all girls and women can access adequate menstrual products, in an environment that is period-conducive and be treated with dignity in order for them to manage their periods in a manner that fosters human and sustainable development."

"A girl who is absent from school due to menstruation for four days every month loses at least 40 learning days, the equivalent of six weeks of learning, per year. It’s like not going to school for half of a school term. Equity in education can therefore not be achieved under such a scenario.” She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods. She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods... It will also address issues to do with period shaming, as girls are often laughed at when they spoil their school uniform or the school chair, or when walking awkwardly due to use of improper and inconvenient menstrual absorbents such as rags, cow dung, you name it... From our estimates, we might be actually looking at a number of 550,000 schoolgirls at most, both in urban and rural schools, that need sanitary wear, which translates to a sanitary wear per capita of ZWL $363 (US$22.6). This means that the allocated money is adequate to cater for all schoolgirls who menstruate, in both urban and rural areas."

"Let me highlight that menstrual poverty is not something that only affects girls or women who are poor. It is not just lack of sanitary wear, but it is also a lack of proper menstrual facilities, period education and a period-friendly environment... When a girl is on her period, she needs a supportive environment that helps her to manage her period with dignity. I was born into a family with five girls with an extended family of 15 people in rural Zvimba. Seven of us were girls who needed at least seven packets of sanitary pads every month to manage our periods but due to unavailability, we had to resort to using anything else to manage our periods... Our main challenge in our work is lack of resources to reach out to more vulnerable girls who are suffering from period poverty. The move by Scotland has shown us that it can be done but Zimbabwe still has a long way to go to completely eradicate period poverty."

"A nation without period poverty and a nation that provides equal opportunities for girls and women to succeed in all aspects"

"Theresa Nyava, the executive director of Sanitary Aid Zimbabwe Trust welcomed the development saying it will go a long way in bringing equity in education. She said it has been established that 72 percent of school girls in rural areas don’t use commercial sanitary wear, desperately resorting to unhygienic means, with 62 percent of them missing school every month... She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods. She added that this development, if implemented well, would ensure that girls attend school, concentrate and also participate in sporting activities, improve their mental health and generally be in control of their periods. She said from their own calculations, the $12.5 million (USC) earmarked for the project can actually cater not just for rural girls, but also for all schoolgirls who need sanitary pads in Zimbabwe."

"Theresa is one of the exemplary women who are making impact at the grassroots level in Zimbabwe. Her work in fighting to eradicate period poverty since 2016 has tremendously benefited local communities of young women and girls in rural and urban Zimbabwe. From founding an organization with personal funds in 2016 together with funds from well wishers, Theresa has demonstrated great empathy and a high level of zeal and determination. She has soldiered on, albeit the economic challenges in the country and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This has seen her organization, Sanitary Aid Zimbabwe expanding its work, to now offer more services such as training services for women and young girls that empower them to make reusable sanitary pads and other hygienic products... It is therefore not surprising that Theresa is affectionately known as “Sanitary Bae” in social circles because of her work in Sanitary issues."

"It takes time to bridge the education gap between man and women. Our mandate was to reduce gender disparities where the boy child goes to school and the girl child is married off."

"The role is to educate the whole of Zimbabwe not only the girl child. The advantage of an educated woman is that they become a power in society and there is no way they will raise uneducated children."

"Women! You can do it. Come to Women `s University in Africa (WUA) and study. Get up and break out from your comfort zones."

"Improving the status of women is one of the most critical levers of international development. Women Excel is one exciting forum created by women for women with the purpose of empowering women in every sphere of their lives."

"Women often find it difficult to apportion resources towards their own education because more often than not they put their needs at the bottom, whilst they care for their families."

"We started Women`s University because we wanted to prove that we can do it. The message to women is to keep on pushing the cart and do not doubt your abilities."

"A mixture of driven personality and deep seated passion to assist the marginalised and a conviction to serve, further strengthened her determination to establish the institution,whatever the cost."

"The university is testimony of hard work, resoluteness, selfless-ness and determination of someone who was not satisfied being at the top alone. She stretched her hands to pull other women to be up there with her."

"Her passion and determination to empower women attracted organisations like Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), which became the biggest funder for technical support."

"Professor Sadza has taken the gender agenda across continents and sensitised most women of positions of influence to ensure they do not to leave any woman behind."

"Prof Sadza leaves a track of indelible footprints in the academic arena, business field and the lives of the 10 481 graduates that have had the privilege of learning at the Women’s University in Africa, the only such institution in Africa."

"Her heart has always bled for those women whose backgrounds have contributed to their exclusion in the academic arena, whose culture made preference for investment in the boy-child whilst relegating the vulnerable girl child to a school dropout, early marriage and rearing of the family."

"Her life has been dedicated to addressing gender disparities and indeed fostering equity in university education."

"The organization is a child of necessity, I was the president-general of the better life program for Africa rural women (BLPARW), Which was a pet project of her Excellency Late Maryam Babangida, the Former Nigerian First lady, established in September 1986."

"WAELE AFRICA was established to empower African women, economically, politically as well as to ensure the participation of women in peace and conflict transformation."

"We have quite a great plan moving forward; as for Now, WAELE AFRICA publishes a monthly magazine, in Both French and English."

"Women must be involved in leadership positions globally. More women should be part of the economic and political development of their respective countries. This will lead to accelerated growth and development worldwide."

"This organization is a child of necessity! We felt it would be unkind to abandon the people we had already mobilized."

"Africa is in need of mediators and peacekeepers. Our continent is engulfed in inter-religious, ethnic, and tribal conflicts, and women are proven to be the most effective agents for peacebuilding."

"We have called on African leaders to deliberate on peacebuilding and conflict resolution across the nation."

"The NGO has earmarked the sum of two million naira as a revolving loan for each of the selected states, with 20,000 naira given to each widow to run a business of her choice."

"We have trained hundreds of widows across Nigerian states such as Benue, Enugu, and Cross Rivers on financial empowerment."

"She was conferred with the Global Excellence Award for Women Empowerment and Development for her role in empowering women across Africa through her foundation."

"The girl child is just like an egg that can easily be damaged through teenage pregnancy, sexual abuse etc, hence, the need to protect them."

"Your dreams will come true."

"When the legendary Nelson Mandela made his famous quote ‘there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children' he most likely had the humanity-indicting apartheid system in mind. Were he alive now and a Nigerian, he would have replaced the last strand of the sentence with ‘the way in which it allows the tobacco industry, merchants of death, to toy with the lives and destinies’ of its children."

"When you know your stand and stay consistently by it, eventually you will prevail."

"Most people who violate the right of others are cowards. Once you draw attention to their crimes, once you stand up to them they withdraw and people are safe"

"The poor also have rights to the city and there are more humane and inclusive ways of running ‘a mega city’ than the brutal and sledgehammer approach that currently obtains here."

"... A country is deemed great that truly cares about its children aka pikins, and the most vulnerable."

"We must stand up for equality, justice and human dignity because it is vital to each and every one of us all – woman, man and child"

"We are using this opportunity to remind them that it is the constitutional responsibility of the government under chapter two of the constitution to provide security for the people. It is as if they are helpless, let them resign and let us know that we don’t have a government"

"The need to end discrimination against women in Nigeria and close the existing gender gap also necessitated the birth of WELA to assist in efforts to stop the abuses against women and dismantle all the gender barriers that penalise women and girls in Nigeria"

"In times like this, we all must come together to educate ourselves and our youth in basic human rights. These rights were set forth by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The purpose of the Human Rights walk is to unite all people in these rights and to make them a reality."

"You need to know your human rights because a population ignorant of its rights cannot demand or defend them. Yet, few in the world know even two or three of their 30 rights."

"The ideology underpinning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR, is a simple yet, profound one which proclaims that all human beings are born free and equal with dignity and rights."

"We advocate for everyone to stand up for their rights and those of others. For this reason WELA stand for equality and Justice through human right education"

"“The president does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years”."

"“We must say the truth”."

"“It is disheartening to note that some aspirants used their hard-earned money to purchase nomination forms, got screened, cleared, and campaigned vigorously yet found their names omitted on Election Day, these forms were bought at exorbitant prices”."

"“It is commendable that state governors have closed down schools; however, this could be counterproductive if parents are still going to work. We should not isolate students and expose their parents. Let us remember that they will meet at home”."

"“The establishment of the Future Assured College in Maiduguri, Borno State recently is to provide for the education of young girls affected by the insurgency”."

"“This intervention provides a lead way of what we can do together to support these young brains to attain a brighter future because of the challenges facing girl-child education”."

"“Prospect of promoting quality health and education of girl-child both at school and at home are seriously challenged”."

"“I am optimistic that our common interest in promoting girl-child education can expand beyond its present scope”."

""The regime might not have been a perfect one, but I want to seize this opportunity to seek forgiveness from the Ulamas and Nigerians in general. We all need to work together to achieve a better Nigeria.”"

"I hope every ladies see themselves as Great."

"One thing I want my girls to hold onto is, regardless of where they are coming from, they can make it..."

"I believe you can still find diamonds in these places"

"Technology is a space that's dominated by men. Why should we leave that to guys? I believe girls need opportunities."

"Most girls are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. Many of them are not thinking education, a plan for the future... They need to be shown another life"

"You can imagine the kind of brilliance we have in people, but you never discover or see them if you don't give them opportunities to shine."

"Makoko is a case study, isn't something you can fully understand. It took me a while to understand a lot of things about what goes on in that place."

"Children who learnt bullying from home and their peers will eventually be shielded by their parents and where they cannot justify the actions of their wards, they will ferry them to safety."

"I would want to see women go actively into politics, and by politics, I do not mean by appointment alone. I will like to see women run for office so that they can be in a better position to effect more change as against just being appointed into political offices, which is good in itself."

"All these terrorist groups are walking around with the same agenda. They may believe differently, but it’s the same agenda. They’re anti-all of us."

"I’m disgusted when I hear some of our current public officials excuse their non-performance on Sabotage."

"I laugh again not in humour at the seeming punishment of the staffs who participated in the padding of our 2016 budget."

"As a religious person, you are subject to the commandment of God and as a Nigerian, you are subject to the laws of the land whether you like it."

"They’re not girls who have social status. Their parents are not economically well off, she said. “But I can tell you, if any one of those girls belonged to a government official, they’d be found."

"What got me really enraged was the fact our government hadn’t said a word because they didn’t believe the girls were taken,” she said. “They didn’t say anything until about 19 days after."

"What we fail to realize as humans is that our world may be large, but we’re all just in a small cup,” she said. “What affects one person affects every single one of us."

"Please do not push your luck in challenging the status quo or seeking to insist on your high ground, it is a proven means of soliciting for your middle name."

"I don’t think that the word leader has to do with a particular talent or a particular field.A leader is a leader, and this cuts across in different ways."

"We live in a world where women are abused daily and are unable to speak up. One out of four women experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. This crime can take place at anytime and can happen to anyone regardless of tribe, religion or social class. Sadly, the society’s response to this heinous crime has led victims to believe that silence is the best option. However, Speaking up is our greatest weapon in this fight against sexual violence."

"I didn’t just want to document: I wanted to fully understand what I was documenting. I wanted to be very aware of how you take photographs in certain situations; not to expose people, and to try to present the narrative you want without making it into a spectacle of a human being in suffering. That is why I see myself as a visual scholar. I need to understand the aspects of what I am working with."

"The first thing I would say is to understand there is a history of activism, of the arts, and literature and to keep that in mind and not discard the past and what people did. It is important to learn about the past and build on it. That is quite important to understand. Ageism is still very prominent in how people speak, write, and create their ideas, particularly on social media. I would say the first thing is to look at the past and build on it and respect it, just as I respect what is happening now and what young people are doing."

"You can’t change anything if you don’t have imagination... Don’t let the oppressor dictate the narrative. I think we have the tendency to react to the oppressors’ narrative and really we should be dictating our own narrative. That is something I learned: sometimes we focus on them rather than what we ought to change in ourselves. They are there to distract us from what we need to do."

"People need to understand we are invested in the future and how that future will be."

"Caught between Western imperialism, African patriarchy and religious fascism, the continent’s gay community needs a strong, articulate set of voices. This is a work of African resistance that boldly states: We are here, and we are many!"

"I want to resist the “African homosexual” as an empirical figure waiting to be discovered or, through NGO and international interventions, to be created and saved"

"I am not scared of lifting other women up. As long as I wear the crown, no one can take my throne."

"You can’t boldly say you have succeeded in life till you help someone who can never pay you back."

"I LOVE YOU: Even the toughest man will melt a bit when his partner professes their love for him. They love hearing we love them. Also, they like hugs, kisses and cuddling too. Even a nicely-worded email or text message will work"

"YOU ARE MY DAD: It’s less of an ego-boost as it is a verbalization of respect. It’s a testament to both our efforts and our priorities – which are the woman and her well-being."

"I APPRECIATE YOU AS A MAN: Men need to feel like men.. It has everything to do with knowing that their partner appreciates something about their character (honesty, integrity, selflessness, etc.) or something else."

"I RESPECT YOU: As men age, They have less of a need to be recognized for selfish reasons . This feeling is replaced by the need to feel respected out of love. They love feeling admired and respected from the people who love and care about them!."

"I APPRECIATE WHAT YOU DO: Men need to feel like they are good providers for the people they love. If they believe anything less, they don’t perceive themselves as the man they should be. As such, when they are told that you’re thankful for their hard work, effort, and for providing, it means a tremendous deal to them."

"YOU LOOK GREAT: This one’s a no-brainer, right? After spending a significant amount in a relationship, they still love hearing that our partner finds them attractive. This is particularly the case if they’ve been putting in some time at the gym. Your compliments serve as a reward for their hard work and as motivation to keep them going."

"I TRUST YOU: There are fewer things more sacred than trusting someone with your life. When you’re in a relationship, this is an essential truth. Here’s a bit of advice from Georgianna Donadio, Ph.D., “The best time to share your feelings (is) just before or during close intimacy. At that time, levels of oxytocin, a hormone that enhances feelings of trust, love and intimacy, are elevated, making it the best moment to love talk with your partner."

"I'M LISTENING: Men and women communicate very differently. For example, in an argument, a woman is usually more willing to sit down and have a dialogue. The man often feels an inclination to seek solitude to think things over or distract himself. They do love hearing “I’m listening” or “I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to talk” in any case."

"THANK YOU: Similar to women, men appreciate recognition for efforts small and little. “Thank you” is a straightforward yet powerful phrase that shows them your appreciation for what they do. (Here’s a tip, ladies: if you say “Thank you” on a regular basis for something they do, they are much more likely to do it again.)"

"We want to do away with the walls that divide and separate us, whether it's the walls of social class or the wall of ethnicity, or the walls of religion."

"We are mothers we are life-givers and we are solution bearers we think that we should bring solutions to the table rather than dwell on the problem."

"For the sake of peace, it is important to build a community of women with one purpose and work for the overall well-being of the people notwithstanding their religious and tribal affiliations."

"My motivation and drive in life is God. I have a personal relationship with Him. And my hunger for the impossible quickens something in me to rise to the occasion and make it possible."

"My father taught me integrity while my mother taught me to be industrious, hardworking and disciplined. My husband, Dr. Iko Ibanga, is another person who has taught me to strike a balance between my pioneering, result-oriented spirit and loving people sincerely. He is one man that brings beauty out of relationships."

"When men and women combine and form close bonds, we’re stronger and more effective, like a bundle of broomsticks connected together by a single cord."

"I am not saying we should disregard sex differences, i am only advocating that boys and girls be given equal opportunities to develop themselves as standing up straight to pee doesn’t necessarily make anybody smarter, or dumber."

"I don’t think we would have been so hard on the woman if we stopped tying acts of service to gender."

"I love my femininity and would always embrace and enhance as best I can, but I believe that shouldn’t box me or constrain me to a set of rules."

"I am all out for teaching young girls and inspiring women to break away from age-long societal norms, constructs, and stereotypes that have limited their progress by showing them that they can do anything and be whomever they choose to be regardless of society’s dictates."

"Being a gender advocate is definitely not for the faint hearted."

"The educational institution, as a citadel of learning, should not be a place where societal constructs are amplified or embraced."

"In 5 years I believe that we will be showcasing a lot of lucrative innovations that were created by Africans for Africa."

"We have a strategic role to play in breaking that financial and growth ceiling."

"Start wherever you are and just do your little bit and that little will match up with somebody else little bit. Before you know it we have a wide level of impact."

"we will get more funding and financing if we collaborate because we will prove that Africa is the place where people should invest."

"So many people struggle with where do I start from even when they want to make a difference."

"Women are way ahead of men in terms of wanting to be social change makers."

"If your voice is not part of shaping what black philanthropy is, we will be impacted by what other people develop."

"Despite the overwhelming pushback against gender equality, I encourage young women and girls to remain resilient and hopeful for the holistic change we are working to create."

"I anticipate a day in my lifetime when women and girls can thrive and take up space in all socioeconomic and political spheres of society without fear of violence."

"I call on governments, policymakers, and other key stakeholders to prioritize the rights and well-being of women and girls in COVID response plans."

"Despite the challenges to women’s and girls’ empowerment, young women and girls must remain resilient and hopeful for the holistic change we are working to create."

"I am a lawyer (in equity), vocal girls’ rights advocate, and an unapologetic feminist."

"My doting parents raised me to believe in Gender Equality."

"Feminism is the translucent lens through which I view all individuals – EQUAL, regardless of gender."

"I am a Woman of Rubies because of the passion I exude and my commitment to purposeful living"

"Women generally speak the same language – silence, and breaking this culture is what a few women have tried to do. A lot of women are not empowered and they allow themselves to be used by politicians as cheer leaders. They bring them to clap at political rallies."

"When there is justice, fairness and equity. When human rights are guaranteed and when the system works."

"This is unacceptable! Nigeria is a democratic country under the law and not a dictatorship or banana republic."

"Freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of movement are some of the fundamental human rights granted to Nigerian citizens by the 1999 Constitution as amended... We, therefore, condemn the shooting of Sowore as barbaric and an infringement of his rights under the law."

"It is very, very important that in as much as we try to protect the rights of those who believe in same-sex marriage, we still have to let them understand the consequences in terms of the health hazards and all that, but, if it is their own choice, there is really nothing one can do about it."

"It is so obvious that the Nigerian society is not committed to the wellbeing of the girl child going by the spate of sexual violence on girl children in recent time and the high level of abandonment and threat to the education and health of the girl child."

"There is no country that can prosper if a quarter of its population is left behind. And the wellbeing of girls amounts to the wellbeing of the country."

"Education still remains the quickest way to liberate a mind and no amount of talk can do this if we fail to educate the girl child. I also believe that laws protecting the girl child must not only be enacted but must also be enforced. And we must ensure compliance."

"I believe there is power in the words that we say, and our words have enough creative power such that what we say and believe in our minds & hearts shape our reality."

"I believe in Nigeria’s potential to truly be a great nation; the giant of Africa and indeed, a giant in the world."

"Citizens who understand the power they have to elect and hold those in public office accountable can truly move mountains!"

"I believe very deeply that Nigeria should and will be great. I believe I deserve better."

"We must stop looking outside of ourselves for a messiah but look inward, making a conscious decision to play our parts in the puzzle."

"Feudalism was a licence to plunder, rape and even murder. The rich got richer; the poor despaired."

"I announced 'Jehad' - a movement to represent the silent majority to raise controversial issues that most people feel afraid to speak about. It liberated me from the corrupt politics that I had witnessed. I decided to stand apart and away from the mainstream of the rotting political system and the deficient and self-serving politicians that consumed our national wealth and exploited our people."

"In her letter to her mother, Koofi writes: “I learnt from you that literacy alone is not enough to bring up good children, but intelligence, patience… and self-sacrifice. This is the example of Afghan women, women like you who would walk miles with an empty stomach to make sure your children get to school.”"

"In her opinion, talking to the Taliban about reconciliation is a mistake, “another short-term quick fix that will do nothing to solve the world’s problems.” She advises her daughters not to be afraid of anything in case she doesn’t make it back home one day: “I live this life so that you — my precious girls — will be free to live your lives and to dream all of your dreams.”"

"Faith is the strongest of all earthly weapons!"

"That who is not free in his house, does not have his house. That who is not free in homeland, had lost his homeland."

"It is the woman herself that matters rather than her covering."

"I do not advocate neglecting your parents: honour and succour them, especially in their old age, but don’t stay at home and do housework when you long, body and soul, to fly to the uttermost ends of the earth, there to find your mission in life and your gift to the world."

"I have arranged the poems by women in a separate section, irrespective of whether British or American; not in any sense of sexual rivalry, but merely from a natural desire to give them prominence and to show that despite their lack of opportunity, women feel all the poetry of flight and are fully alive to all that progress in aviation means to the world."

"The Leeds Mercury has always taken a pride in stating fairly all points of view in public life."

"la mujer es apta para todo."

"Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan."

"Si la mujer estuviera convenientemente ilustrada, educada y emancipada de formulismos rutinarios, la politica de los pueblos seria distinta"

"No hay duda que la primera y mejor escuela es el hogar. La mejor y superior maestra para el niño, es, la madre instruida."

"I refuse to accept the assertion of any historian who erroneously believes that women have no right to use their freedom without being considered corrupt or immoral, while men have been able to do whatever they want and indulge the most absurd and ridiculous whims, without being judged, repudiated or prevented from going where they choose, with no concern about not being paid attention to, respected or sought after. We are going to put an end to those unequal laws-where the few have a lot and the many have a little-in order to finally secure peace for the just and achieve the truth and justice that our sex deserves."

"Although we are all brothers, some die of hunger and of foodstuffs, clothing and shoes. And with so many naked and bare-while what is useful and necessary rots at the depots and warehouses"

"My great worry is the problem of poverty…Instead of prisons, I would have schools, art and vocational academies, free trade, free love, the abolition of marriage and the substitution of private property for public property."

"Education is the mother of freedom; science is her eldest daughter; and her sisters, tolerance and discretion, with rights and responsibilities."

"In the middle of great abundance, and without having studied the social question, I believed that everybody had the right to be clean and clothed, to wear shoes, and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t so. I thought everyone knew how to read and write and I was astonished when I saw the opposite"

"She’s a woman, not only when she’s powdered and wearing lace and ribbons, just like a man doesn’t stop being a man when he learns to cook, mend, sweep and sew."

"Women, by force of will and energy, are quite capable of doing certain jobs that they previously had been denied. This theory is constantly disputed by those who claim women's inferiority due to sexual difference, which, it is said, seems to be an immutable law of nature. But there is nothing more false than to attempt in this way to uphold the permanent superiority of men."

"As a general rule, women nowadays dedicate all their energy, all their attention to their appearance; they are not concerned with anything except wearing the latest fashion; they squander all their intelligence in trying to become more beautiful, and not even in any practical way, by some beneficial and hygienic method, like practicing gymnastics, exercising in the fresh air, or swimming every morning. But no, it must be done with ribbons and lace, by cutting their breath short from the excessive use of tight-fitting corsets. And this translates to a waste of time, health, and money."

"a true beauty, real and lasting, [is] achieved by a healthy diet, without eating meat or drinking alcoholic beverages, by practicing gymnastics and taking walks in the open air, not a fictitious beauty such as that of adornment, without which, she is no longer herself."

"Could there exist true happiness in a marriage when the man is the only one who can regularly exercise his free will and satisfy his desires, without caring whether or not his wife agrees? Accustomed to the passive obedience of women, he does not bother to find out whether or not she is satisfied with his conduct. And if she is not, he does not attempt to please her, nor to adapt his conduct to a new way of life. How can the holy priestess of the hearth preserve the sacred fire of love in the home when she has to officiate alone? Where is the principal object of her devotion? Look for him outside the home at those times when he should be at the side of his companion. Will a solid foundation for domestic happiness be established by this behavior? No. Men have the right to do or undo, without his companion. He goes to a masked ball or not, to the casino, to gamble, or chases other women.... and meanwhile, poor woman! A sad scenario for domestic bliss! She is subjected to a sad solitude for days and nights on end, orphaned of love, of sweet attentions and joys while the above-mentioned companion gambles, dances... or falls in love."

"For women it is generally admitted that her sexual life is null or subordinate to that of the companion-legal or otherwise-that she has chosen. She should live and feel for him; be passionate if he is, and maintain herself neutral if he is cold. Until now a man has considered sensual desire as something that pertains to him, not recognizing in women a moral and physical self organized like him."

"The only thing we want to put forth is that women must acquire greater freedom and rights. The current system, with all its errors, is sustained by the ignorance and slavery of women."

"Harmony within a marriage greatly influences the education of children, our future citizens. How many times have a mother’s tears, cried in moments of pain and contradiction, powerfully influenced her children!"

"Women must become enlightened or educated, because being enlightened encompasses all the fields of human science: Physiology, Geology, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Engineering, Agriculture, Geometry, History, Music, and Painting...Education is a beautiful and necessary thing."

"If a woman is not instructed and educated will she be able to educate, counsel, and guide her children suitably? No. And this is an important matter that should interest women, the home being the first and most necessary of schools. Whatever the child sees the mother do or say is what the child will observe and learn."

"Education means cultivating patience, tolerance, a sweet disposition, harmony, abnegation, and temperateness. Anyone who cultivates these virtues is truly educated."

"There are many women who think that being a mother means contradicting a child, and later they beat them, and order them about for the sake of giving orders, to see herself obeyed, ordering the child not to run, not to jump, not to yell, in sum, a whole bunch of ignorant things, the truth is, to prohibit a child from doing all this is to prohibit them from being healthy. They act like this with girls precisely because they are girls, as if a girl's organism did not have to develop, so that they can grow up beautiful and strong, and not scrawny and pale, nor become mothers full of pains and ailments. They think that being a mother authorizes them to mistreat and order the children at whim, and oblige them to do things against their will, that is an error."

"How many girls pay for the tantrums, jealousies or vexations of their mothers, who act without any justifying motive, only because they need to blow off steam and they can’t do it in front of their husbands."

"yo entiendo que lo que otros consideran utópico, és en mi concepto realizable."

"¿Qué conceptos tenemos de los que se oponen a todas las ideas de igualdad y libertad humana? La de traidores y judas del Maestro. Todos los que juzgan una idea llevada á la práctica, utópica, son obstáculos, y los obstáculos deben empujarse á un lado. Son los que entorpecen las grandes iniciativas, las obras de bien. Y aun así, se llaman patriotas y padres de la patria. ¿Qué concepto de la patria tendrán? Un concepto egoista, que empieza en ellos y termina en ellos. Ellos lo son todo."

"No hay nada más perjudicial al éxito de una empresa, que la timidez, el apocamiento, la duda. Una especie de cobardía, que creo que solamente la poséen los vagos. No creo nada imposible; ni me asombro de ningún invento ni descubrimiento, por eso no encuentro utópica ninguna idea. Lo esencial es llevarla á la práctica. Empezar! Lo demás, es debilidad, y un concepto errado del poder humano. ¡Querer es poder!"

"El actual sistema social, con todos sus errores, se sostiene, por la ignorancia y la esclavitud de la mujer."

"unas manos útiles son preferibles á unas simplemente bellas."

"No me explico por qu el hombre cr e tener siempre derechos sobre la mujer."

"Todos los que apoyan, y continúan explotando, son los que sostienen el estado de miseria del pueblo y por tanto son los sostenedores de las cárceles, presidios ó mejor dicho los creadores de ladrones. de asesinos, de locos y fanáticos religiosos y políticos. Porque si no fuera por temor á la miseria, no habría fanáticos, políticos y religiosos. El temor á la miseria ó la miseria misma hace cometer torpezas, que degeneran en crímenes, injusticias y locuras, por los cuales tenemos cárceles y manicomios desigualdades é injusticias. La Revolución Social, será la que hará desaparecer tantas iniquidades. Y la revolución surgirá por la propaganda y el estudio é investigación científica. Y la propaganda la hacemos los libertarios y el estudio está al alcance de todos. Estudiemos y preparemos nuestra generación para las luchas futuras, que se avecinan."

"El hombre acostumbrado á ver en la mujer un objeto de placer olvida que está destinada á sor madre y maestra de una nueva generación"

"En un sistema social comunista en que los individuos tengan derecho sobre todo lo que produce la naturaleza y el ingenio de todos, podrá haber más libertad, y el hombre podrá crear una familia sin preocupaciones económicas ni sociales. Pero aún no hemos llegado á esa época, no tardará en ser establecido entre los humanos, ese hermoso procedimiento común."

"Individuos de ambos sexos hemos caído en el error de creer que solamente el hombre tiene derecho á usar su libertad del modo que le plazca."

"Es indispensable que la "Igualdad" deje de ser una vana frase muy usada, que los derechos de ambos sean iguales."

"En vez de ir á oir misa, visitas los pobres y socórrelos, que podrás hacerlo: en vez de confesarte y comulgar, visita los presos, y llévales consuelos, algo que los instruya. No olvides que los abundan en cárceles y presidios son los pobres y los ignorantes, las víctimas de siempre de todas las explotaciones."

"Cuando se reforme esta sociedad indiferente y egoísta por la futura, fraternal y altruista, entonces, cuando no se cometan injusticias, cuando no se castiguen inocentes, cuando los jueces no exijan "la verdad, toda la verdad, y nada más que la verdad", siendo los primeros embusteros. Cuando no haya quien robe un bollo de pon, porque carezca de él, Cuando no exista la propiedad privada, y todos nos miremos como hermanos, entonces, y sólo entonces, desaparecerán las cárceles, presidios y las inútiles y perniciosas iglesias. No habrá miseria, odio ni prostitución. Existirá el libre cambio, pues estarán abolidas las fronteras y la verdadera libertad reinará en este planeta. Procura tú ayudar con la práctica á la realización de estas hermosas ideas humanas para que no perezcan de hambre y de frío, los infelices que no tienen hogar, ni riquezas, en los tristes portales de alguna cochera ó pesebre, ó de algún palacio....iqué irrisión! ¡Qué humanidad! á dos pasos de opípara mesa y de ricos y abundantes abrigos, perecer de hambre y de frío. Cerca de la prodigalidad y el despilfarro, el hambre, el dolor... pobres niños víctimas de la miseria... Parece un sueño, ó cuento y es una realidad, que asombra... ¡Qué horror! !qué falsos son los cimientos de esta llamado sociedad, que está basada en el crímen, el error, y la hipocresía."

"Las instituciones religiosas, han ayudado á fomentar esos privilegios y división de clases. Si los trabajadores en general por medio de la instrucción no logran destruir los privilegios de castas, razas, gerarquías, y miles de majaderías, que nos perjudican como seres humanos. Entonces la revolución lo hará. Muchos le temen á la revolución. Pero no hay como pertenecer á ella, para que el miedo se evapore. Las cosas vistas desde lejos, producen distinto efecto. De cerca, se llegan á palpar, y desaparece lo que se llama efectos de distancia y también de apreciación."

"Debemos explicarlos las cosas materiales como son, sin añadir ni disminuir. La verdad debe ser la base fundamental para la educación de la niñez Y los padres tienen la obligación de no engañar á sus hijos, y enseñarlos á no engañar á los demás."

"Los padres deben dirigir y educar al niño, pero no castigarlo. Es un error creer que es una forma de educar el maltratarlos y atormentarlos."

"Socialista soy, porque aspiro á que todos los adelantos, descubrimientos é invenciones establecidos, pertenezcan á todos, que se establezca su socialización sin privilegios. Algunos lo entienden con el Estado, para que este regule la marcha, yo lo entiendo sin gobierno No quiero decir que me opongo á que el gobierno regule y controle las riquezas, como lo hará, pero yo mantengo mi opinión de sentirme partidaria decidida del no gobierno. Socialismo ácrata. Bien yo aquí afirmo y declaro solemnemente, que para ser socialista es necesario haber analizado y comprendido la Psicología."

"El socialismo está en el luminoso cristianismo que socavó los cimientos del poder de los Césares, por la fraternidad. Y la fraternidad universal sera la implantación del socialismo que es abnegación, dulzura, modestia, templanza, <> Seguros escalones que conducen á la perfección humana, para la libertad y el progreso espiritual indefinido aun por la pluralidad de mundos habitados superiores. Instruyámonos para purificarnos. eduquemos nuestra voluntad para el ejercicio del bien, y dejemos consumir bajo el influjo de la razón, el fuego de la pasiones, en holocausto á la emancipación humana, para la persecución del progreso espiritual."

"One of the most outstanding women leaders in this movement was Luisa Capetillo...She wrote on education and the importance of women working outside the home, on the benefits of a Communist society free from oppression and religion, on love, and on the future of society. In all her writings she insisted on her affiliation with socialism, on her support for women's liberation, and particularly her defense of "free love." She never married, and had three children in open relationships. Capetillo traveled to New York, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Florida, and published the feminist magazine La Mujer. She was arrested in Cuba for wearing slacks. In Puerto Rico she is remembered in a popular song that says: "Doña Luisa Capetillo, intentionally or not, has created a tremendous uproar because of her culottes.""

"The socialist and especially anarchist organizations in Puerto Rico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century launched a number of community education programs, and its leadership made literacy and intellectual activity a priority for the working class. Belpré may have been raised in a milieu similar to the environment that produced Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), the Puerto Rican feminist anarchist who, though of humble birth, was highly literate, bilingual (Spanish/French), and became an accomplished author and activist as an adult (Iglesias de Pagán 1973; García and Quintero Rivera 1982; Ramos 1992; Sánchez González 2001)."

"A century ago Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo said, "If you don't want women to sell themselves for bread, give them bread.'"

"In looking at the Puerto Rican movement as a whole and the positive contributions that we made in the seventies and early eighties, first we need to point out that we built on our legacy of struggle. We stood on the shoulders of such Nationalists as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebrón, and such communists as Luisa Capetillo, Jesús Colón, Bernardo Vega, Julia de Burgos, Juana Colón, Evelina Antonetti, Antonio Corretjer, Genoveva Clemente, Gerena Valentín, and many others."

"We identified as revolutionary nationalists' committed to ending exploitation and colonialism. We were inspired by the herstories of women activists in Puerto Rico. We learned about Lola Rodríguez de Tió and Mariana Bracetti, early fighters for the abolition of slavery and the island's independence from Spain; Luisa Capetillo and Juana Colón, working class organizers and women's rights advocates; and Lolita Lebrón and Blanca Canales, Nationalist Party militants imprisoned for their actions to free Puerto Rico. We studied the lives of African American women such as Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist, and Harriet Tubman, who freed slaves through the Underground Railroad. Our sisters in the Black Panther Party were diversifying the image of the revolutionary, and we joined the protests to demand the release of Angela Davis from a California prison, and of Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird in New York. The long line of women activists, from contemporary social justice movements, became our role models and mentors."

"She had taken an active role in many strikes over her life, including the highly successful sugarcane strike of 1916 which won 13% pay increases. In addition to her anarchist activism, she caused a scandal by being the first woman to wear trousers in the region: once sensationally being arrested in Cuba and tried for it. Although she successfully defended herself in court arguing there was no law which prohibited her wearing men's clothing."

"Her progressive ideas and her lifestyle inspires amazement, then respect and admiration, because of the enormous personal sacrifices she made in order to live a different life and fight for her vision of a new world."

"I believe that it is essential, especially for women active in the feminist movement in our country, as well as for those who are affirming their cultural identity, to know about the struggle of Puerto Rican female workers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Luisa Capetillo is a symbol and model to emulate because she was not satisfied with merely having principles and believing in them. She actually lived those principles with an indomitable rectitude, in spite of her contradictions."

"Luisa Capetillo, Historia de una mujer proscrita belongs to the contemporary cultural phenomenon of women's biographies. Only now are we becoming familiar with María de las Mercedes Barbudo, who struggled for Puerto Rican independence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was jailed in El Morro, the infamous military garrison in old San Juan; with Ana Roqué (often referred to as Ana Roqué de Duprey), pioneer journalist and novelist; Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo, travel writer, translator and poet; Librada Rodríguez, labor and political leader; Julia de Burgos, the poet of love and nationhood; and Ruby Black, the United States feminist and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's friend and confidante, who made a successful career writing as a correspondent for La Democracia, a Puerto Rican daily newspaper."

"She revolutionized the role of women in Puerto Rican society and became a paradigm for the new woman."

"When I initiated my research, motivated by the desire to learn more about the history of Puerto Rican women, I found that everyone who knew Luisa Capetillo when she was alive, or knew about her, remembered her as the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants in public. At first I thought these recollections were based on an implied societal intention not to recognize this revolutionary for her important role, but rather to brand her an eccentric, remembered only by what could be considered superficial actions. I was saddened by the fact that even respected intellectuals didn't value her feminist, labor and anarchist work in its true perspective. What I found out was that Luisa Capetillo did not wear pants in public as a whim or to attract attention. She did not preach free love because she was immoral or libertine. She did not become the first feminist in Puerto Rico, both in theory and in action, because she was disappointed in love. The theories developed by Capetillo and her actions in daily life came from the legitimate theoretical political formation that ruled her life, Luisa Capetillo must be situated in her historical moment. The fact that she was a vegetarian and a true believer in Swedish calisthenics and in yoga, as ways to keep the body in optimum health, has to be discussed. To fully understand this woman, it is not enough to know her intellectual and public accomplishments; how she lived also has to be known."

"Along with theories about "spontaneous revolution" and the organization of campesinos and industrial workers into unions and libertarian federations, the anarchists also transmitted a set of ideas about everyday life that included free love and free education, which would result in men and women "free" from conventional ties. The books by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta (who lived in Latin America for many years), significantly shaped the education of Puerto Rican workers and deeply inspired them. The educational theories of the Catalonian Francisco Ferrer and the French writers Sebastian Fauré and Madeleine Vernet (whom Luisa Capetillo called Magdalena Vernet), became the ideal of Puerto Rican workers."

"The defense of a woman's right to education was the motivating and uniting issue which would eventually culminate in a more liberal complete and progressive education for Puerto Rican women. Tempered by their struggle, women emerged who would lead the feminist movement in the early twentieth century. These women were the liberals Ana Roqué, María Luisa de Angelis, Isabel Andreu de Aguilar, and the workers Luisa Capetillo, Franca de Armiño and Concha Torres. A better and more complete education for women of all social strata remained the unifying cause within the feminist movement throughout the years."

"During her lifetime, Luisa Capetillo was often compared to George Sand."

"Where Luisa Capetillo truly acquired her vast culture was through the independent reading that she did during her lifetime, beginning in childhood. She read the works of the French writers, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, the Russian Romantics, Leo Tolstoy and Turgenev, and the French astronomer, spiritualist and freethinker Camille Flammarion, whose research on astronomy and psychical studies she avidly read. Her own work reflects the ease with which she handled the theories and texts of influential authors such as the French doctor Paul Vigne, of Hugo and Tolstoy, the writings of anarchist educator Madeleine Vernet, and the philosophical-political essays of Peter Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill."

"The play that Luisa Capetillo wrote in 1909, Influencias de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas), published in San Juan in 1916, was inspired by Tolstoy's philosophy and included a main character who resembled him."

"José María Vargas Vila, Colombian journalist and novelist, whose radical political ideas resonated with the workers, was also a favorite of Capetillo and her audience."

"Journalist Santiago Carreras described the historic moment and Capetillo's passion as he recalled, "Luisa Capetillo at the head of the march, along with other leaders, haranguing the workers...her great mission was to read aloud to them, which she did, atop benches of the plaza." Her role in the Arecibo strike determined the direction of her life. There Luisa Capetillo became a union leader, from that moment on dedicating herself, with equal success, to organizing workers and to spreading anarcho-syndical ideas through her writings in pamphlets and newspaper articles, in talks, rallies, lectures and private gatherings."

"In spite of the fact that Capetillo's work is eminently internationalist in content, it is bound to an essential Puerto Ricanness. Whether it be in personal allusions or references to particular social problems, her love for Puerto Rico's needy children and her devotion to its workers are ever present."

"In 1908 Capetillo participated in the Fifth Workers' Congress of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores, where she defended female suffrage with zeal, not only for women who knew how to read and write, but for all women, without exception. In this Congress, she showed herself to be a true suffragist, with more advanced ideas than those of the other women, who later, in their own professional and civic groups, would support the vote only for women who could read and write. Her fellow workers in the labor movement on the Island considered her the "First true suffragist in the country.""

"She was not interested in writing for the few, but rather for the greatest number of Puerto Rican workers. ..Her beliefs in universal fraternity and the eradication of national barriers and borders inspired her to visit other countries, allowing her to share her ideals far beyond the limits of Puerto Rico."

"Her ideas about love and sexuality have been proven over time to be profound and visionary."

"Julio Aybar, editor of the newspaper Unión Obrera, said that her theories did not intimidate him. "We are not threatened by anything that Capetillo says in her book because they have always been our own opinions. Luisa breaks with today's hypocrisy and faces the issues with courage, fearless about what she writes, since it seems to us that she practices what she preaches.""

"With the publication of Mi opinión, Luisa Capetillo became the first Puerto Rican woman to organize her feminist ideas and publish them as a theoretical document."

"Capetillo could easily be a protagonist in the re-emergent feminist struggle of the 1970s, although she lived at least a hundred years earlier."

"While Luisa Capetillo theorized about women and anarchism in Puerto Rico, her contemporaries did the same in many other countries, among them Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Spain and the United States. Juana Belén Gutiérrez (1875-1942) in México, Maria Collazo (n.d.) in Uruguay, Juana Rouco Buela (1889-1969) in Argentina, Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1914) in the United States, and Teresa Clamunt (1862-1981) in Spain, preached the emancipation of women and free love and fought for workers' rights while living lives consonant with their ideals."

"La mujer," one of the articles that she published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

"About Capetillo, Jaime Vidal wrote, "For me, the author of this book is one of the most independent and free women of the Hispanic-American race, and when discussing free love she is imbued with the fiery and poetic expression of Latin writers and the ease of Anglo-Saxon thinkers. She enriches her theories and criticism with an abundance of arguments that convince even the most skeptical in the matter of free love.""

"Like the majority of the anarchists of her time, Capetillo was deeply impressed by the victory of the revolutionary forces in Russia in 1917."

"She participated in rallies in support of the candidacy of Santiago Iglesias Pantín, whom she admired and considered her comrade."

"The funeral orations were delivered by her companions Alfonso Torres, Florencio Cabello, Esteban Ortiz and José López."

"Luisa Capetillo lived intensely and actively from the moment she became part of the labor struggle to the moment of her hospitalization and death. She fought for proletarian causes, education for the masses, and the emancipation of women. Her life was not easy or pleasant. She had no comforts or luxuries. She inspired hostility in many people who rejected her revolutionary ideas. However, it is also true that until her last moments, she was accompanied and comforted by the workers, her compañeras and compañeros, to whom she offered her life. In her confessional book, Influencias, she bemoans the envy and rancor that those who fight for truth and justice suffer. Yet this Puerto Rican anarchist clearly never regretted her life's direction, aptly describing herself as "a stoic of life...""

"Although in Puerto Rico there was discussion of the liberal ideas of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, and later, of Eugenio María de Hostos, it was Luisa Capetillo who established a new precedent by living according to her revolutionary ideals. By daring to live her own way, she was severely punished by the society she was forced to exist in. Among her peers, her lifestyle was resented by even the most progressive workers. Nevertheless, Capetillo was inspired by and steeped in her parents' readings and their adherence to the Romantic Movement. Embracing the anarchist principles that excited many Romantic European minds, she was able to live a different life with great bravery."

"Her ideal was to achieve a communist society where all human beings would be equal, with every worker equally valued and none being more privileged than others. She envisioned a community devoid of exploiters profiting from the labor of the workers, the major producers in society."

"{{cite news"

"Mr President, of course we should legislate to stop all forced labour. But how many times have we had to listen to accusations about China, backed up by nothing more than the say—so of weapons—industry—funded think tanks and groups on the payroll of CIA cut—outs like the National Endowment for Democracy? Where are the full and rigorous investigations, the evidence? Screaming, unsupported accusations is not how to conduct international relations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just visited Xinjiang, has had discussions with many groups and representatives there, and hopes this is the start of a fruitful process towards transparency and high human rights standards in China."

"We need more diplomacy, not less. We have two powers. The US and Russia have an awful lot in common. Both are run by monopoly capital, run by oligarchs on both sides. We have two imperialist powers fighting each other in Ukraine, and only working-class people are dying."

"Energy poverty is first and foremost a political failure which requires an adequate political response which tackles the root causes of injustice while ensuring a fair and sustainable future for all. Energy is a public good, but we need to start treating it as such – because we haven’t been doing so."

"The G7 and NATO-aligned countries, which collectively represent a minority of the world’s people, want to contain Russia and China and stop EU-Asia integration. The BRICS countries, which represent a larger portion of the world’s people, are not calling for this break – for isolation or for containment. They are clear that they want to maintain a world where multilateral institutions such as the UN are respected. The EU seems to want world domination. The Global South really wants genuine multilateralism. We should listen to them."

"Is the US a functioning democracy? Well, let’s have a look at it. It cost 2 billion to become president. They have 25% of the total prisoners in the world. They spend over 800 billion a year on arms, which is more than most of the world put together. They’ve been at war for 250 years since their state was formed 275 years ago. But they can’t afford universal health care. They can’t afford a 1.7 trillion debt forgiveness for students. They can’t afford for a programme for the 17 million children that go to bed hungry. Is this a functioning democracy? What’s your idea of a democracy? Bernie Sanders wasn’t even allowed to win the nomination for the Democrats. The Americans couldn’t spell democracy."

"What is democracy anyway? Is it having a vote every four or five years? No, it's not. It's your people having a say in the society they live in. And most of the American people have no say in the society they're living in."

"We all know exactly what NATO is: a post—war mechanism designed to maintain US dominance and control over Western Europe, advance US geostrategic interests and violently suppress socialism. To pursue these aims, NATO has partnered with right—wing terrorists and fascists to conduct long campaigns of bloody terror and destabilisation, both in and outside Western Europe. Everywhere it conducts operations, it leaves a trail of destruction and destabilisation behind it, and persists often for decades after the initial act of aggression."

"Why are we choosing an aggressive position with China? Why are we not choosing cooperation instead of aggression? Why are we not respecting the principle of state sovereignty and non-interference? We should be working for peace with China. It's in our interest. But you know what? I can't help feeling that we are being led along by the nose by the Americans who have a vested interest in challenging China at the moment not because China is a threat to the security of the American people... But China is a threat to their financial supremacy"

"We must question, as the Pope has done, the wisdom of sending arms to Ukraine. We must stop executing the war on Yemen. We must stop the use of sanctions as a weapon of war in Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, Yemen and elsewhere. These medieval weapons are killing women and children, the sick, the old and the vulnerable the most. We must end Fortress Europe and extend the compassion we rightly have for the Ukrainian women and children to all refugees and internally displaced people. Selective humanity is not humanity at all."

"Many people are asking, what is democracy? Democracy is where the people have a say in how their society is organised. There isn’t much of it around. In Member States, it’s been watered down dramatically by the weakening of local government – one of the best vehicles that the people had for connecting with those that were ruling them."

"If we care about human rights we will suspend relations with the criminal apartheid state of Israel until they stop the genocide of the Palestinian people and until Palestine is free."

"Meanwhile, the EU and our friends are immune from criticism and when you have armed contracts with totalitarian regimes, who carry out terrible atrocities, you look the other way. I will take seriously the concern expressed in here for US-paid journalists imprisoned in Vietnam when you deal with the millions of starving and dying children in Yemen and demand they be free from Saudi-UAE aggression and free from the fear of the weapons of the US, Canadian, UK, French, German, Swedish Spanish and Belgian countries blowing them to pieces."

"The US and their allies claim to be fighting a war on terror whenever they drop bombs and kill people. Here they have taken out some of the people who have done more to fight ISIS than anyone else that we know. They have been asked to get out of Iraq, are they going to get out of it? Are they going to recognise the democratic decision? They claim to have brought democracy to Iraq; are they going to respect it now?"

"El-Sisi is a brutal dictator. Do the French have any problems selling him weapons? No. Do the French have any problems selling weapons to the Saudis who are committing genocide in Yemen? No. Does the EU do anything about it? No. This European Union has sanctions, which are a form of terrorism, against Venezuela, Syria, Iran. You do business with murderers. What’s going on with you?"

"We know who is increasing the tensions in the Persian Gulf. It isn’t Iran; the Saudis, with the nice backing of Israel and, of course, the US. Why don’t we call it as it is and stop playing footsie with words? They have a problem with the powerful nature of Iran, with the independence of Iran, and Europe does need to put its arm around Iran and be more welcoming. Iran is not feeling the love from Europe. You have the potential to do more and welcome them more into the international community."

"A watershed in my life was getting divorced in Puerto Rico—that was my second marriage—and leaving Puerto Rico to become part of the women’s movement. In my formation as a professional, there was always a kind of pressure to deny or not use a lot of your personal experience. The science of medicine, to some degree, negates the human, feeling, experiential part of it. But I was now discovering a whole other world out there through my personal experience of a deceptive marriage. That triggered quite a bit of growth in me toward understanding what happens internally to people, what happens in their lives and what they can do or not do…So I went back to New York and I got very involved in reproductive rights. I began to join in the women’s movement. At Barnard College there was a conference called the First International Conference on Abortion Rights that was attended by a few thousand women…We organized one of the first consciousness-raising groups of Latino women…A number of incredible things emerged from women talking about their experiences…We shared and we became very bonded. That was the beginning of my identification with women’s issues and reproductive health."

"My mother was a schoolteacher who fought for reforms such as the right to teach in Spanish, the vernacular,” she explained. “English was imposed upon the Puerto Rican school system when the US military invaded in 1898."

"In Puerto Rico, racism was subtle. There wasn't the kind of separatist racism like in the US. I wasn't used to this."

"I saw that anybody who could afford an abortion could get a perfectly fine one. It would be written up as an appendectomy. Women from the US used to go to Havana to get abortions."

"What brought me to the women's movement was the women's health movement. The cultural elements of feminism didn't resonate with me, but abortion resonated with me. I became part of the women's movement in October 1970 at an international meeting on abortion rights attended by several thousand women and held at Barnard College in New York City."

"Women brought a feminist perspective to health issues affecting women. They examined power relationships among individuals and between individuals and systems. The very early drafts of Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the Boston Women's Health Collective, which was seminal in all this, said we need to know our bodies, we need to know what makes us healthy and what threatens our health, and we need to negotiate or confront the health care system to get the best possible health from it."

"The only way to effect change was for more women to go into the professions and instill a different perspective—a more human touch and a more respectful relationship with patients."

"The women's movement was very diverse, but the more public positions articulated by the movement didn't include the experiences or concerns of women of color or of poor women."

"We got a lot of flack from White women who had private doctors and wanted to be sterilized,” she said. “They had been denied their request for sterilization because of their status (unmarried), or the number of their children (usually the doctor thought they had too few). They therefore opposed a waiting period or any other regulation that they interpreted as limiting access . . . While young white middle class women were denied their requests for sterilization, low income women of certain ethnicity were misled or coerced into them"

"APHA has always provided a home for people in public health with a broad view of what public health is. Public health is really about people's life conditions and how these conditions do or do not promote health. APHA is committed to equity and ending all barriers, and has always been committed to civil, human and health rights. It's a wonderful place for women to be."

"We still have a system that excludes, underserves, and even misserves all too many people. The latest census tells us that there are over 44 million Americans without health insurance. That is inexcusable. The failed social policies of the past few decades have widened the gaps between rich and poor, well and poorly educated, medically indigent and consumers of elective high-tech surgery, owners of multi-mansions and the homeless. We need health, but above all we need to create a grounding for healthy public policy that redresses and salvages the growing inequities. We cannot achieve a healthier us without achieving a healthier, more equitable health care system, and ultimately, a more equitable society."

"Shall we not then have women school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers?"

"Your favor containing the question, as to whether I consider myself a "new woman" is before me. As a rule I do not consider myself at all. I am, and always have been a progressive woman, and while never directly attacking the conventionalities of society, have always done, or attempted to do those things which I have considered conducive to my health, convenience or emolument, as for instance: Attended college and graduated when the general sentiment of the people was against it, and this after I had been a married woman. Entered a law school and graduated, at a time when there was much opposition to such. Applied for, and was admitted ultimately to the United States Supreme Court. Such a course had been previously unknown in our history. I was the first woman to ride a wheel in the District of Columbia, which I persisted in doing notwithstanding newspaper comments. I accepted a nomination to the Presidency by the Equal Rights Party, and my letter of acceptance was published throughout the length and breadth of 2 worlds. I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade; or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men; but wish we had more of it everywhere. I was new about 60 years ago, but did not then appreciate my privileges. Yours truly, Belva A. Lockwood."

"Peace is a matter of education more largely than of legislation; although the latter is necessary."

"Our own civil war cost our nation one million men and three billion dollars, besides the waste of valuable records and countless treasure, and $145,000,000 yearly in pensions. It laid the foundation of the countless financial disasters of 1895, and created sectional prejudices and hatreds that will not entirely die out during the next fifty years."

"It is doubtful if a candid person, entirely unacquainted with the facts, who should read English history with an account of the seven years' war of the Revolution, and then read our American history of the same events, could believe that they related to the same events. The same may be said in reference to the historians of the Franco-German war or of our war of the Rebellion."

"We have ten statues to the soldier where we have one to the philanthropist."

"A recital of their wars constitutes the largest portion of the history of Christian nations; while the strides that they have made in commerce, in manufactures, and the arts, constitute the least."

"The love of home and country are undoubtedly meritorious attributes, and self-sacrifice for country has always been held in high esteem, but it is but another form of self-love, and it is quite possible to make this love not only excessive, but unjust. There is another and a higher love-the great love of humanity, of peace, of justice and equality-that should be taught to our youth as well. To die for one's country has been usually considered"

"Our Congress, without any danger of war unless we provoke one by meddling, are continuously making appropriations for war ships to strengthen our Navy, in order to protect long stretches of sea coast, that no nation has the remotest idea of attacking, or to protect our foreign commerce, which has recently grown so small that one would need a microscope to discover it. These large naval appropriations furnish very good jobs for the young men who graduate at Annapolis; and glory for the Secretary of the Navy, who is usually anxious to magnify himself and his office. So the money of the people is spent for a costly vessel that will usually stand the strain of one peaceful cruise at sea, providing there are no storms, and then go to the dry dock for repairs. These appropriations are not only useless, but positively harmful, for they at once alarm our European friends, and incite them to a greater increase of their military and naval appropriations."

"The United States can afford to be generous and progressive along the line of peace legislation, even to taking the initiative in a permanent Treaty of Arbitration with a country as highly cultured as Great Britain, for the peace spirit is the cultured one, and the war spirit the savage side of human nature; other nationalities would be sure to follow. This would be the dawning of a new day, an epoch in history ever to be remembered. The present industrial condition of the country, the struggle of labor against the greed of monopolies, of trusts, of vast aggregations of capital, is a far greater menace to the security and prosperity of the State than any foreign foe possibly can be."

"The Red Cross follows after the army, binds up the wounds made by the sabre and the bullet, closes the eyes of the dying, and sends the parting message to the widow and mother; but the Peace Movement, with a broader charity, seeks to abolish guns and bayonets and to settle all difficulties by arbitration, or by judicial methods."

"Women have nothing to gain by war, and the laboring man only a soldier's grave, or wasted health, with his sacrifices speedily forgotten or ignored by the Government and the masses."

"The great war of to-day is a war for bread and butter"

"No thoughtful person, no humane person, believes in war, which destroys everything and creates nothing but hatred. We believe and teach peace and arbitration in the home, in the church, in society, in the State, and between nations. We believe in the sanctity of human life, the inalienable rights of individuals, in justice, in equality and fraternity. Our Government has already settled many serious difficulties with the various nations of the world by arbitration and by treaty, without resort to war and without bloodshed, and the expense of all of them combined has not been one-tenth that of the War of the Revolution."

"Organization is the hope of the world, and woman the elastic cement that is binding organizations together, and by them and through them we hope soon to hold the banner aloft to the nations of the world, proclaiming the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."

"Tradition has developed into practices which overtime have become beliefs which in essence they put women in a position of inferiority."

"Tradition has developed a hierarchy in relationship between men and women that leads to discrimination."

"The role tradition has played in the relationship in the family between men and women has been detrimental to women."

"The developed world needs to feel that these huge levels of poverty (are) a threat to their own security. When their interests are at risk, money can be found."

"We need to make the message much clearer -- that aid means saving lives, it’s not a luxury."

"Culture for me is when you sing or dance, when you have theatre, when you read a book, a beautiful poem. It doesn't matter whether it's Shakespeare who wrote it or whether it is an African poet – it is communicating with all of us, regardless of who you are, your colour, your social structure."

"It is not just fear of a husband that makes a woman bow to these traditions. They are ingrained in her from her upbringing, the women learn to accept as if it's normal."

"We are a society where women, and children by the way, are not safe anywhere. Something absolutely and deeply wrong is happening in our society."

"The problem is not the consequences of what’s happening, it’s the root causes of why and how we got where we are as a society.”"

"A pandemic within a pandemic has been exposed and we are confronted with the horrific reality that millions of women and children — in every country — are fighting for their survival, not just from COVID-19 but from the brutalities of abusers in the prisons of their homes."

"We are proving that we can come together as a united human family to holistically tackle COVID-19, let us apply an equally comprehensive, vigorous, and unrelenting focus to eradicating gender-based violence as well."

"We have to change our mindsets, our behaviours, our value system."

"We must reinvent our relationships and re-engineer the way we relate in our families, in our schools, in our workplaces with the spirit of ubuntu that Archbishop Tutu taught us and exudes with every fibre of his being."

"These are the beautiful faces,the brilliant minds and vibrant voices of our daughters, nieces, sisters, whose childhood and innocence we have left unprotected, and these shocking statistics on teenage pregnancy do not even paint an accurate nor comprehensive picture of our shameful disregard for young people we claim to love and cherish."

"Africa’s socio-economic transformation will only be realized once we aggressively address gender-specific challenges, prioritize gender equality and women’s participation, and firmly entrench women in leadership positions at all levels in society."

"African women need to be in the driving seat of national discourse,women need to be at the centre of our economies,they must also pro-actively seek to correct the status quo."

"Investing in education from early childhood has a lasting effect on the survival, development, protection and active participation of children in social, economic and political activities."

"Education, particularly for girls, is a catalyst for reducing child and maternal deaths and lifting people out of poverty."

"To ensure that we achieve the goals for our development by 2063 we need to fully invest in and optimize of the continent’s other half which for too long has been neglected: the African female."

"“When you educate a girl, you educate a nation.”"

"Women are not children; they are adults that know what they want to do. They should be recognised with their dignity and to start a business whenever they feel like it."

"People say I am powerful but I care more about impactful – in the work I do with children, adolescents, women or even institutions. Those who observe can say, ‘you are powerful,’ but it doesn’t come from me to say I am powerful."

"What they have taught me and what I take from their lives is this real ability to go beyond yourself and to dedicate your life to the common good, to create spaces and opportunities for freedom for all."

"I am driven by the thought of seeing myself reach the pinnacle of success."

"I am also driven daily by the belief that I was made to be a positive influence in people’s lives and make a meaningful impact in my community and globally."

"I would like to be remembered as a woman who cared about youth development and women development and who went about doing that in innovative ways."

"Go where you are needed, look for a gap that you can fill and go for it!"

"I really believe the Internet is a well of wealth when it comes to opportunities- be it sponsorships, scholarships, jobs etc."

"I have the audacity to dream, there is nothing that I believe is impossible for me to achieve with enough patience, time, hard work and determination."

"I have been down and out and have had circumstances on every front which could have potentially broken me and made me give up. But I have a tenacious fighting spirit and have learnt not to see rejection and failure as a reflection of my abilities or as a reflection of my journey but as necessary growing pains."

"It is always when I do the things that are purpose-driven that I am happiest, most fulfilled and go the furthest. I’ve learnt to listen out for the voice of God regarding my purpose and follow that."

"I am inspired by women who work hard to make ends meet. The woman who is a street vendor while carrying a child on her back in the heat and rain, the woman who walks Kilometers to go to the farm so that her children can eat."

"Never stop investing in yourself, take that short course, take a year off and go to school, do whatever you need to do to further your dreams."

"You are your own most prized commodity so you need to place yourself as your own highest priority"

"Just like male politicians women are capable."

"Politics is about our country’s development so when the other gender is not actively involved, there will be no balance."

"You don’t have to insult your opponents, just sell your yourself and your party manifesto and explain thoroughly why you would be the right candidate for the job."

"Woman of steel (27 July 2022) Retrieved (30 July 2022)"

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, to do more and become more, then you are a leader."

"For me, the most rewarding thing is that I am able to influence people’s lives in my own small way."

"Radio puts one in a position of influence. Many people look up to you for guidance. This makes one humble, because you cannot give people advice when you do not practice what you preach."

"The time is ripe now for women to prove it beyond doubt that they deserve positions of responsibility by merit not by virtue of gender."

"We want our seat at the top table on merit, not because we are women. We should respect each other’s businesses and talents. At some point we should engage each other for a rewarded aid. Let’s be open with each other and advise one another. We need to team up and be passionate with what we do"

"Africa’s future belongs to its young people"

"The Industrial Workers of the World is a new form of labor organization, one that stands for the industrial working class and that class alone."

"The working class of this country look out upon a situation where there are natural resources present to supply the entire world with plenty; they look out upon an industrial situation which has invented machinery capable of getting these natural resources with but little labor expenditure into finished commodities of necessities or luxuries. Yet in spite of that and in spite of the productiveness made possible by men who labor and the natural abundance of the earth itself, in spite of that, we have people starving in this country and five million idle; over a million child laborers in the United States; seventy thousand children in New York City and fifty thousand in Chicago that go to school without a breakfast in the morning. We have a conditionin which the majority of the people are a propertyless class, are a class that own no land, that control none of that productive machinery, that control absolutely nothing in this land of the free and home of the brave but their own labor power; their own abilities to work."

"Today the working class have only conditions that they themselves are in a position to remedy, they have only false conditions, not nature’s making, but man’s making, that they themselves can overthrow"

"All we have is our ability to labor and the capitalist class have not that one commodity; they have the factories, they have the land, they have the railroad but they have not the labor power, the power of wealth producing."

"Gompers, the Bosses’ Friend."

"We have only our organization, fellow workers; they have capital; they have the power of the government, the slugging community of the capitalist class; they have the power of the state; they have the power of international capital — and we have but our power of organization."

"I feel that many of our critics are people who stayed at home in bed while we were doing the hard work of the strike."

"What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to have achieved a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. For workers to go back with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and a determined attitude toward society means that even if they have made no economic gain they the possibility of gaining in the future. In other words, a labor victory must be economic must be revolutionizing. Otherwise it is not complete."

"a labor victory must be twofold, but if it can only be one it is better to gain in spirit than to gain economic advantage."

"Our work was to educate and stimulate. Education is not a conversion, it is a process. One speech to a body of workers does not overcome their prejudices of a lifetime. We had prejudices on the national issues, prejudices between crafts, prejudices between competing men and women, all these to overcome."

"Stimulation, in a strike, means to make that strike and through it the class struggle their religion; to make them forget all about the fact that it's for a few cents or a few hours, but to make them feel it is a "religious duty" for them to win that strike. Those two things constituted our work, to create in them a feeling of solidarity and a feeling of class-consciousness"

"I don't say that violence should not be used, but where there is no call for it, there is no reason why we should resort to it."

"Physical violence is dramatic. It's especially dramatic when you talk about it and don't resort to it. But actual violence is an old-fashioned method of conducting a strike. And mass action, paralyzing all industry, is a new-fashioned and a much more feared method of conducting a strike. That does not mean that violence shouldn't be used in self-defense. Everybody believes in violence for self-defense. Strikers don't need to be told that. But the actual fact is that in spite of our theory that the way to win a strike is to put your hands in your pocket and refuse to work..."

"If on Sunday, however, you let those people stay at home, sit around the stove without any fire in it, sit down at the table where there isn't very much food, see the feet of the children with shoes getting thin, and the bodies of the children where the clothes are getting ragged, they begin to think in terms of "myself" and lose that spirit of the mass and the realization that all are suffering as they are suffering. You have got to keep them busy every day in the week, and particularly on Sunday, in order to keep that spirit from going down to zero. I believe that's one reason why ministers have sermons on Sunday, so that people don't get a chance to think how bad their conditions are the rest of the week. Anyhow, it's a very necessary thing in a strike."

"In fact that is a necessary process in every strike, to keep the people busy all the time, to keep them active, working, fighting soldiers in the ranks. And this is the agitator's work,-to plan and suggest activity, diverse, but concentrated on the strike. That's the reason why the I.W.W. has these great mass meetings, women's meetings, children's meetings; why we have mass picketing and mass funerals. And out of all this continuous mass activity we are able to create that feeling on the part of the workers, "One for all and all for one." We are able to make them realize that an injury to one is an injury to all, we are able to bring them to the point where they will have relief and not strike benefits, to the point where they will go to jail and refuse fines, and go hundreds of them together."

"This is the agitator's work, this continual activity. And we lay awake many nights trying to think of something more we could give them to do. I remember one night in Lawrence none of us slept. The strike spirit was in danger of waning for lack of action. And I remember Bill Haywood said finally, "Let's get a picket line out in Essex street. Get every striker to put a little red ribbon on and walk up and down and show that the strike is not broken." A few days later the suggestion was carried out, and when they got out of their homes and saw this great body that they were, they had renewed strength and renewed energy which carried them along for many weeks more in the strike."

"People learn to do by doing. We haven't a military body in a strike, a body to which you can say "Do this" and "Do that" and "Do the other thing" and they obey unfailingly. Democracy means mistakes, lots of them, mistake after mistake. But it also means experience and that there will be no repetition of those mistakes."

"The employers have a full view of your army. You have no view of their army and can only guess at their condition."

"Shall it be 'America First' or 'Workers of the World, Unite!'""

"Let those who own the country, who are howling for and profiting by preparedness, fight to defend their property."

"I despise the rule of Rockefeller and Morgan as much as that of King or Kaiser, and am as outraged by Ludlow and Calumet as by Belgium."

"The majority of our workers are foreigners, one or two generations removed, and with their European home-ties and American environment, internationalism becomes the logical patriotism of a heterogeneous population."

"The train on which I write rushes by factories where murder instruments are made for gold."

"It obliterates all differences of race, creed, color, and nationality. It celebrates the brotherhood of all workers everywhere. It crosses all national boundaries, it transcends all language barriers, it ignores all religious differences. It makes sharp and clear, around the world, the impassable chasm between all workers and all exploiters. It is the day when the class struggle in its most militant significance is reaffirmed by every conscious worker."

"This day is to the enlightened worker an augury of a new world, a classless world, a peaceful world, a world without poverty or misery. It is the glowing promise of socialism, the real brotherhood of mankind. On this day in 1941 the wise words of Lenin; “Life will assert itself. The Communists must know that the future at any rate is theirs,” will light up the lonely jail cells of Browder and Thaelman and countless others. Lowhummed snatches of revolutionary song will be heard in concentration camps. On the sea, in military barracks, in the forced labor of factory or mill, the hearts of the driven workers will beat to unison with those far away who parade joyously behind gleaming red banners, to stirring music on Moscow’s Red Square. “Do your damnedest to us!” they mutter between clenched teeth, the conscripts in European trenches, the prisoners in Franco’s dungeons, in Hitler’s hell holes, in Mussolini’s prisons; “Your days are numbered. You can’t stop the final victory of the people!""

"May Day was baptized in the blood of American workers."

""Let the voice of the people be heard!" cried Parsons, as the noose tightened around his neck. It has been, it ever Will be on May Day, brave martyred hero of yesterday! This year the newly organized, victorious strikers of the International Harvester Works in Chicago will hallow your names on May first."

"Rosa Luxemburg, brave woman Socialist of Germany, who was later brutally murdered by the militarists, sounded the alarm against a World War in 1913. She called upon the workers to make May Day a mighty demonstration for peace and socialism. “Workers of the world, Unite!” became the insistent cry on May Day. Every vital issue was pressed, more and more militant slogans raised in each country and internationally."

"Only workers are forbidden to be internationalists. It’s perfectly proper for J. P. Morgan and Henry Ford; for the bankers, the munitions trusts, the chemical companies. It’s proper for scientists, stamp collectors, athletic associations, musicians, spiritualists, people who raise bees, to be internationalist – but not workers. Only the clasped hands of the workers across the boundaries are struck down in every country. It will pass for all anthropologist to say in abstruse language, “There is but one race – the human race!” But let a worker say, “Brother, fellow worker, comrade” – and there’s hell to pay. He should be sent back from where he came from! He should be deprived of his citizenship; he should lose his job; he should be jailed! If a Christ-like voice should challenge them: “But what about loving thy neighbor as thyself?” the wild man from Texas would roar: “Who said that? He’s a Red, subversive, a trouble maker!” Let us not be dismayed in the slightest by all this frenzy. Let us remember the cool words of Lenin: "Acting thus the bourgeoisie acts as did all classes condemned to death by history." Every beautiful May Day of solidarity, triumph, and hope is another reminder to us to take “the long view” – the Bolshevik view of passing events. The road ahead may be rougher but it is shorter than the road behind."

"On May Day we salute the Soviet Union – land of socialism – land of peace and plenty, the great ideal of labor since time immemorial, the cooperative commonwealth of all who toil."

"Let the war mongers shout; let the profit-mad rave. “We shall not be moved!” retort these millions of American workers on May Day. There is nothing to be despondent about; nothing to be weary about – not so long as we are organizing and fighting. Not so long as we are holding what we have won in an iron grip; are moving forward, getting more. Not so long as there is unswerving resistance to the Roosevelt-Willkie war party among eighty-six percent of the American people. Organize. Fight. Press Forward – that’s the spirit of America’s May Day in 1941."

"Organize and fight, to stay out of war! Against all imperialism and fascism, including American!"

"peace and socialism is in the hearts, in the minds, on the lips of millions around the world May First, 1941. The “sun of tomorrow” shines upon us. The future is ours."

"I and none of my comrades are guilty of any conspiracy to advocate overthrow of the United States government by force and violence. Silence might be construed as defeatism when the truth is that I am so serene in our consciousness of innocence of any crimes, that I can be imprisoned but I cannot be corrected, reformed or changed. My body can be incarcerated but my thoughts will remain free and unaffected. All human history has demonstrated that ideas, thoughts, cannot be put in prison. They can only be met in the forum of public discussion."

"The political, industrial and social conditions under capitalism which created our ideas remain. They will produce similar ideas in the minds of countless others and further strengthen them in ours. Never did prison affect resolute people who live and work and die if necessary by their ideas. We Communists are such people. I have faith in the ultimate justice of the American people once the fog of lies, hysteria, prejudice and, worst of all, fear is swept away. It is a terrible thing to see one's country in the grip of fear-needless, stupid, foolish fear; fear of imaginary enemies, fear of our allies and friends; fear of the accusing fingers of stool pigeons, fear of losing one's job or one's citizenship or one's place in a community. The whole governmental bureaucracy, wasting billions of dollars, boasting, bragging, bullying, is whistling in the dark of fear, trying to make the whole world afraid of us."

"It is from a small handful of frightened rich that this contagion has spread the men of the trusts, who never loved their country more than their stocks and bonds, whose patriotism is always on a percentage basis, who would rule and exploit and use violence against not only their fellow countrymen but the human race. They would plunge the world into a sea of blood by atomic warfare in order to maintain their own mean and mercenary rule, their way of life, and foist it upon other people who want none of it. Great as the danger looms, I have faith that fascism will never come to pass in our country. I am proud of the role that our Party has played in signalizing that danger since 1935."

"Somewhere and soon the Smith Act will go into the discard as did the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1800, the Fugitive Slave Laws of the sixties, the Criminal Syndicalist Laws of the 1920s."

"The fog engulfing courtrooms, middle class juries and the press will lift among the masses of plain people, the ones who never get on federal juries because their appearance and manner doesn't satisfy a hard-boiled political appointee who splits his infinitives, doubles his negatives and toadies to the prosperous."

"A people's movement is arising in our country like a strong, fresh prairie wind against repressive legislation, loyalty oaths, congressional investigations, witch-hunts, political trials and the like."

"I asked you a question on Friday, Your Honor, which I now repeat: If the Communist Party is not illegal, its membership and officership is not illegal, if advocating socialism is not illegal, if advocating a day-to-day program of "good deeds," as the government cynically calls it, is not illegal, what in all conscience is illegal here? Of what are we guilty?"

"In all my long life. ... I never expected that I would go to jail for books, and not even whole books but scraps and pieces, and if I return to my normal life of the last forty-seven years, of working and speaking on unionism, democratic rights, the rights of the Negro people and of women, on peace and against fascism and war, and on socialism, what happens then, Your Honor?"

"Your Honor, all the material property I possess, as far as a fine is concerned, are books accumulated since I first bought a paper-covered copy of Tom Paine's Common Sense at the age of sixteen. They are good books-poetry, drama, history, political economy, fiction, philosophy, art, music, travel, literature. Marx and Engels are there beside Shakespeare, Shaw, Emerson, Hegel, Mark Twain; Lenin and Stalin are there beside Thoreau, Jefferson, the Beards, the Webbs, Hugo, Hardy and many others...There is force and violence on those shelves but not where the government looked for it. It is in Irish history-Connelly, O'Casey and others telling of the long and bloody struggle against British rule. It is in American labor history, in Colorado, West Virginia, Homestead, South Chicago and on the Embarcadero of San Francisco. It is in American history-the Revolution, the wars against the American Indians, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War. It is in the struggles of the Negro people. It is in the Bible, too-which is on my shelf, Your Honor-violence against the Jewish Tribes, and the old prophets, against Jesus and his Disciples, and the early Christian martyrs."

"Force and violence come from the ruling class and not from the people."

"An unforgettable tragedy of our childhood was the burning of the excursion boat, the General Slocum, in 1904."

"The book (Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy) first popularized the idea of socialism in this country. It was a biting criticism of capitalism, which hit home to many Americans and with which they agreed in the days of rising monopolies."

"His (Peter Kropotkin's) appeal to the youth of the poor struck home to me personally, as if he were speaking to us there in our shabby poverty-stricken Bronx flat: "Must you drag on the same weary existence as your father and mother for thirty or forty years? Must you toil your life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread?""

"Another book I recall, which caused an immediate change in my life, was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. After reading it I forthwith became a vegetarian!"

"During that period (around 1906) I had studied two more books, which helped to catapult me into socialist activities. One was the Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft; the other was Women and Socialism by August Bebel."

"The unionization of women, even in occupations like the needle trades where they predominated, had scarcely yet begun. Equal opportunities, equal pay, and the right to be organized, were the crying needs of women wage-earners then and unfortunately these demands remain with us today. Many union leaders, like Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, did not consider women workers organizable or dependable. "They only work for pin mon-ey was the usual complaint. An outside job was considered by the woman worker herself as a temporary necessary evil-a stop-gap between her father's home and her husband's home. Fathers and husbands collected women's wages, sometimes right at the company office. Women did not have a legal right to their own earnings. There was no consideration for the special needs and problems of working mothers, though they were numerous and pressing. Even the clothes of women hampered them-the long skirts that touched the ground, the big unwieldy sleeves, the enormous hats. You were still "a girl" if your skirt was above your shoe tops."

"The struggle for the right of women to vote was nationwide and growing. It had started with the first Equal Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was addressed by Frederick Douglass, the great Negro leader. The suffragists had been ridiculed, assaulted by mobs, refused halls, arrested for attempting to vote, disowned by their families. By 1904, groups of working women, especially Socialist women, were banding together to join in the demand for the vote. Two years later, International Women's Day was born on the East Side of New York, at the initiative of these women demonstrating for suffrage. It spread around the world and is universally celebrated today, while here it is deprecated as "a foreign holiday.""

"The suffrage movement was growing more militant and figures like Maude Malone appeared. She organized the Harlem Equal Rights League in 1905. She interrupted Theodore Roosevelt at a meeting of 3,000 people to demand where he stood on woman suffrage. She walked up and down Broadway, at the same time we were holding our street meetings there, with signs front and back, like a sandwich man, demanding "Votes for Women," and lost her post as a librarian in consequence."

"Suffragist speakers on streetcorners were invariably told: "Go home and wash your dishes," or, regardless of their age: "Who's taking care of your children?" Others said: "Imagine a pregnant woman running for office," or "How could women serve on juries and be locked up with men jurors?""

"There was a prevalent concept that "woman's work" was confined to the domestic scene. "Woman's place is in the home," was the cry. Women were constantly accused of taking "men's jobs.""

"I said then and am still convinced that the full opportunity for women to become free and equal citizens with access to all spheres of human endeavor cannot come under capitalism, although many demands have been won by organized struggle."

""Big" Bill Haywood came out of jail a hero-a fitting symbol of the solidarity of labor. He was described by one reporter as, "big in body, in brain, and in courage." He made a triumphal tour of the United States and Canada, under the auspices of the Socialist Party and the labor organizations which had defended him. He was an intensely down-to-earth dramatic speaker. I remember hearing him say: "I'm a two-gun man from the West, you know," and while the audience waited breathlessly, he pulled his union card from one pocket and his Socialist card from the other."

"In 1907, During the campaign to free Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, I was invited to speak at a meeting, in Newark, New Jersey, arranged by the Socialist Labor Party...This meeting is an unforgettable event in my life because it was here I first met James Connolly, the Irish Socialist speaker, writer and labor organizer who gave his life for Irish freedom nine years later in the Easter Week Uprising of 1916 in Dublin...He was short, rather stout, a plain-looking man with a large black moustache, a very high forehead and dark sad eyes, a man who rarely smiled. A scholar and an excellent writer, his speech was marred for American audiences by his thick, North of Ireland accent, with a Scotch burr from his long residence in Glasgow...Connolly worked for the IWW and had an office at Cooper Square. He was a splendid organizer, as his later work for the Irish Transport Workers, with James Larkin, demonstrated...He felt keenly that not enough understanding and sympathy was shown by American Socialists for the cause of Ireland's national liberation, that the Irish workers here were too readily abandoned by the Socialists as "reactionaries" and that there was not sufficient effort made to bring the message of socialism to the Irish-American workers...He published a monthly magazine, The Harp. Many poems from his own pen appeared. It was a pathetic sight to see him standing, poorly clad, at the door of Cooper Union or some other East Side hall, selling his little paper. None of the prosperous professional Irish, who shouted their admiration for him after his death, lent him a helping hand at that time. Jim Connolly was anathema to them because he was a "So'-cialist." He had no false pride and encouraged others to do these Jimmy Higgins tasks by setting an example. At the street meetings he persuaded those who had no experience in speaking to "chair the meeting" as a method of training them. Connolly had a rare skill, born of vast knowledge, in approaching the Irish workers. He spoke the truth sharply and forcefully when necessary"

"Its (the IWW's) advent was an important event and it blazed a trail, like a great comet across the American labor scene, from 1905 to the early 1920s. It made labor history, and left an indelible impress on the labor movement. The IWW was a militant, fighting, working class union. The employing class soon recognized this and gave battle from its birth. The Iww identified itself with all the pressing immediate needs of the poorest, the most exploited, the most oppressed workers. It "fanned the flames" of their discontent. It led them in heroic struggles, some of which it organized. Others jumped in to give leadership after the strike had started. The memorable accusation against Jesus, "He stirreth up the people!" fitted the IWW. It set out to organize the unorganized, unskilled foreign-born workers in the mass production industries of the East and the unorganized migratory workers of the West, who were largely American born and employed in maritime, lumber, agriculture, mining and construction work. In the East and South, it reached workers in textile, rubber, coal maritime and lumber and in a variety of smaller industries. In New York City, for instance, there were IWW locals in clothing, textile, shoe, cigar, rattan, piano, brass and hotels. In the West there was a Cowboys' and Broncho Busters' local of the IWW. The entire working class of the fabulous town of Goldfield, Nevada, was organized in 1906 by Vincent St. John into the IWW. The Italian laborers at the U.S. Army's West Point were once organized in the IWW. I recall speaking to them there, about 1911. I joined in 1906…"

"At this (IWW) convention I was thrilled to meet Mrs. Lucy Parsons, widow of Albert Parsons, who had been executed 20 years before in the yard of the Cook County Jail in the heart of Chicago. While he was hanged she was held a prisoner in the Clark Street Station House, not far from where we were then meeting... I remember Mrs. Parsons speaking warmly to the young people, warning us of the seriousness of the struggles ahead that could lead to jail and death before victory was won. For years she traveled from city to city, knocking on the doors of local unions and telling the story of the Chicago trial. Her husband had said: "Clear our names!" and she made this her lifelong mission."

"I never met a man I admired more than Vincent St. John...He was damned as a dynamiter, a gunman, a dangerous agitator; he entered camps with a price on his head, used his mother's name-Magee-and organized hundreds of men, often single-handed. He was one of the greatest labor organizers this country ever produced...He was short and slight in build, though broad-shouldered, quick and graceful in his movements, quiet, self-contained, modest, but his keenness of mind and wit outmatched any opponent...In a real fight, Saint's mild blue eyes became steely and cold. He fought only on principle and then as mercilessly as the enemies of the workers did. His loyalty to the working class was boundless. For eight years, from 1907 to 1915, he struggled with lack of funds and the uneven development of the IWW, whose strength he never exaggerated."

"The Greatest woman agitator of our time was Mother Jones. Arrested, deported, held in custody by the militia, hunted and threatened by police and gunmen-she carried on fearlessly for 60 years. I first saw her in the summer of 1908, speaking at a Bronx open-air meeting. She was giving the "city folks" hell. Why weren't we helping the miners of the West? Why weren't we backing up the Mexican people against Diaz? We were "white-livered rabbits who never put our feet on Mother Earth," she said. Her description of the bullpen, where the miners were herded by federal troops during a Western miners' strike, and of the bloodshed and suffering was so vivid that, being slightly dizzy from standing so long, I fainted. She stopped in the middle of a fiery appeal. "Get the poor child some water!" she said, and went on with her speech. I was terribly embarrassed."

"The next winter I saw Mother Jones again in Chicago at a meeting in Hull House of the Rudewitz Committee, to which I was a delegate from Local 85, IWW. I heard her hot angry defiant words against the deportation of a young Jewish worker on the vile pretext of "ritual murder." (Jane Addams and others saved him from certain death by their spirited defense). Mother Jones was dressed in an old-fashioned black silk basque, with lace around her neck, a long full skirt and a little bonnet, trimmed with flowers. She never changed her style of dress throughout her lifetime. She may sound like Whistler's Mother but this old lady was neither calm nor still, breathing fearless agitation wherever she went... She was put out of hotels. Families who housed her in company towns were dispossessed. She spoke in open fields when halls were closed. She waded through Kelly Creek, West Virginia, to organize miners on the other side. Tried for violating an injunction, she called the judge a "scab" and proved it to him. She organized "women's armies" to chase scabs-with mops, brooms and dishpans. "God! It's the old mother with her wild women!" the bosses would groan. In Greensburg, Pennsylvania, when a group of women pickets with babies were arrested and sentenced to 30 days, she advised them: "Sing to the babies all night long!" The women sang their way out of jail in a few days to the relief of the sleepless town. She was asked at Congressional hearing: "Where is your home?" and she answered: "Sometimes I'm in Washington, then in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota. My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong. In 1903 she led a group of child workers from the textile mills in the Kensington district of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Oyster Bay, Long Island, to confront President Theodore Roosevelt with proof of child labor. In Colorado, after the Ludlow massacre in 1914, she led a protest parade up to the governor's office. In West Virginia, time after time, she led delegations to see various governors and "gave them hell," as she said...When she was a very old lady, she warned the rank and file against leaders who put their own interests ahead of labor. Until her death she stoutly affirmed her one great faith: "The future is in labor's strong, rough hands!"... She inspired me a great deal when I first heard her in New York and Chicago in those early days, though I confess I was afraid of her sharp tongue. But when I reminded her of the meeting in the Bronx and told her I had lost my baby, she was very sympathetic and kind. Her harshness was for bosses, scabs and crooked labor leaders."

"After war was declared a mounting wave of hysteria and mob violence swept the country. It was not shared by the vast majority of American people who became increasingly intimidated. Printed signs were tacked up in public places: "Obey the law and keep your mouth shut!" signed by Attorney General Gregory. The victims of mob violence were varied-Christian ministers, Negro and white, advocates of peace on religious, moral or political grounds; Socialists, IWWS, members of the Non-Partisan League, which was strong among farmers in the Middle West; friends of Irish freedom, and others. Some individuals, both men and women, who made chance remarks on war, conscription or the sale of bonds were tarred and feathered, beaten sometimes to insensibility, forced to kiss the flag, driven out of town, forced to buy bonds, threatened with lynching."

"This spirit of mob violence was one of the most dangerous and shameful manifestations in our country, all in the name of making the world "Safe for Democracy.""

"Kate Richards O'Hare, as I have described, was a prominent and extremely effective Socialist speaker."

"Whatever her subsequent political shortcomings may have been, progressive women were very proud of her at that time."

"I had been a devoted IWW, but my activities in the Workers Defense Union also brought me into contact with Socialists, anarchists, trade unionists, Communists, suffragists, pacifists, liberals, Indians, Irish nationalists and official representatives of both the Soviet and Irish Republics."

"There were practically no women in the Italian movement-anarchist or socialist. Whatever homes I went into with Carlo the women were always in the background, cooking in the kitchen, and seldom even sitting down to eat with the men."

"Woodrow Wilson spoke fluently and freely on all subjects as a "liberal," but his sorry deeds belied his words. "Self-determination" and "make the world safe for democracy" were the most vulnerable. Demonstrations and delegations of advocates of peace, "Hands off Russia," freedom for Ireland, amnesty for political prisoners and last, but not least, "Votes for Women," confronted him at every turn. His administration was faced with the great steel strike of 1919-20. His plans to join the League of Nations were defeated by the Senate. Members of his administration resigned in protest over various issues-a secretary of state over war, a collector of the New York port over suffrage, the issue that perhaps plagued him most."

"World War I made many radical changes in the lives of American women. It brought to an end the "lady" type. The labor shortage was great, the need of trained workers acute. At the end of 1918, nearly three million women were employed in food, textile and war industries. Occupations hitherto regarded as "men's work" were open to woman. They worked as conductors on street cars. For the first time they were trained as radio operators. Women volunteered for the motor corps in the army and wore uniforms for the first time. "Farmerettes," wearing bloomers, went from the cities to farms. Women did relief work, sold war bonds, organized canteens for the armed forces, joined nursing units. Thousands emerged from their homes into public life. Many remained in industry, either from necessity or choice, when the war ended."

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"The Women's Party picketed almost continuously from January 1917 until March 19, 1919. They picketed the White House and Capitol, held military parades, return receptions for Wilson after his trips to Europe and receptions when he departed. They picketed him in Washington, Boston and New York. Only the Irish had attempted such tactics. Later, a Children's Crusade for Amnesty picketed President Harding. Suffrage banners were addressed to foreign visitors and President Wilson's speeches on "freedom" and "democracy" at home and abroad were burned by the suffragists in a "watch-fire of freedom" urn."

"Once the right to vote was achieved, women did not remain united as women, but divided into the existing political parties and other organizations as their views and interests dictated. The one common denominator of peace could, I believe, unite women once again, with a few exceptions."

"I have no recollection of the term "united front" in the 1920s. It came into use considerably later. But the extent to which the radical and progressive movements operated then on such a principle is very apparent. Men and women who spoke out for suffrage would also sign appeals for financial aid to the IWW and appear on Irish and amnesty delegations and were in the peace movement. There were no hard and fast lines drawn between one good freedom cause and another and no such fears of reprisal as there are today. People were not afraid they would hurt one cause by identifying themselves with another. I marvel today at how wide and diffuse were my contacts and friendships in those days."

"I was still an IWW in my convictions and hesitated to join a political party, although the Russian Revolution and association with the suffragists and the Communists were modifying my views considera-bly"

"When the news of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 burst upon the world, American workers learned for the first time of a man named Vladimir Lenin-through this great event in human history, the beginning of socialism. We also learned some new words, which became part of the language in no time, "Bolshevik" and "Soviet," among them. Even those of us who were left-Socialists and IWWs knew practically nothing of the Russian Socialist movement, except that we had great sympathy with its long, agonizing struggle to overthrow the tsar's cruel and bloody regime. Overnight, "Bolshevik" became a household word, even to those who did not know it merely meant "majority," and referred to a political division in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. "I am a Bolshevik from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes!" said Debs. "Damned Bolsheviks!" employers shouted at militant workers and union organizers. All strikers were "Bolsheviks," of course."

"the IWW...those are the initials for the Industrial Workers of the World which used to be called the "I Won't Work" which was extremely incongruous because actually the people who belonged to the organization were in the basic, most difficult hard-working industries of our country. To call it the workers of the World was rather an ambitious name as actually it never did go beyond the confines of the United States and it grew out of the desire of American workers to continue the traditions and the form of organization of the old Knights of Labor."

"(The IWW} was not only the inheritor of many of the traditions of the 1880's but personalities who were identified with the 1880's were present at the early conventions of the IWW. The names may not be known to you unless you are students of labor history but included were such figures as Eugene Debs, Daniel DeLeon and Mrs. Lucy Parsons"

"There were many free speech fights...their techniques were something like the Freedom Riders of today. They would send out telegrams, and; I am explaining, you understand, I am not agitating, they would send out telegrams something like this, and say: "Foot Loose Wobblies, come at once, defend the Bill of Rights", and they would come on top of the trains and beneath the train, and on the sides, in the box cars and every way that you-didn't have to pay fare, and by the hundreds literally they would land in these communities, to the horror and consternation of the authorities and they would stand up on platforms or soap box and they would read part of the Constitution of the United States or the Bill of Rights...those were the free-speech fights that are very well known and very characteristic of the IWW in the western part of the country."

"The AFL was the skilled workers' organization and its form and methods and principles were not the same as the IWW. The IWW believed in the class struggle. They didn't believe in the brotherhood of capital and labour and they believed that these unorganized foreign-born mass production workers should be organized in an industrial union - all together in one union and not split up into a dozen or more organizations."

"what precipitated the big strike in 1912, [which was known as the Bread & Roses Strike] which is one of the great historical struggles in our country, was a political act on the-part of the State."

"Bill Haywood decided that we had to speak English so these people could understand it. And I will never forget the lesson he gave to us. I was very young at that time, I was 22, and he said, now listen here, you speak to these workers, these miners in the same kind of English that their children who are in the primary school would speak to them and they would understand that. Well, that's not easy -- to speak to them in primary school English. Well, we learned how to do it. The only trouble is with me it kind of stuck and when I go to speak to a college audience I feel at a little bit of a disadvantage because I don't know all the big words. The small words, the short words, were the ones I was drilled in by William Haywood."

"I will give you an example of how he used to speak. We had to explain to them why we wanted them to be in the IWW, one big union and not in the AFL. Well, he would say, [showing his hand fingers spread] the American Federation of Labor, the AFL is like that, each one separated, but the IWW is like that, [he would make a fist] and they would all say, three cheers for the IWW and he had made his point."

"At the same time that this Lawrence strike was going on, there was a great strike of timber workers in Louisiana, also under the auspices of the IWW, and I single that out, although we had strikes all over the place, we were just hopping all over from one place to another, because there for the first time the discrimination, the segregation rules were-broken down. William D. Haywood went down there to speak and he said every striker sits wherever he wants to sit. Segregation in this hall of the IWW and the Negro and white workers, I think for the first time in American labor history, broke that taboo and met together."

"if there is really one thing that I am proud of in my long labor history, it is that while he was in prison, before he was executed, Joe Hill wrote a song for me dedicated to me, that was called, the "Rebel Girl" and that song, I hope you will do it here some time, it may not be the best of words or the best of music, but it came from the heart and it was certainly so treasured."

"in the period of World War I a tremendous onslaught was made against the IWW, the Socialists, all Progressives in our country. There was a very strong peace movement at that time. It was not like World War II, which was an anti-Fascist war."

"I really should tell you something about where the IWW stood in relation to other organizations because the picture probably is not yet too clear. Well, it was not a craft union; it was an industrial union and it was opposed to the AFL, bitterly so. It did not stand for any of the things that the AFL stood for, a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, a brotherhood of capital and labor, none of those things. It was strong for fighting the boss every time we got a chance and so some of the things sound very strange, but it was the truth. They did not believe in making any contracts. They believed that as long as you were organized, you could hold the office to what it said it was going to do. But a contract, a piece of paper held you and so they didn't make any contracts. How, their attitudes towards what we call the white collar workers was not good. Not good at all, because they just considered that they didn't belong to the working class. You had to wear overalls, be muscular, you had to work. If you were a pen pusher, you were not a worker, according to the IWW. Now, this also applied to students. In other words, what they would call today a very sectarian organization. But to some extent the students of that day were responsible because the students had no sympathy with the labor movement. In fact, when there were strikes it was always possible, as I saw down in a hotel, at a strike in New York City, it was always possible to get students to go in and take the place of the workers. Well, times have changed, I am very glad to say."

"the IWW also differed from the AFL in that it stood for Socialism. Although it differed from the Socialist Party in that it rejected political parties and political action, and this might have been a reflection of is composition...they had this very peculiar attitude that the real struggle was in the industries, in the shops, what they call at the point of production."

"it almost seems to me that we lived in a kind of wilderness when I tell you what didn't exist. There were no radios, no TV, no movies, very little of advertising as we know it today, there were no plastics, no artificial fabrics, no airplanes."

"I am talking about 1919, 1920, that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover first put in his appearance. He was put in charge of these raids and all reports of all over the country were to be made to him, and they were called "G" men. The FBI came into existence a little later - in 1924. So he has had this kingdom for 38 years now, regardless of administrations and it is not actually under Civil Service or under the control of the Department of Justice."

"the hatred against the IWW was so great -that editorials in papers would say, "They should be arrested at dawn and shot before breakfast, without a trial.""

"today the methods to have political auxiliaries to unions is a much better and a much more effective thing. But we tried to put everything in one pot and it simply didn't work. We were unable, and we were pretty arrogant. We were young and had the right answer to everything. We didn't want to work with the AFL, we didn't want to work with the Socialist Party, we didn't want to work with anybody else. And naturally, when the Communist Party came along, they considered that a real party because here was a much more revolutionary organization than the old Socialist Party, and they didn't agree either with the concept of the Russian Revolution although they were glad that it was a revolution that overthrew the Czar and they didn't stand with Kerensky but there was certain, you might almost call it, primitive concepts of a revolution. To the IWW a revolution meant that you take over the factories, and the shops and the mills, and the mines and the fields and you chase the bosses out, just chase them out, and that was the end of it. That was the revolution."

"the IWW's positive side, certainly it was militant, it was courageous, that it fitted the period, that it belonged to the pioneer days and that it fought for the interests of the poorest, the most lonely, the most despised, those that the AFL couldn't organize, the foreign born, the women, and as the Negroes began coming into industry, the Negroes."

"we certainly never heard of such a thing and we never thought it would be possible, that there would be social security or unemployment insurance. Those were the results of the 30's. The great struggle hat came out after the decline of the IWW. Also, we never heard of vacations with pay. We never heard of vacations, let alone vacations with pay. We never heard of seniority as it is understood today. There were no pensions for retirement of workers. There were no welfare funds of unions. There were no health centers of unions, and there were no trade union schools such as there are today. All of these things have come with the unions that have come into existence since the period of the IWW."

"There is less violence against labor today, but there are more legal restrictions. There are more attempts to invade the rights of labor by repressive legislation and by all kinds of restrictions."

"have we made progress? Oh, we certainly have, we certainly have, in spite of all the difficulties, in spite of all the problems, the labor movement has made tremendous progress. There is a new role and a new outlook for youth today. One of the pamphlets that I read years ago, I don't know if any of you have ever heard of it, is Peter Kropotkin's Appeal to the Young and it was a beautiful appeal to the young to carry forward their responsibility to make this world a better world to live in. Now, I feel in our way we did our best but the time comes when you know, they say old age isn't a disease but I say it is. The time comes when you have to slow down and lay off and give the benefit of your experience to a younger generation, if they want it."

"Club member Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, famed organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, and later a leading member of the U.S. Communist party referred to her membership in Heterodoxy as "an experience of unbroken delight!" She added, "It has been a glimpse of the women of the future, big spirited, intellectually alert, devoid of the old 'femininity' which has been replaced by a wonderful freemasonry of women.""

"During my days of solitary confinement, after Margaret had persuaded the warden that I should have access to reading material, I spent a few sessions alone in the library. Within a short time I had combed the entire place, turning up only a few books that held the slightest interest: A book on the Chinese Revolution by Edgar Snow, the autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, and a book on communism written by an astonishingly objective little-known author. After my discovery of these books, my thoughts kept wandering back to their enigmatic presence. And suddenly it hit me: they had probably been read by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Claudia Jones, or one of the other Communist leaders who had been persecuted under the Smith Act during the McCarthy era. I myself had been told that if I received any books during my time there, I would have to donate them to the library-which was a pleasure, considering the state of that so-called place of learning. As I turned the pages of those books, I felt honored to be following in the tradition of some of this country's most outstanding heroines: Communist women leaders, especially the Black Communist Claudia Jones."

"The gap left by the arrest of Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti was immediately filled by Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Haywood's years of experience in the labour struggle, his determination and tact, made him a distinctive power in the Lawrence situation. On the other hand, Elizabeth's youth, charm, and eloquence easily won everybody's heart. The names of the two and their reputation gained for the strike country-wide publicity and support. I had known and admired Elizabeth since I had first heard her, years before, at an open-air gathering. She could not have been more than fourteen years of age at the time, with a beautiful face and figure and a voice vibrant with earnestness. She made a strong impression on me. Later I used to see her in the company of her father at my lectures. She was a fascinating picture with her black hair, large blue eyes, and lovely complexion...The splendid free-speech fight she had made in Spokane with other members of the I.W.W., and the persecution she had endured, brought Elizabeth Gurley Flynn very near to me. And when I heard she was ill, after the birth of her child, I felt great sympathy for this young rebel, one of the first American women revolutionists of proletarian background. My interest in her had served to increase my efforts in raising funds, not only for the Spokane fight, but for Elizabeth's own use during her first months of young motherhood. Since she had returned to New York we were often thrown together, in meetings and in more intimate ways. Elizabeth was not an anarchist, but neither was she fanatical or antagonistic, as were some of her comrades who had emerged from the Socialist Labor Party. She was accepted in our circles as one of our own, and I loved her as a friend."

"Flynn succeeded Gene as Party chairman. She was the first woman to be elected to that post. She had been a compromise candidate; Ben Davis was also campaigning for it and many people in the Party, including a good section of the Black leadership, were terrified by that prospect. Liz seemed the best alternative. Elizabeth enjoyed a very positive reputation in the Party. When she rejoined in the 1930s (she had been a member briefly and secretly in the 1920s), she moved directly into the top leadership. She didn't need to adopt that fierce demeanor that was required of other women who were battling their way up in the hierarchy. She was genuinely concerned about people in a way that most Party leaders were not. Whenever I went to New York I would try to visit her down in the Chelsea Hotel, where she lived. She was worth listening to for her political views and because she had very acute opinions of her coworkers in the national office and wasn't afraid to express them. She adored Gene Dennis but was always very critical of Foster. Evidently the antagonism went back many, many years. She wasn't taken in by all the glamour of his heroic past as a union organizer. After all, she had her own credentials which were at least as impressive as his. She was very effective in the role of a public face for the Party, as well as a link with the historic past of the Wobblies, the "Bread and Roses" strike in Lawrence, and the free speech fight in Spokane. She had a remarkable ability to speak in plain language before a large audience and establish immediate rapport. That was something that the old-time agitators in the Party had, people like Flynn and Foster, and Clarence Hathaway, much more than my own generation. But over time I developed very mixed feelings about Liz. In Party meetings she was always very careful not to say anything unacceptable to Gus or to the Soviet Union. She was worried about me and the bad end to which my politics would lead me."

"I share the faith of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Pettis Perry and all my co–defendants that America’s working people, Negro and white, will surely rise, not like sheep, but with vigilance towards their liberty, to assure that peace will win and that the decadent Smith Act, which contravenes the Bill of Rights, will be swept from the scene of history."

"I'll see you in young shooting sprouts/That sneer at weeds - age-gnarled in doubt/Of users who defile in epithet,/A life well-lived in service, built from strife...I'll think of you forever/And how your spirit rings/Because your faith leaps as a flame/Sweet nurture to all things"

"Dorothy Day regarded Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, for instance, who had joined the U.S. Communist Party in 1937, as "my sister in the deep sense of the word." Flynn, Day wrote, "always did what the laity is nowadays urged to do. She felt a responsibility to do all in her power in defense of the poor, to protect them gainst injustice and destitution" (Long Loneliness, 145-146)."

"One of my favorite historical labor figures, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the famed rebel girl whom Joe Hill sang about and a formidable union organizer in her own right, hit the nail on the head way back in the nineteenth century while discussing the need to keep political and social justice demands on the same level as so-called bread-and-butter economic issues. In her words: "What is a labour victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society, is to achieve a temporary gain and not a lasting victory.""

"In Flynn's words, it was "a day without parallel in American labor history... a reign of terror prevailed in Lawrence which literally shook America.""

"According to traditional Marxist theory housewives were problematical as to their class consciousness; they often were unreliable allies of radical men. They were usually grouped with peasants and intellectuals as a potentially conservative drag line on the forward march of proletarian men. Women's equality was a stated goal of all Marxist movements, but the way women's issues were treated, one got the clear message that what women did was marginal to the struggle, unless they excelled at doing it the way men did. The great and celebrated heroines-La Pasionaria, Mother Bloor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Clara Lemlich did not organize housewives; they organized female factory workers, women's auxiliaries or men."

"During my tours for the war prisoners I went back to New York periodically to report to the organization and consult with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and others in this work. So began my long years of association with that fighting daughter of a long line of fighting Irish ancestors. At sixteen she was already active in the I.W.W., and Joe Hill put her in a Wobbly song, "The Rebel Girl." While she did not join with us in the early days of the Communist Party, she worked with us closely. Finally, after an interlude of ten years of illness in Portland, Oregon, she came back to New York and joined the Party, and is today one of our finest speakers, and one of the most honored and beloved members of our National Executive Committee. The story of Elizabeth's life is interwoven with many of the great labor struggles of this country. Workers everywhere know her lovely ringing voice and glowing spirit and great fighting heart. Calumet-Pas-saic-Paterson-Lawrence-all these places knew her on the picket line and the platform. Today, bearing a heavy burden of sorrow from the sudden death of her only son, Fred, she fights on for a world in which mothers will not have to lose their sons needlessly in battles for their masters."

"The woman for whom I had the greatest admiration was, of course, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn."

"She began this amazing record by getting arrested on a street corner when she was fifteen. Her father was arrested with her. He never has been arrested since. It was only the beginning for her. The judge inquired, "Do you expect to convert people to socialism by talking on Broadway?" She looked up at him and replied gravely, "Indeed I do." The judge sighed deeply in pity. "Dismissed," he said."

"she joined the I.W.W., which was then in its golden age. Full of idealism, it swept the Northwest. They had free-speech fights everywhere. The authorities arrested them and more came. They crammed the jails to bursting. "In one town," said Elizabeth, "there were so many in jail that they let them out during the day. We outside had to feed them. Every night they went back to jail. At last the wobblies decided that when the jail opened they would not come out. People came from far and near to see the wobblies who wouldn't leave jail." This part of her life, organizing and fighting the fights of the migratory workers of the West, is the part of her life that she likes most."

"Defense work was no new thing to her, and from 1918 until recently her major activities have been getting political prisoners out of jail. And since 1921 she has concentrated on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. There has been constant work, there have been arrests, there has been her preoccupation with comrades in jail for their opinions. She comes out of her first twenty years in the labor movement undimmed and undiscouraged."

"If I had no other pleasant memories to recall than those of the beautiful women I have met who were active in progressive or radical affairs, life would still be worth while. I fell in love with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn when as a young girl she aroused uncounted thousands with her clear, ringing voice to the cause of social revolt."

"One gets a sense of the energy and fire of some of those turn-of-the-century radicals by looking at the police record of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn"

"Might it not be that men who have spent their lives thinking in terms of commercial profit find it hard to adjust themselves to thinking in terms of human needs? Might it not be that a great force which has always been thinking in terms of human needs, and that always will think in terms of human needs, has not been mobilized? Is it not possible that the women of the country have something of value to give the country at this time?"

"It would be strange indeed if the women of this country, through all these years, had not developed an intelligence, a feeling, a spiritual force to themselves which they hold in readiness to give the world. It would be strange indeed if the influence of women through direct participation in the political struggles, through which all social and industrial development proceeds, would not lend a certain virility, a certain influx of new strength and understanding and sympathy and ability to the exhausting effort we are now making to meet the problem before us."

"For seventy years, the women leaders of this country have been asking the government to recognize this possibility. Every great woman who stands out in our history-Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Catt-all have asked the government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare. All have felt that the energy, the thought, and the suffering that was spent in trying to obtain permission to serve directly should as quickly as possible be turned to the actual service."

"The nation needs its women-needs the work of their hands and their hearts and their minds."

"It is time for our old political doctrines to give way to the new visions"

"How can people in other countries who are trying to grasp our plan of democracy avoid stumbling over our logic when we deny the first steps in democracy to our women? May they not see a distinction between the government of the United States and the women of the United States?"

"Can we afford to allow these men and women to doubt for a single instant the sincerity of our protestations of democracy? How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen? How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?"

"Whatever her subsequent political shortcomings may have been, progressive women were very proud of her at that time (around 1917)."

"Jeannette Rankin had just begun to serve her term as Representative from Montana when the infamous war resolution sponsored by Wilson came crashing into Congress for immediate attention, with the eyes and ears of the world waiting for the verdict. I had been hanging around the Capitol all day on April 5, and had gone home late that night, sick at heart because I was sure the measure was going to pass. About 3 a.m. the vote of the House was taken with 50 members against and 373 for war. I heard about the ordeal next day from those who had seen the session through. As the roll was called, and the reading clerk shouted "Rankin of Montana!", there was no response. Then, louder: "RANKIN OF MONTANA!" Visibly overcome and sobbing in despair, she answered: "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.' So Jeannette Rankin, in that nest of dominant males, made herself heard. If the manner was essentially feminine, nevertheless it was truly the voice of the maternal instinct which seeks to protect life rather than destroy it."

"In Congress, a few voices spoke out against the war. The first woman in the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin, did not respond when her name was called in the roll call on the declaration of war. One of the veteran politicians of the House, a supporter of the war, went to her and whispered, "Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country. Next roll call she stood up: "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote No.""

"When the revolution came to power there were tens of thousands of prostitutes, hundreds of thousands of illiterate women, 70,000 domestic servants. Gambling was a big business, vice and corruption were encouraged, and the population was denied its most elementary rights: access to education, to medical care, to hospitals, to recreation. All that was reserved for the privileged classes alone."

"What did the triumphant revolution offer our women? A new life, filled with possibilities and prospects, in which their deepest dreams might become reality. A society in which that which is most precious to us all-our children's future-would be assured. A different society, where the people would be masters and mistresses of their own destiny, where they would exert their rights fully, where new values would come into being. The triumph offered our women the opportunity to study and to work, it offered them economic security, thereby putting an end to oppression and hardship. It opened prospects of health care, of social security. For women, the revolution meant the opportunity to attain human dignity."

"We had to change women's mentality-accustomed as they were to playing a secondary role in society. Our women had endured years of discrimination. We had to show her her own possibilities, her ability to do all kinds of work. We had to make her feel the urgent needs of our revolution in the construction of a new life. We had to change both woman's image of herself and society's image of women."

"Voluntary work was beginning to fulfill its purpose: opening new horizons for women, showing them it was possible to take part, creating a new consciousness."

"In the PSP a group of us organized a woman's caucus; in fact this is what most of the women in Left organizations did. We studied the writings of the Russian leader, Clara Zetkin on the "women's question." We read about revolutionary Cuban women-Haydée Santamaría, Vilma Espín-and the role they played in toppling the Batista government."

"We felt like that instead of those nationals sending in white organizers that would go to 256, we wanted them to go where the white workers were."

"They can say anything they want to about it, but we carried it out democratically. Ain't going to say we didn't make mistakes. Hell, I made mistakes, you have, and they did. But some of the mistakes they made, we talked about them."

"They knew I'm going to fight you for...what I feel like is for the workers."

"Having a union made a lot of difference."

"The women were the backbone of that union."

"They were afraid of black people. They just couldn't stand to see, their nerves would not allow them to meet with ten black people without an attorney, whole lots of us."

"We'd go to singing and he'd say, "Velma, how can you sing? They're working the hell out of you." And I said, "I'm singing the hell out of you."...it made you forget how hard you were being worked and the treatment you were going through. Singing is something that is good for the soul, and we used to do lots of it. We had to."

"When we once got the union, I think people began to realize, I've got a crutch, and they began to tell some things. See, some things would happen to people that maybe they were afraid. Self-preservation, I've got to work. I'm head of a household. I'm feeding children. Even though you ain't making but $9.35. That $9.35 meant survival. And once we got the union, they felt like, well, I've got some protection. I've got somebody that really cares. They didn't feel like it was a little group here and there. It was 10,000 on check-off, and 10,000 members makes you feel good, you know. You're surrounded. And the grievances became more."

"My training, I guess, came from coming from a mother and working in the church and in the school. I'd always participated in PTAs, and we had organizations. And I was head of an organization in the church. I got lots of my training from my pastor too."

"Shiloh was the only church that we could go into."

"In the beginning of the union we set up, because we had poor people, they didn't have enough. And you couldn't go to the welfare or nothing if you were black. If you were black and had a clean house, you went to the welfare, you didn't get nothing. They'd tell you if you had a little old raggedy radio set, sell the radio and use that money. So we had clothes banks and things, and churches would contribute to that."

"I surround myself with people. I know my limitations. And I'll surround myself with people that I can designate to be sure it's carried out...And if you can't do that, you're not an organizer."

"We had one voting place in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, for blacks, Fairview School. And when we started our drive to get people to register, actually pulled it to its height, it was at that school. That's where the policeman came out there, in gear, to arrest everyone of us."

"They called us niggers, communists, everything in the book."

"And when we went down there, they told us, "You niggers can register but you're not going to have a nigger. We're not ready for a nigger to be elected officer." They didn't say Negroes, a nigger. And we sat there and looked at them."

"Paul Robeson, they came and told us he had been to Russia and what communism was."

"They went on the air and labeled the union top and all the union leadership as communist that night at midnight (before an election)."

"Many in the audience were tired of resolutions being passed but never acted upon."

"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist the right to life as a rich woman has it, the right to life, and the sun, and music, and art....The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too."

"I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the fire-proof structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 143 of us are burned to death. We have tried you, citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and daughters and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us. Public officials have only words of warning to us-warning that we must be intensely orderly and must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back when we rise into the conditions that make life bearable. I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement."

"When I was about five years of age my parents brought me to this country and we settled in New York. So my earliest recollections are of living in a crowded street among the East Side Jews, for we also are Jews."

"I was doing quite well when the factory burned down, destroying all our machines-150 of them. This was very hard on the girls who had paid for their machines. It was not so bad for me, as I had only paid a little of what I owed. The bosses got $500,000 insurance, so I heard, but they never gave the girls a cent to help them bear their losses. I think they might have given them $10, anyway."

"After I had been working as a cap maker for three years it began to dawn on me that we girls needed an organization. The men had organized already, and had gained some advantages, but the bosses had lost nothing, as they took it out on us."

"Then came a big strike. . . . About 100 girls went out. The result was a victory, which netted us-I mean the girls-$2 increase in our wages on the average. All the time our union was progressing very nicely. There were lectures to make us understand what trades unionism is and our real position in the labor movement. I read upon the subject and grew more and more interested, and after a time I became a member of the National Board, and had duties and responsibilities that kept me busy after my day's work was done. But all was not lovely by any means. . . . Soon notices... were hung in the various shops: “After the 26th of December, 1904, this shop will be run on the open shop system, the bosses having the right to engage and discharge employees as they see fit, whether the latter are union or nonunion.” Of course, we knew that this meant an attack on the union. The bosses intended gradually to get rid of us, employing in our place child labor and raw immigrant girls who would work for next to nothing."

"Women have proved in the late strike that they can be faithful to an organization and to each other. The men give us the credit of winning the strike. . ."

"The girls and women by their meetings and discussions come to understand and sympathize with each other, and more and more easily they act together.."

"we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take-just that and no more."

"There are many factories and trades where women stand all day where there are even no chairs, though those are called for by the law. There are many kinds of work at which girls could sit instead of stand if the pressure of work were not so intense, if they were not speeded up to the highest point of endurance."

"what an absurd law, to require employees to testify against their employer before action can be taken."

"When you go to a factory as I have done, and see young girls in the first flush of womanhood bending their backs to the machine, or sitting crouched upon a chair putting stitches into men's hats; or standing with the stench of dead beasts in their nostrils in packing houses, putting sausages into sausage skins, standing on slime-soaked floors with wet feet; or when you see them in the laundries in steam filled rooms because there is no adequate hood over the machine, you marvel at the courage, or buoyancy of youth. And then when you see middle aged women with their drawn faces, still at the same kind of work they were doing as young girls, with evidently the life, buoyancy and hope crushed out; or when you see the old, old women who should be tenderly treated because of their age, we marvel at the tragedy of life which held such promise and gave so little fulfillment."

"But today there is no hope for any woman who is forced to labor to have any respite even in her remotest old age. It is said, of course, that her children should take care of her; but what of the woman who does not marry, or who, having married, has lost her children and husband? Or of the old mother who is too proud to be a burden upon her young son who himself is supporting his family with difficulty?"

"There are thousands of girls and men working in the textile mills of this state under conditions which are almost a guarantee for tuberculosis"

"No amount of money is saved to break strikes and every possible means are used to continue to pay young women such wages upon which it is almost impossible for them to live."

"The great menace to society from home work is not so much a danger of transmitting disease, although this is constant, as it is the menace which results from exploited childhood and womanhood. It is impossible to guard children from being exploited in their homes."

"we could report one story after another showing how the children are forced to work. Of course the moment an opportunity offers for them to enter the factory they do it, their vitality and vigor already sapped. Is this an intelligent way we have of dealing with the citizens of our Republic?"

"We think we have a wonderful law in New York limiting the hours to eight, but I would like to ask you if it is common sense for democracy to allow its children to wrap caramels at $3.50 a week instead of training and educating them in industrial schools so that when they are mature they may be intelligent citizens, and when they are married become intelligent mothers."

"We have in recent years experienced a tremendous awakening who have risen up and struck against conditions."

"Bread and butter, shelter and clothes and adequate food are absolutely necessary to people, and more than that we need time for other things, of the spirit and mind-and, what is more, we need money for it, and when they talk of minimum wages and say that a girl can live on six or eight dollars a week they take nothing into account except bare necessities; and when they say that eight or nine hours a day is reasonable they take nothing into account except work, and they do not for one moment consider the needs of the mind and spirit and the right of every individual to have leisure for the development of the higher qualities of man."

"I want to say to you suffragists, especially to some of you who are saying that the working women are not taking part in this great suffrage movement, and that they are not coming to the fore as they should, how can they? Working nine, ten hours a day and then on their return home attending to their home duties, where is the time for them to take active part in even a suffrage movement? Many times they have to stay in the factory and work through the evening, they cannot make engagements without the reservation that they can break them if work calls. And when these women join their union, attend their meetings and pay their dues they are doing more for social betterment than any other group that we know of. They are getting their suffrage training."

"Woman suffrage will only accomplish the results we expect of it and hope of it if women develop into an intelligent electorate, and I would like to impress upon you the need of becoming familiar with industrial conditions so that when we get the power we can change them; and it seems to me that it is up to the women of leisure who are working in some way in the suffrage movement not to cry out or protest against the working woman's indifference to suffrage but to recognize her distinct contribution as an organized worker and to be ready to stand by her in her heavily handicapped struggle to better her conditions. Some of the leaders of the New York State have done this magnificently, but there are thousands who have not and who stand aloof and indifferent to the great struggle."

"the suffragists have a great opportunity to lay before a group of over worked women the power of their vote; in this way an intelligent electorate would be developed who knows before it has it, what it can do with the vote, and who will use it effectively. It is as we suffragists make ourselves intelligent upon the problems which we will have to solve that the vote will be of any use to us or to the community or nation."

"If the women of leisure and opportunity would do as that young and extraordinary woman Carala Voerishoffer did we would more quickly get results."

"Political democracy will not do us much good unless we have industrial democracy; and industrial democracy can only come through intelligent workers participating in the business of which they are a part, and working out the best methods for all."

"As activists and rebels, Jewish women like Emma Goldman, Maud Nathan, Rose Schneiderman, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan influenced many of the key social movements of their eras suffrage, trade unionism, international peace, and the contemporary women's rights movement."

"In the first two decades of the 20th century, the suffrage movement was infused with immigrant working-class women, in which Jewish women were very prominent. Their numbers–pouring into parades and suffrage organizations–were in the tens of thousands. The two most prominent Jewish immigrant suffrage leaders were Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich. Both were heroines of the Triangle Shirt Waist strike [Uprising of the 20,000] and fire. Lemlich became a communist, Schneiderman a Roosevelt Democrat. They both linked suffrage to the legislative and economic concerns of wage-earning women."

"Those who call resistance to assimilation a luxury might do well to think about calling "sexual preference" a luxury, or reproductive rights, or access to education or creative expression. None of these is bread, but "Bread and Roses" was a demand voiced by Rose Schneiderman, a union organizer and a Jew. What are the roses? As Jews we need our peoplehood, our culture, history, languages, music, calendar, tradition, literature... We need these things because they are beautiful and ours, and because the point of struggle is not bare survival but lives full of possibility. But Rose Schneiderman's metaphor flounders. Our culture is not a rose, it is our backbone."

"Some young women found a focus for their lives in union work. Few became as totally immersed as Rose Schneiderman, who never married and discovered, when she became active in the union, "All of a sudden, I was not lonely any more.""

"On 11 January 1912, the Lawrence strike, also known as the Bread and Roses strike, broke out. Polish women working in cotton mills in New England noticed their pay had been reduced and stopped their looms, leaving the mill shouting "short pay!". Other workers, mostly women and girls, also walked out and within a week 20,000 were out. Despite savage repression they held out until mid-March and won all of their demands, which were also mirrored by other employers who wanted to avoid similar strikes. The popular name for the strike came from a line from a speech by socialist Rose Schneiderman: "The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too", a demand which young girls inscribed on their banners in Lawrence."

"History knows her best for a 1912 speech in which she proclaimed, "The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too," but that enduring turn of phrase only scratches the surface of Schneiderman's lifelong contributions to the cause of workers' rights. Another speech she gave in 1911, as the ashes of the Triangle smoldered behind her, laid bare her mission as an organizer. "Too much blood has been spilled," she said then. "I know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. And the only way is through a strong working-class movement.""

"Schneiderman had long pushed for cross-racial engagement in the laundry sector, recognizing the power in numbers and the symbolic advantage of a fully integrated labor effort."

"The once radical Rose Schneiderman herself had become an established mover and shaker in the country's labor leadership. Appointments to New York's Minimum Wage Advisory Board and FDR's National Recovery Act (NRA) Labor Advisory Board were evidence of her mellowing politics, and Schneiderman also drew criticism from the long-running Communist paper the Daily Worker for being an "ally" of "the A. F. of L. machine." Schneiderman's close relationship with the Roosevelts and discomfort with the emerging radical movements that would define the 1930s political landscape were another factor. The ideological gap between different eras of the WTUL would lead to its eventual dissolution in 1949."

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass."

"(The Indian Re-Organization Act) was like the small beginning of new hope, in the century-long history of man's destructiveness here, by which long ago the parakeets and the ivory-billed woodpecker had been exterminated, the egret and the white ibis only just saved by the Audubon Society that was still trying to protect the last of the roseate spoonbill, the Everglades kite and the almost vanished crocodile."

"The Indians, before anyone else, knew that the Everglades were being destroyed. During the war there was less and less rain, in one of those long, unpredictable, unpreventable dry spells, in which year after year the fresh water, like the soil, shrank away."

"The whole Everglades were burning. What had been a river of grass and sweet water that had given meaning and life and uniqueness to this whole enormous geography through centuries in which man had no place here was made, in one chaotic gesture of greed and ignorance and folly, a river of fire."

"But the white man, in all his teeming variety, men of the farms and the Glades, men of the cities and of the sea, whose inertia and pigheadedness, greed and willfulness had caused all this, as if for the first time seeing what he had done, now, when it was almost too late, the white man was aroused. For the first time in South Florida since the earliest floods, there were mass meetings and protests, editorials, petitions, letters, and excited talk. Thousands, choking in acrid smoke, saw for the first time what the drainage of the Glades had brought to pass."

"The Everglades were one thing, one vast unified harmonious whole, in which the old subtle balance, which had been destroyed, must somehow be replaced, if the nature of this whole region and the life of the coastal cities were to be saved."

"In 1928 Mr. Ernest F. Coe, a landscape architect who was fascinated by the strange beauty of this wilderness, conceived the idea that it should be made a national park. He fought almost single-handed, through years of depression and of disinterest, to gain public backing. His tall, spare figure, his suave voice, the absent gaze of his blue eyes as he talked and wrote and argued and lectured and, as he said, "made a nuisance of himself," was the very figure of a man obsessed. He was laughed at and he laughed at himself. He sacrificed his career to keep the hope of the park going."

"It was too soon to expect that all these people would see that the destruction of the Everglades was the destruction of all. They had all cried for help in times of extreme wetness and of extreme dryness, as if they could not realize that they lived under a regular alternation of extremes. They received the help always given in emergencies. But they could not get it through their heads that they had produced some of the worst conditions themselves, by their lack of co-operation, their selfishness, their mutual distrust and their wilful refusal to consider the truth of the whole situation."

"Perhaps even in this last hour, in a new relation of usefulness and beauty, the vast, magnificent, subtle and unique region of the Everglades may not be utterly lost."

"Today, the movement of water through the Everglades is entirely unnatural, and the Everglades are considered one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. As 106-year-old Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, longtime Everglades advocate explains, "The lake's entire southern rim was diked by a high levee, so that the only outlets were the canals, all fitted with gates to control the waters in an effort to put man, not nature, in charge of the Everglades. All this provided an enormous area upon which agriculture, mostly sugarcane, developed to the south and southeast of the lake.""

"The Arab woman who is equal to the man in duties and obligations will not accept, in the twentieth century, the distinctions between the sexes that the advanced countries have done away with. The Arab woman will not agree to be chained in slavery and to pay for the consequences of men's mistakes with respect to her country's rights and the future of her children. The woman also demands with her loudest voice to be restored her political rights, rights granted to her by the Sharia and dictated to her by the demands of the present. The advanced nations have recognised that the man and the woman are to each other like the brain and heart are to the body; if the balance between these two organs is upset the system of the whole body will be upset. Likewise, if the balance between the two sexes in the nation is upset it will disintegrate and collapse. The advanced nations, after careful examination into the matter, have come to believe in the equality of sexes in all rights even though their religious and secular laws have not reached the level Islam has reached in terms of justice towards the woman. Islam has given her the right to vote for the ruler and has allowed her to give opinions on questions of jurisprudence and religion. The woman, given by the Creator the right to vote for the successor of the Prophet, is deprived of the right to vote for a deputy in a circuit or district election by a (male) being created by God."

"...Every woman who does not stand up for her legitimate rights would be considered as not standing up for the rights of her country and the future of her children and society. Every man who is pushed by his selfishness to trespass on the legitimate rights of women is robbing the rights of others and bringing harm to his country. He is an obstacle preventing the country from benefiting from the abilities and efforts of half the nation or more. He is impeding the advancement of his country and preventing it from being placed in the position it deserves - among the advanced nations whose civilisation was built on the shoulders of women and men together, just as Arab civilisation at the beginning of Islam was built on the co-operation and equality of the two sexes. Now after this feminist conference and the presentation of the cause of women to the public and the placing of its documents in a historical archive, it is incumbent upon man to record on his own page in the historical record that which will honour him and justify his stand before God, the nation, and future generations."

"I see myself as a foreigner in my community. This is because my thoughts do not match their thoughts, and their thoughts do not match mine. My community doesn't consider me to be a real woman because they are unwilling to accept a woman who objects or defends her gender. To them, I am not a woman because I am strong and stand against them. They believe that strength is for men and weakness for women."

"So if the traditions and culture of the Eastern community are blindly compelled to hurt a woman’s dignity, insult and degrade her in the name of cultural unity, then I am ready to burn myself. If it means facing prosecution and rejection to highlight these difficult truths, I intend to vocalize my pain and start a revolution for the silent women who faced centuries of oppression."

"the mother of the Egyptian feminist movement"

"Although I was never fortunate enough to meet her in person, the Arab feminist renaissance owes her and her achievements a great debt of gratitude. She must be counted in the very first rank of women who fought for the advancement of Arab women, their rights and progress. Her name echoed in every concourse of women, and at every social activity. She was the first to point to the nation's need to make use of cultured women, to get women used to the routine of work, to expand the circle of acquaintances among Arab women, and to call upon them to demand social reform. It must be emphasized here that Egyptian women were the first Arab women to engage in concerted national action, defying both local traditions and foreign occupation in their celebrated demonstration in 1919. Huda Sha`rawi was in their vanguard. They left their private chambers, fired by a burning desire to rid their land of foreign occupation, and raised their voices so loud that the whole world heard them with astonishment and admiration. We in Beirut closely followed news of them, our hearts filled with pride in their achievements and a great hope for their success. The world press carried pictures of them leading the demonstrations courageously and with utter determination, defying the guns of the British army, and marching onwards even after some in their ranks were killed or wounded. Their actions may be considered a historic landmark of the feminist movement, testifying to the degree of intellectual maturity and nationalist sentiment achieved by Egypt, its feminist leaders and its women in general. These actions also served as a sort of beacon, lighting the way for women throughout the Arab world, at once a refutation of those who depicted Arab women as weak and lazy, and a testimony of the potential power of Arab, and Eastern women in general."

"Hoda Shaarawi and her organization worked hard to bring women's rights to the forefront as part of the national struggle for liberation. Women started to be aware of the fact that they have to fight a double battle: not only against the British and foreign exploitation, but also against male domination or patriarchy in the family and in society."

"Doria Shafik took the liberal ideology of the EFU one step further, becoming more militant in her reformist ideas and actions than Huda Sharawi."

"I told my husband if we have to go to the White House, "Okay, I will go. But I'm going as myself. And it's too late to change my pattern. And if they don't like it, then they'll just have to throw me out.""

"Well, I think a Congressional wife has to be a special kind of woman. I don't think that all women, really, can adjust to this type of life."

"I think that there are sane women that probably have their husbands around the house more than they'd like. And then there are those that wish their husbands were home more."

"I have perfect: faith in my husband. But I'm always glad to see him enjoy a pretty girl. And when he stops looking, then I'm going to begin to worry. But right now, he still enjoys a pretty girl. And he really doesn't have time for outside entertainment. Because I keep him busy."

"I'm not the type that's going to burn my bra or do something like that I really don't feel that strong about it. I feel that the liberated woman is the woman who is happy doing what she's doing, whether it's a job or as a housewife, it doesn't make a bit of difference. Just so she, inwardly, feels that she is happy and that she is liberated."

"While many new opportunities are open to women, too many are available to the lucky few. Many barriers continue to block the paths of most women, even on the most basic issue of equal pay for equal work, and the contributions of women as wives and mothers continue to be underrated."

"I do not believe that being First Lady should prevent me from expressing my ideas. I spoke out on this important issue because of my deep personal convictions. Why should my husband's job, or yours, prevent us from being ourselves. Being ladylike does not require silence."

"Change, by its very nature, is threatening but it is also often productive. And the fight of women to become more productive, accepted human beings is important to all people of either sex and nationality."

"But changing laws, more job opportunities, less financial discrimination, and more possibilities for the use of our minds and bodies will only partially change the place of women in this country. By themselves, they will never be enough because we must value our own talents before we can expect acceptance from others. The heart of the battle is within."

"We have to take that "just" out of "just a housewife." We have to show our pride in having the home and family our life's work. Downgrading this work has been part of the pattern in our society that has undervalued women's talents in all areas."

"We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go, and part of that distance is in our very own mind."

"The long road to equality rests on achievement of women and men in altering how women are treated in every area of everyday life."

"Freedom for women to be what they want to be will help complete the circle of freedom America has been striving for 200 years."

"As the barriers against freedom for Americans because of race or religion have fallen, the freedom of all has expanded. The search for human freedom can never be complete without freedom of women."

"I feel absolutely marvelous. I just had my annual checkup and all my tests are completely clear. There is no sign whatsoever of a cancerous reoccurrence at this point. I am convinced that I am completely cured."

"The most difficult moments were trying to pull my family through my cancer operation. I really had to pull them through, and to try to make them happy because they were so sad and upset."

"Too many women are so afraid of breast cancer that they endanger their lives. These fears of being "less" of a woman are very real, and it is very important to talk about the emotional side effects honestly. They must come out into the open. It was easier for me to accept the operation, because I had been married for 26 years and we had four children. There was no problem of lack of love, affection, and attention. But some women don't have these same emotional resources, and it is very necessary to deal realistically with the fears about breast cancer."

"Cancer also produces fear -- and much of that fear cots from ignorance about the progress already made and ignorance of the need for preventive medicine for men and women alike. Cancer wherever it strikes the body, also strikes the spirit, and the best doctors in the world cannot cure the spirit. Only love and understanding can accomplish this important role."

"I believe we are all here to help each other and that our individual lives have patterns and purposes. My illness turned out to have a very special purpose -- helping save other lives, and I am grateful for what I was able to do."

"when one perceives that the saloon is not the cause that menaces the safety and welfare of society, that it is not the cause of poverty and crime, one must, if honest with one's self, and if possessed of a truly revolutionary spirit, transfer activities to other fields."

"For a number of years I also believed that political bondage was the cause of many of the ills endured by those of my own sex; until I discovered that the man without a job was about as badly off as the woman without a ballot. In fact, a little worse, for we can live without voting but we cannot live without eating."

"The real antagonism is not that which exists or is supposed to exist between the sexes; but between the capitalist class and the proletariat. Women are victims of class distinctions more than of sex distinctions and when I perceived this fact, I changed my course of action and whatever revolutionary spirit there is in me finds expression today in the Socialistic movement."

"During the summer of 1903, the Chief of Police of San Francisco took it into his head to stop the Socialist speaking on the streets. Comrade Holmes was the first to be arrested. His case was tried and dismissed. Upon the strength of this we proceeded to hold a meeting at the same corner where he had been arrested. Hardly had I spoken ten minutes when a couple of policemen came up and ordered me to move on. I refused to do so and was at once placed under arrest. This of course broke up the meeting and I was taken to the police station."

"The tendency of some people to confound the woman question with the sex question evidences a lack of a scientific knowledge and appreciation of the fundamental principles of the two problems."

"Biological facts cannot be overthrown, but mental viewpoints are largely affected and determined by the economic processes in life, and if we probe deep enough we will find a material basis or ground for all social and mental concepts."

"The introduction and establishment of the institution of private property completely changed the status of woman in society."

"When the pioneer woman suffrage workers began their work for equal rights the most popular argument brought against them was that they were "immoral women." Only a short time ago we celebrated the centennial anniversary of the birth of the man who first admitted women as clerks in his store in the State of Maine. This man was boycotted and the women employed by him were considered by "respectable" people of that day as "bad" women. Every effort on the part of women to break away from the narrow life determined by her sex or maternal functions is met by bitter opposition."

"The ethics of capitalism will disappear with the passing of the institution of private property."

"The Co-operative Commonwealth will give us a new and a higher standard of morality."

"Two hundred years ago one could find but few workingmen who could read or write."

"the new industrial processes which the capitalist system gave the world necessitated the education and mental training of the workers in order that they might be fit and efficient wealth producers. Capitalism therefore created the economic or material reasons far the need of the great mass of the workers to be educated: It "democratized" education."

"While economic and material benefits have accrued to the master class through the education of the workers; while large profits were only possible through a trained and skilled laboring class, yet in this very thing which makes for the triumph of the master class financially, we see a potent and powerful factor in bringing about the political and industrial supremacy of the working class."

"Only as the workers have knowledge and intelligence can they solve the problem of their own political and industrial freedom."

"The capitalist masters have educated the workers to their advantage to-day, but for their undoing tomorrow. The thing that makes for the triumph of capitalism ultimately makes for its own downfall."

"Education of the workers for the benefit of the capitalist class means gain and profit only for the few, the upper class of to-day. Education of the workers for the benefit of the working class means gain and profit for the working class and ultimately for the whole human race."

"The future victories of the working class lie not so much in their numbers (the workers have always been in the vast majority), but in the knowledge they possess and the ability to intelligently organize and act together on the political and economic fields."

"Let us ever remember that knowledge is power!"

"I believe that Labor should have a directing voice in the economic, political and social life of the nation. I believe that political and industrial changes should be brought about by democratic methods and policies."

"(I) have been an interested student of the labor and Socialist movements for more than 30 years."

"My membership in the Socialist party began in April 1902 and ended March 1st 1936, when it became a party of dictators and lost its democratic soul. I have now cast my political lot with the Peoples Party affiliated with the American Labor Party."

"During my years of membership in the Socialist Party, I have covered every state in the union except Mississippi in organization and educational work. From 1912 to Nov. 1917 excepting for the winter months of 1912-3 I spent in Alaska. During that time I organized the Alaska Territorial Socialist Party. Had charge of the Delegate to Congress campaign in 1912 and in 1916 was the candidate myself. In many of the mining camps I received the largest vote of any of the candidates. The winter of 1916 and 17 I served as vice-president of the Alaska Labor Union in Anchorage...It fell to my lot to serve as Acting President a good deal of the time. A membership of more than 3200 with some score or more nationalities required skill in handling the meetings and often interpreters were needed to explain what was said to the various language groups. In 1920 had charge of the Debs campaign in the Northwest and looked after the work of placing the tickets on the ballot in Washington and Oregon. In 1932 managed the Socialist campaign in Salt Lake City and also campaigned that year in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Served as State Secretary of California Socialist Party from 1925 to 1930 and from 1925-31 inclusive was managing editor of the Labor World, official organ of the Socialist Party of California. In 1926 ran for Lieut. Governor in California and polled 10,506 votes more than Upton Sinclair who was the head of the ticket. As candidate for the U.S. Senate, I ran ahead of Norman Thomas-Presidential candidate-nearly 8,000 votes. I made a vigorous campaign for the whole ticket but apparently profited most thereby. Had a very active part in the campaign of 1924 and spoke for the LaFollette and Wheeler ticket in Michigan, Ill., Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho and California. During periods covering time from 1922 to spring of 1924 was in New York City and served for a while as organizer for the Umbrella Workers Union. Also assisted in the work of the Paper Box workers Union and helped in their strike... Was the first woman elected to membership on the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party and served from 1907 to 1912. Was elected by the party membership to serve as a delegate to the International Labor and Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1910 and addressed a number of meetings in various parts of England enroute the Congress and return. Was active in the Leage of Women Voters when in San Francisco."

"The only cause of the failure of the revolution of 1779, was that it was presented by only one half of the intelligence race — an intelligence differing it is true, in some of its peculiarities, but from that very difference calculated to form a truer republic."

"It is not Christianity but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her."

"I alluded to my own society making no difference between man and woman in the ministry and the duties of the marriage covenant. It seemed to be a great step for those early reformers, William Penn and George Fox, moving as they did in fashionable society, amid the universal veneration for power in that country. It was a great step for them to take — making the marriage relation entirely reciprocal–asking no priest to legalize their union, but declaring their own marriage, and themselves invoking the Divine aid."

"When woman shall be properly trained, and her spiritual powers developed, she will find in entering the marriage union nothing necessarily degrading to her. The independence of the husband and wife should be equal, and the dependence reciprocal. But Oh! how different now!"

"The Irishwoman now goes about barefoot, the husband with shoes and stockings; — she with her child in her arms, he carrying nothing."

"This then is what we ask for woman, that she may be so prepared for life’s duties, that can be fill her walk in life respectably, and show that she can be something more than a slave, on the one hand, or a toy, or an effeminate being on the other."

"Did Elizabeth Fry, of England, neglect her family? No! After rearing her eight or ten children, she went forth and did the things that Howard did, and greater. See Dorothea Dix, and what a ministering angel she has been! Look at the licentiousness of our own city of Penn, and see how Myra Townsend went forth and established a reformatory house for her sisters; see how she gathered them there and improved their situations, and awakened in them a desire for a better life."

"Why should not woman seek to be a reformer? If she is to shrink from being such an iconoclast as shall "break the image of man's lower worship," as so long held up to view; if she is to fear to exercise her reason, and her noblest powers, lest she should be thought to "attempt to act the man," and not "acknowledge his supremacy"; if she is to be satisfied with the narrow sphere assigned her by man, nor aspire to a higher, lest she should transcend the bounds of female delicacy; truly it is a mournful prospect for woman."

"We would admit all the difference, that our great and beneficent Creator has made, in the relation of man and woman, nor would we seek to disturb this relation; but we deny that the present position of woman is her true sphere of usefulness; nor will she attain to this sphere, until the disabilities and disadvantages, religious, civil, and social, which impede her progress, are removed out of her way."

"So far from her "ambition leading her to attempt to act the man," she needs all the encouragement she can receive, by the removal of obstacles from her path, in order that she may become the "true woman." As it is desirable that man should act a manly and generous part, not "mannish," so let woman be urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not womanish. Let her cultivate all the graces and proper accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adornings, and the flattery and fulsome adulation too often addressed to her."

"I would ask, if this modesty is not attractive also, when manifested in the other sex? It was strikingly marked in Horace Mann, when presiding over the late National Educational Convention in this city. The retiring modesty of William Ellery Channing was beautiful, as well as of many others who have filled elevated stations in society. These virtues, differing as they may in degree in man and woman, are of the same nature, and call forth our admiration wherever manifested."

"Woman was not wanting in courage in the early ages. In war and bloodshed this trait was often displayed. Grecian and Roman history have lauded and honored her in this character. English history records her courageous women too, for unhappily we have little but the records of war handed down to us."

"more noble, moral daring is marking the female character at the present time, and better worthy of imitation. As these characteristics come to be appreciated in man too, his warlike acts with all the miseries and horrors of the battleground will sink into their merited oblivion, or be remembered only to be condemned. The heroism displayed in the tented field must yield to the moral and Christian heroism which is shadowed in the signs of our times."

"The question is often asked, "What does woman want, more than she enjoys? What is she seeking to obtain? Of what rights is she deprived? What privileges are withheld from her?" I answer, she asks nothing as favor, but as right; she wants to be acknowledged a moral, responsible being. She is seeking not to be governed by laws in the making of which she has no voice. She is deprived of almost every right in civil society, and is a cipher in the nation, except in the right of presenting a petition. In religious society her disabilities have greatly retarded her progress. Her exclusion from the pulpit or ministry, her duties marked out for her by her equal brother man, subject to creeds, rules, and disciplines made for her by him, is unworthy her true dignity."

"Woman has so long been subject to the disabilities and restrictions with which her progress has been embarrassed, that she has become enervated, her mind to some extent paralyzed; and like those still more degraded by personal bondage, she hugs her chains."

"I would urge that woman be placed in such a situation in society, by the recognition of her rights, and have such opportunities for growth and development, as shall raise her from this low, enervated, and paralyzed condition, to a full appreciation of the blessing of entire freedom of mind."

"It becomes man to speak modestly of his ability to act without her."

"On no good ground can reform be delayed."

"In how many cases in our country the husband and wife begin life together, and by equal industry and united effort accumulate to themselves a comfortable home. In the event of the death of the wife the household remains undisturbed, his farm or his workshop is not broken up or in any way molested. But when the husband dies he either gives his wife a portion of their joint accumulation, or the law apportions to her a share; the homestead is broken up, and she is dispossessed of that which she earned equally with him; for what she lacked in physical strength she made up in constancy of labor and toil, day and evening. The sons then coming into possession of the property, as has been the custom until of later time, speak of having to keep their mother, when she in reality is aiding to keep them. Where is the justice of this state of things?"

"On no good ground can the legal existence of the wife be suspended during marriage, and her property surrendered to her husband. In the intelligent ranks of society the wife may not in point of fact be so degraded as the law would degrade her; because public sentiment is above the law. Still, while the law stands, she is liable to the disabilities which it imposes. Among the ignorant classes of society, woman is made to bear heavy burdens, and is degraded almost to the level of the slave."

"There are many instances now in our city, where the wife suffers much from the power of the husband to claim all that she can earn with her own hands. In my intercourse with the poorer class of people, I have known cases of extreme cruelty from the hard earnings of the wife being thus robbed by the husband, and no redress at law."

"the opening of profitable employment to women in France is doing much for the enfranchisement of the sex."

"In visiting the public school in London a few years since, I noticed that the boys were employed in linear drawing, and instructed upon the black-board in the higher branches of arithmetic and mathematics; while the girls, after a short exercise in the mere elements of arithmetic, were seated during the bright hours of the morning, stitching wristbands. I asked why there should be this difference made; why the girls too should not have the black-board? The answer was, that they would not probably fill any station in society requiring such knowledge. The demand for a more extended education will not cease until girls and boys have equal instruction in all the departments of useful knowledge."

"Women's property has been taxed equally with that of men's to sustain colleges endowed by the States; but they have not been permitted to enter those high seminaries of learning. Within a few years, however, some colleges have been instituted where young women are admitted upon nearly equal terms with young men; and numbers are availing themselves of their long denied rights. This is among the signs of the times, indicative of an advance for women. The book of knowledge is not opened to her in vain."

"Let woman then go on, not asking favors, but claiming as right, the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being; let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life; employing her own hands in ministering to her necessities, strengthening her physical being by proper exercise and observance of the laws of health. Let her not be ambitious to display a fair hand and to promenade the fashionable streets of our city, but rather, coveting earnestly the best gifts, let her strive to occupy such walks in society as will befit her true dignity in all the relations of life. No fear that she will then transcend the proper limits of female delicacy. True modesty will be as fully preserved in acting out those important vocations, as in the nursery or at the fireside ministering to man's self-indulgence. Then in the marriage union, the independence of the husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal."

"The very men who signed the Declaration of Independence, many of them educated under English aristocratic institutions, did not seem to know how far those principles would carry them. Some of them at that time were very much opposed to educating the working-classes, for fear it would raise them above their proper level. And more recently, many who professed so great a reverence for these republican principles, were strongly opposed to a universal popular education, in place of the charity schools that disgraced the age."

"There has been a great advance as regards the education of women. Many of our grandmothers did not know how to write their own names, it being then regarded as unnecessary for woman to learn to write. Now she has so far come up to the level of the intelligence of society as to rise above the mere drudgery of life, and demand something more."

"Believe me, my sisters, the time has come for you to avail yourselves of all the avenues that are opened to you. I would that woman would wake up to a sense of the long-continued degradation and wrong that has been heaped upon her! Like the poor slave at the South, too many of our sex are insensible of their wrongs, and incapable of fully appreciating the blessings of freedom."

"I am sorry to come before you with so impaired a voice, and with a face so scarred; but, I rejoice that as we who have long labored in the cause become less able to do the work, the younger ones, the Tiltons and the Harpers, come forward to fill our places. It is no loss, but the proper order of things, that the mothers should depart and give place to the children. It is now more than twenty years since this Woman’s Rights movement began in this country. We were allowed to read, if we could not understand much; and could read that Blackstone defined the law, “that the husband and wife were one person, and that person the husband;” and we labored therefore to change the law, so as to recognize the wife as a person with civil rights."

"I can but hope, comparing such an audience as this with the handful who met with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the first Convention, in a little Wesleyan church at Seneca Falls, and seeing Henry Ward Beecher for the first time on our platform, and speaking such noble words for woman, I can but hope that it will not be as our friend Frances D. Gage expressed her fear it would, that the degradation which centuries had created among us, would require centuries to remove;"

"it is an enslavement, although not equal to the degradation of the poor black slaves, and although I have never liked to use the word “slavery,” as applied to the oppression of woman, while we had a legalized slavery in our country. But the oppression of woman has been such, and continues to be such, by law, by custom, by a perverted Christianity, by church influence."

"As our President said, we have in our army such minds as Spencer, and Mill, and I would add Buckle, and many others; and they are diffusing light, intelligence and civilization, and advocating the right. We have women also. We have Frances Cobbe; whose name I speak with pride and rejoicing; and in the literary world we have Charlotte Bronte, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, who are consecrating their talents to the great cause of womanhood, and freedom, and right."

"When some of us in 1840 were sent forth as delegates to the World’s Convention at London, and were denied the right of acceptance because we were women, O’Connell and William Howitt came forth and plead our cause; and a short time after, Sir John Bowring said that the coming of those women to England would form an era in the history of philanthropic doings, and would create a deep if not a wide impression there. I like to allude to these things to show what progress we are making. Education has done much for us. We now have women as physicians, and in various departments of society. A little while ago when the daughters of Edgworth put out their volumes, they were afraid to publish them over their own names, and borrowed the name of their father. And when Lady Morgan wrote her history, in her introduction she mournfully says that “man tells woman that obscurity is her true glory, insignificance her distinction, ignorance her law, and passive obedience the perfection of her nature,” and proceeds to state the effect of this erroneous and vicious teaching on the mind and powers of woman."

"Young women of America, I want you to make yourselves acquainted with the history of the Woman’s Rights movement, from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft. All honor to Mary Wollstoncraft. Her name was cast out as evil, even as that of Jesus was cast out as evil, and as those of the apostles were cast out as evil; but her name shall yet go forth and stand as the pioneer of this movement. I want you to note the progress of this cause, and know now that Woman’s redemption is a hand, yea, even at the doors."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

"The Female Anti-Slavery Society was the first national woman's rights organization in the United States. It was composed of Black and white women, and Black women made up a significant part of its leadership, notably in Boston and Philadelphia. Sara Parker Remond, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Letetia Still, the Forten sisters (Margaretta, Harriet, and Sarah), among others, joined forces with white women such as Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley Foster, and Maria Weston Chapman to organize the collective labors of the antislavery movement."

"The first such effort resulted in the organization of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, founded only a few months after the AASS. One of its main organizers was Lucretia Mott, who recalled later that, at the time of the founding, she had no idea of how to conduct a meeting. She said she had "no idea of the meaning of preambles and resolutions and votings." Women were seldom in assemblies of any kind and she had attended only one other convention before, "of colored people in this State.""

"It is no wonder that the eager, highly intelligent, already rebellious, young bride Elizabeth Cady Stanton found Lucretia Mott a "revelation," and they "walked home arm in arm" from the convention hall to their lodgings in Queen Street declaring "it was high time some demand was made for the liberties of women," and "discussing the propriety of calling a woman's rights convention.""

"Nor let it be said that we have forgot/The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;/Nor her who to the world was known/By the simple name of Lucy Stone."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"if any woman would take her sister to her heart, and warm her there again by sympathy and kindness, if she would endeavor once more to infuse into her the spark of life and virtue, or morality and peace, she often dare not so far encounter public prejudice as to do it. It requires a courage beyond what woman can now possess, to take the part of the woman against the villain. There are few such among us, and though few, they have stood forward nobly and gloriously. I will not mention names, though it is often a practice to do so; I must, however, mention our sister, Lucretia Mott, who has stood up and taken her fallen sister by the hand, and warmed her at her own heart. But we can not expect every woman to possess that degree of courage."

"Struggle brought about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the government from denying women the right to vote. The amendment did not just appear: It was the fruit of the struggle of the suffragettes, led by such figures as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the mid-nineteenth century."

"the name of Lucretia Mott has been written in the history of this country which records the deeds of those who have spent their lives trying to lift their fellow men to a higher plane and relieve the suffering of the world in letters which can never fade...Lucretia Mott shines more brilliantly in the galaxy of the good and great because of her work as an abolitionist and her efforts to improve the condition of woman"

"Lucretia Mott traveled thousands of miles, when travelling was much more difficult and far less pleasant than it is to day, holding meetings all through New England and even venturing in some of the slave States to arouse the conscience and touch the hearts of the people concerning the woes and wrongs heaped upon 4,000,000 slaves. She was often debarred from the use of public halls and suffered persecution of every conceivable nature even at the hands of those who called themselves Christians — yes even from her own religious sect, the Quakers, because of her activity in behalf of the slave. Once but wonder at the cool, calm courage of the small, fragile, gentle Lucretia Mott who never at any time of her life weighed more than 90 pounds, and much of the time did not weigh even that, as she faced the violence of hostile mobs. More than once her long, gray Quaker cloak was singed with vitriol thrown at her through windows by howling, hooting mobs during the meetings which she addressed. Nothing illustrates the courage and the tact [of] the little woman more than an experience she had, when she, the other speakers and the audience were driven from an abolition meeting in Philadelphia by an angry mob. She placed a friend who was with her under the care of a gentleman. “But what will you do”, inquired the lady. “This man”, replied Mrs. Mott touching the arm of a man among the hooting ruffians who had broken up the meeting, “will see me through safely, I think.” The man was so impressed with the sweetness of her manner and the angelic expression of her countenance that he instantly responded to her appeal [and] protected her from further insult as they passed through the hostile crowd."

"How long the emancipation of the slave might have been delayed, had it not been for those Female Anti-Slavery Societies established largely through the efforts of Lucretia Mott, and other noble women like her, no human being can tell...Many a poor trembling slave was lifted from bondage into freedom by means of the underground railroad which ran through the home of James and Lucretia Mott. She helped and befriended free colored people and protested in season and out against the cruel exhibition of prejudice against them from which they suffered in the North...Tho thorny the path and rough the road, forward she pressed to do the work for the persecuted and afflicted which she felt called to perform."

"I could wish no better, brighter future for the boys and the girls who are so fortunate as to attend this beautiful, well-appointed Mott school than that they emulate the courage, the unselfishness, and the zeal in all good work which were such conspicuous and beautiful traits in the character of that saintly woman, for whom this building which we dedicate to day is named."

"is there one in this Hall who sees nothing for himself to do?"

"I want to say here that I believe the law is but the writing out of public sentiment, and back of that public sentiment, I contend lies the responsibility. Where shall we find it?" "Tis education forms the common mind." It is allowed that we are what we are educated to be. Now if we can ascertain who has had the education of us, we can ascertain who is responsible for the law, and for public sentiment."

"I say that woman is not the author of this sentiment against her fallen sister, and I roll back the assertion on its source. Having the public ear one-seventh part of the time, if the men of the pulpit do not educate the public mind, who does educate it? Millions of dollars are paid for this education, and if they do not educate the public mind in its morals, what, I ask, are we paying our money for? If woman is cast out of society, and man is placed in a position where he is respected, then I charge upon the pulpit that it has been recreant to its duty. If the pulpit should speak out fully and everywhere, upon this subject, would not woman obey it? Are not women under the special leading and direction of their clergymen? You may tell me, that it is woman who forms the mind of the child; but I charge it back again, that it is the minister who forms the mind of the woman. It is he who makes the mother what she is; therefore her teaching of the child is only conveying the instructions of the pulpit at second hand. If public sentiment is wrong on this (and I have the testimony of those who have spoken this morning, that it is), the pulpit is responsible for it, and has the power of changing it. The clergy claim the credit of establishing public schools. Granted. Listen to the pulpit in any matter of humanity, and they will claim the originating of it, because they are the teachers of the people. Now, if we give credit to the pulpit for establishing public schools, then I charge them with having a bad influence over those schools; and if the charge can be rolled off, I want it to be rolled off; but until it can be done, I hope it will remain there."

"I want to remind you that we had labored for twenty-seven years previous to the terrible mobs of 1830. Do we remember the fall of 1860 and the winter of 1860 and ’61? Do we remember that never was a more bloodthirsty mob organized in the city of Boston than was organized in the fall of 1860?"

"We have not Secretary Seward to thank, we have not President Lincoln to thank, we have not the govt of the United States to thank, we have not the commercial men nor the churches to thank; but we have Jeff Davis and the terrible persistency of the rebels to than, that there has been this change of conduct in the North. It was a matter of military necessity, and therefore we have it. And having been induced by military necessity, for the sake of self-preservation, we cannot rely upon it."

"It is only by labor, incessant labor, in season and out of season, that we can create such a public sentiment as we need"

"nothing is done while anything remains to be done, so far as the death of American slavery is concerned. Not that I believe that one iota of moral truth that has ever been uttered, any more than one atom of physical matter that has ever been created, can be lost. But, so far as the accomplishment o the overthrow of slavery is concerned, were success to attend the federal arms today, I feel confident that slavery would linger, God knows how long; and I am willing, therefore, to wait another ten years, if need be, in order to insure its destruction now."

"I have not been accustomed to address meetings of this kind. It is not my vocation to make speeches, or to sting together brilliant sentences, or beautiful words. But my mission has been back among the people, amid the little sources of public sentiment; among the hills and the hamlets — amid the opposed, but the comparatively unsophisticated; and I have had no weapon but the gospel of truth in its simplicity."

"Where was our country sixty years ago! She sprung upon the arena of nations, armed in the glorious panoply of liberty. The principles we not advocate had omnipotent sway with her. They were quick and living; and when she hurled them across the Atlantic, the thrones of centuries trembled, monarchs blanched with fear. But look back then years ago only, and where was our country! A hissing — a mockery — a reproach before those very nations whom her first advance had so terrified."

"She had, ten years ago, two and a half millions in the condition shadowed out by that print. She! who had declared as one of her first principles, that NO MAN should be deprived of his liberty without due process of law! She forgot her first principles, — and the world went on its round, and no one seemed aware of the fact that ono-sixth part of her whole population were sitting in the shadow of slavery — groaning in the fetters of the “freest nation on earth.” She was careful of her national honor, she thought — she was scrupulously careful as to money. It was her boast from old times, that fourpence worth of property could not and should not be unjustly taken away from one of her citizens. But who remembered her tow and a half millions — deprived of everything that makes existence valuable or honorable? She had poured out blood like water for liberty sixty years ago; but ten years ago, if there arose a murmur of resistance from her own enslaved children, it was adjudged worthy of death! What were her liberties? She had liberty to plunder! liberty to trample down the weak at will! Her sons were free. Yes! none so free: freebooters they were! Free to snatch the babe from the arms of its father, or mother — free to drag the husband and wife asunder! Free to scatter families to the four winds! Ah, the very mention of her liberties mocked the slave’s anguish, and was the death-knell of his hopes. And with all this, we boasted of our Christianity! We could sit down — could we not? — and weep over the infants whom famine or superstition consigned to the waters of the Ganges. But the 75,000 infants in the United States, annually swept down into the water of darkness and despair — who wept for them? We could shed tears over the East India widows, whose religion it was to ascend the funeral pile; but the widows of the United States — made widows by law — reduced to widowhood by system — and that system sanctioned by our religion — we had no tears for these. And we dared to call our religion Christianity! We dared to justify in religious convocations, the putting asunder of what God had joined! All this was going on. And the land was wrapped in silence. Perhaps, at distant intervals, one might hear a sign half drawn, over the necessity of the existence of such evils, but no one questioned that necessity; and the poor afflicted people of color suffered on."

"Why were we so indifferent? Why, as a lady once said to me, five-eighths of us were so busy glorifying in our own freedom — . . . and we thought we were indeed free. But when, under the authority of Jehovah, the Moses of America said, “Let the people go!” — when the sound reverberated from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and from Maine to Mexico, “let the people go, that they may serve him!” Then, those whose hearts beat with answering sympathy, those whose hearts were poured forth in unison with his who raised that cry — they found to what they freedom amounted. I need not tell this society what was its amount. You were free to be mobbed — free to be slandered and misrepresented to any amount — free to be driven from your own place of meeting by five thousand of the most respectable and gentlemanly of your friends, called together by public advertisement for the express purpose. Our country saw then, what their liberty amounted to: liberty to speak what slavery should dictate. Men were awakened, then, to a realizing sense of their freedom. Free were they? Yes, free to the tar-cauldron and the feather-bag! Free to have a bonfire made of their furniture before their own doors in the open street! Free to be whipped and imprisoned! Free to be shot down! A great freedom, indeed, was this! Who could have believed it? Ten years ago, I would have spurned the man who should have predicted it."

"All the great family of mankind are bound up in one bundle. Rights are the same for one and for all; and when we aim a blow at our neighbor’s rights, our own rights are by the same low destroyed. We are not distinct and independent; — one nerve runs through the whole great family of humanity. We cannot injure another, without bringing a curse upon our own souls. This philosophy shows us the surpassing benevolence to man of the divine injunction, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Why? He is part of ourselves. In loving him we see the only means of truly regarding ourselves; and if all loved thus, then this world would be all paradise: heaven would be begun on earth. Then the interests of one would be respected of all, and all interests would be united for the benefit of one. If the many refuse thus to feel and act for all, let the few go on; the more the better. At least let us who see the beauty of the injunction, “love our neighbor as ourselves,” press forward in obedience."

"Our own moral destruction is consequent upon our leaving slavery to go on."

"It is the system that must be entirely annihilated. Some who are int its toil are dear to me. They will be saved as if by fire — but let the fire be kindled, and the chaff consumed. Truth shall do the work."

"There is less need of discussion than we sometimes imagine, and more of action."

"I rejoice to be fully identified with the despised people of color. If they are despised, wo ought we their advocates to be. It is a poor policy, for it is a wicked policy which would make two bands of us. We hear about retaining our influence by not being identified with them. But what was the example of our Saviour! The publicans and sinners were his associates — the poor and the despised."

"The Female Anti-Slavery Society was the first national woman's rights organization in the United States. It was composed of Black and white women, and Black women made up a significant part of its leadership, notably in Boston and Philadelphia. Sara Parker Remond, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Letetia Still, the Forten sisters (Margaretta, Harriet, and Sarah), among others, joined forces with white women such as Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley Foster, and Maria Weston Chapman to organize the collective labors of the antislavery movement."

"When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as 1838 Angelina Grimké and Abby Kelley, who were the first women orators I ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti-slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby condemned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty."

"The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sarah Grimké and Abby Kelley went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition."

"I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. Abby Kelley once entered a church only to find herself the subject of the sermon, which was preached from the text: ” This Jezebel is come among us also.” They jeered at her as she went along the street. They threw stones at her. They pelted her with bad eggs as she stood on the platform. Some of the advocates of the very cause for which she endured all this were ready to drive her from the field. Mr. Garrison and Wendell Phillips stood by her. But so great was the opposition that one faction of the abolitionists left and formed a new organization, after a vain effort to put Abby Kelly off from the committee to which she had been nominated."

"The widening of women’s sphere is to improve her lot. Let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff — if it sneer, let it sneer — but we will go emulating the example of the sisters Grimké and Abby Kelly. When they first lectured against slavery they were not listened to as respectfully as you listen to us. So the first female physician meets many difficulties, but to the next the path will be made easy."

"We are completely aware that the condition-if you want to call it that of Anglo women can't help but affect us, since Anglo women teach our children and provide most of the input for all media in this society."

"What is stronger: racism or sexism? I believe racism. Anglo women must analyze their emotions and intellect and think clearly on this. Is the women's movement a move to place just another layer of racist Anglo dominance over minority peoples?"

"The social and economic upheavals which deposed the Díaz regime and produced the 1910 revolution gave Mexican feminists another arena for action. Revolutionary supporters established women's organizations like the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and newspapers like Vesper which helped the cause and raised women's consciousness about their own status. Juana Belen Gutiérrez de Mendoza was an outstanding feminist and journalist of the period."

"In terms of women's rights, the Mexican revolution of 1910 had enormous impact. During the revolution men and women developed relationships of partnership and mutual regard very seldom seen in most societies. Through their activities as clerks, secretaries, smugglers, telegraphers, journalists, financiers, and soldiers, women had a rare opportunity to develop their potential on a large scale, beside the men, and won their respect and recognition as partners. Perhaps within the Mexican culture this phenomenon was only to be repeated in the U.S. with the Chicano farmworker and civil rights struggles of the twentieth century."

"From Frances Swadesh's research on southwestern cultures we know that mestizas in the southwest enjoyed a very liberalized existence as compared to Mexico and other parts of the United States in the 1850s. Women like pony rider mail carrier Candelaria Mestas and "La Tules" in New Mexico blew the Chicana stereotypes. In the 1880's socialist and labor organizer Lucy Gonzales Parsons was actively organizing women workers in Chicago. Her very presence and activity as a leader in the labor movement for thirty years propelled both the feminist and labor causes."

"The P.L.M. and its publication Regeneración became important vehicles for the espousal of women's rights in the U.S. within the Chicano community."

"The 70s has seen an upsurge in activity and development for Chicanas without parallel. Chicanas have made enormous contributions in the fields of education, journalism, politics and labor. They have certainly added depth and new dimension to feminist philosophy and literature in this country."

"if feminism or a women's liberation movement continues its activities in this country, Chicanas seem ready to make certain it is a multicultural movement, especially in educational institutions and in the political and socio-economic arena."

"Both movements and both decades provided impetus, opportunities and vehicles for women's development, although, unfortunately, in both cases development was selected and often controlled by others-by our men in the Sixties and by Anglo women in power in the Seventies."

"Instead of optimisim, I am inspired by Erma Bombeck, universal humorist, whose words seem singularly directed to us: "If life is a bowl of cherries, what are we doing in the pits?""

"We can choose to repeat ancestral practices or to break with them."

"Whether we are Cuban, Puerto Rican, Bolivian, or Mexican-American we have uncannily similar historical backgrounds, including an American or Caribbean indigenous culture, conquest by Spain, a period of colonialism, mestisaje struggles for independence, nationalism-and for Hispanas in the United States, another colonial experience."

"Hispanas should no longer leave unchallenged the irresponsible expressions of ideologies and rhetoric that both disregard the basic tenet of individual worth and ignore women's continued contribution to culture and to the political, artistic, and intellectual evolution of the Hispanidad. Until we do this, the detractors of womankind will continue to promote bastardized machismo as basic and inevitable in the Hispanic culture. Unless we do this, the majority society, and many of our own people, will continue their fantasized portrayals of Hispanas as objects; passive nonentities, social reactionaries, and nonproductive members of society."

"we must maintain the perspective that our overriding priority must be the redemption of the documented history of the Hispanic woman-a history rendered illegible by the cultural, sociological, economic, and political confrontations between colonizer and native of the New World."

"Our strategies should be aimed at educational institutions-those depositories for young people where racism, extreme chauvinism, and anti-female feeling is the strongest. We need to address ourselves aggressively to educational textbooks in which Hispanas are the invisible minority."

"Media, communication, and group action are urgently needed if we're going to control our lives in the Eighties and beyond."

"Hispanas and Hispanos together must confront the subject of equal rights. No one else is going to come in and resolve the situation for us."

"as long as Hispanos are not prepared to deal with women's equality they will be handicapped in their relationship with Hispanas."

"one of the challenges for Hispanas in the Eighties is to raise the consciousness of the community toward full and equal rights for all persons regardless of sex, to claim rights to personhood, which our Indian and Hispanic cultural heritage has never denied us."

"We cannot hide the facts from men any longer. We will not use the proverbial shawl to protect them from reality. There is a new revolution to face together, a new independence to be fought for, together."

"Chicanas' involvement with the women's movement in the 1890 to 1920 period was limited by the barriers that impeded all women with similar backgrounds: the antilabor, antiminority attitudes of the leadership of the women's movement. They were affected also by the antisocialist and anticommunist attitudes of the movement in the early twentieth century, since many Chicana workers and leaders were ardent socialists."

"The greatest victory for the women's movement was not victory for minority women. The suffrage amendment did not enfranchise Chicanas and black women. Chicanas were affected by the aftermath of the suffrage amendment, when women's movement activities slowed down, because white women achieved their desires, but Chicanas, like other minority women, had to continue to struggle for mere survival. They were affected when middle-class women were given preferential treatment in war industry, but blacks and Chicanas had to continue with unskilled, low-paid agricultural work and other service occupations. Chicanas were affected when white middle-class women went back home in the fifties, but minority women did not, and Chicanas, to boot, continued to suffer repression and deportation for their continued labor and civil rights advocacy. Chicanas have been affected when their community and their own gains in the 1960s have taken a back seat to the women's movement just as the black movement and black suffrage took a back seat to the suffrage movement in the latter part of the last century."

"One of the first Chicanas to come into contact with the suffragist movements in the 1880s was Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, a Chicana socialist labor organizer."

"Jane Addams and others spoke and acted on behalf of women labor leaders like Lucy Parsons, assisting them in rallies, providing bail when they were arrested, and using their tremendous power and influence on behalf of working women."

"Although many social workers like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, and socialists like Emma Goldman advocated the rights of immigrants and working women, in most instances during the 1890 to 1910 period their advocacy had little or no effect on the suffragist movement's attitude toward minority or working-class women"

"the promotion of barriers to universal suffrage such as literacy and educational requirements disenfranchised Black women, Chicanas, and poor and immigrant women until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

"like Chicanas today, the women found, then, that while few battles were won in civil rights on behalf of their communities, fulfillment and the gains of the women's movement were never their gains. The suffragist movement had been manipulated since the 1870s to benefit those that eventually benefitted from it and noone else."

"Chicana feminist activities in the 1904 to 1920 period were channeled through civil rights activities and labor organization work. Some outstanding women were Jovita Idar, a journalist and civil rights worker from Laredo, Texas; Soledad Peña, orator and educator; María Renteria; and María Villarreal. These women were speakers and participants in a historical civil rights conference, the Primer Congreso Mexicanista. On October 15, 1911 they also founded the Liga Femenil Mexicanista."

"Polling places in the southwestern states were almost always on the Anglo side of the tracks, where Mexicans were allowed for domestic work or other service jobs only."

"Chicana labor leaders and politicians, like Denver's Dolores McGran González, testified before congressional committees, ran for local office, and served as national delegates to the Progressive Party Convention in the late 1930s. Other women who have become models of female-inspired activities of the period are Dolores Hernández, who was killed on October 10, 1933 during a strike of 15,000 farm workers in Visalia, California. Another woman labor union leader made history in 1936 when she led pecan sheller strikers in San Antonio in a successful strike effort. Emma Tenayuca Brooks, then a 17-year-old labor organizer and orator, became a beacon of hope to beleagured workers throughout the United States. For her efforts, she has had to live 40 years in obscurity and anonymity. In civil rights and educational reform, a strong women's advocate, Mariá L. Hernández of Lytle, Texas, worked tirelessly throughout the 1930s demonstrating, speaking, and protesting the educational status of Mexican-Americans in the United States."

"Some of the women who led the movement in its early days were Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, Alicia Escalante with the Welfare Rights Organization, and Gracia Molina de Pick and Anna Nieto-Gómez with feminist activities. Women politicians like Virginia Muzquiz of Crystal City, Texas, Mariana Hernández, and Grace Davies put Chicanas in the political forum. Like these women, there have been hundreds of others who, in the late 1960s and 1970s, have proved that Chicanas have come of age politically in this country."

"Minorty women could fill volumes with examples of put-downs, put-ons, and out-and-out racism shown to them by the leadership of the [women's] movement."

"The Chicana is "together" but her progress is not commensurate with her her goals as a woman. The two great barriers to her achievement are: 1) the opportunism in the women's movement that has forced lower priorities to be set on public policy and governmental programming for minority populations and the poor, and 2) the conservatism of Chicano males."

"It is always easier to battle strangers than one's family."

"In order to truly understand the needs and problems of La Raza, we must include the Chicana in our study."

"As minority women, the Chicanas have had to fight racism, sexism, and sexual racism. Racism oppresses the Chicana as a member of a Spanish speaking, culturally different, non-Anglo group in a society that values only one culture, and only one race as superior over all, the Anglo-Saxon race. The Chicana encounters sexism in a society that associates social and economic power, authority and superiority with male dominance and male control."

"The Chicana feminist has had to struggle to develop and maintain her identity in spite of the paternal and material tendencies of two social movements to absorb her into their general movements as their own rank and file."

"the Chicana feminist has been cautioned to wait and fight her cause at a later time for fear of dividing the Chicano movement. Also it has been recommended that she melt into the melting pot of femaleness rather than divide the women's movement."

"In order to establish themselves as a legitimate interest group or groups, the Chicana femenista has continually had to justify, clarify, and educate people in the political and philosophical issues of the Chicana woman. This has not been easy. They have acted at the cost of being called "vendidas" (sell-outs) among their own group, the Chicanos. At the same time the femenistas have had to pressure the women's movement with little or no solid backing from the Chicano movement. From 1968-1971 feminism was rejected by the Chicano movement as irrelevant and Anglo-inspired."

"Harassment of femenistas forced many Chicanas to suppress their convictions. The term "women's libber," a stigmatizing label, was used as a social label assigned to those who spoke out for women's rights in the Chicano movement."

"It is therefore the philosophy of the Femenistas that in order for a movement to truly fight for justice for all its people (both men and women) must it also, from the beginning, identify and fight the economic oppression delivered through sexism as well as through racism. It is the double responsibility for both Chicanas and Chicanos to become politicized to the economic implications of sexism-sexist racism; otherwise, the issues of employment, welfare, and education as they pertain to the Chicana are not known and therefore ignored and not resolved."

"Differences between the philosophies of the "loyalists" and the "femenistas" have indeed been controversial ones. The loyalists do not recognize sexism as a legitimate issue in the Chicano movement. Femenistas see sexism as an integrated part of the Chicana's struggle in conjunction with her fight against racism."

"There is still a continuous effort on the part of Chicanas to maintain their identity and have people recognize how feminine issues have different and important facets to them when dealt with within the context of minority women, especially minority women who are Spanish-speaking and considered foreigners in their own land."

"Historical differences determine the relationship between the Anglo woman and the Chicana woman. The Anglo woman is a product of Protestant and imperialistic Anglo-European capitalism. The Chicana is a product of Catholic societies which still bear the marks of Counter-reformation feudalism and colonialism. Her Moorish, Spanish, Mexican Indian-Mestizo, Southwest heritage contribute to her cultural world view. Southwest heritage contribute to her cultural world view. But it also outlines her colonized situation in an imperialistic racist country."

"Chicana feminism shares with all women the issues that affect them as women, such as welfare, birth control, abortion, and employment. But it is in the context of the needs of the Chicano people who suffer from racism that sexual issues have a new dimension."

"In providing adequate health programs, Anglo women contend with the cruel prejudice doctors have towards women patients. Chicanas must also contend with doctor's racism, insensitivity to the Chicano culture and the lack of bilingual medical staff."

"I am a Chicana feminist. I make that statement very proudly, although there is a lot of intimidation in our community and in the society in general, against people who define themselves as Chicana feminists."

"a feminist can be a man as well as a woman-it is a group of people that advocates the end of women's oppression."

"People-reactionaries I call them-sometimes define a feminist as someone who hates men. Maybe this is not totally erroneous, but the label is a tactic used to keep people from listening to the issues."

"Child care-it's not a female duty, it is a community responsibility."

"I resent the usual remark that if you're a feminist you have somehow become an Anglo or been influenced by Anglos."

"One of the most renowned feminist of the past is well known throughout the world, though she is not well known by Chicanas. Her name is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and she has been called one of the first feminists of the Americas (which is incorrect, because there were many pre-Columbian feminists). Several of the North American Indian societies were matriarchal and advocated the non-oppression of women-the non-oppression of anybody. Sor Juana was a seventeenth century genius. She was a genius who happened to be a woman and who therefore had only two alternatives: to marry, or to join the convent and marry God. She chose the latter because she felt it would offer her more flexibility and more opportunity to study. And she did study-she studied very hard. She was enthusiastic, to say the least, about learning. She spoke about women's hair-how the hair was a symbol of women's beauty, but if it covered an empty mind, it was nothing but a mask. She said that not until a woman's mind was equal in beauty to her long hair should she have her long hair, so in three months she would plan to read a certain amount, and if she hadn't she would cut off her hair. In three more months, if she hadn't achieved her goal of, say, three volumes, the hair was to go right back until the goal was reached. Sor Juana is famous for Respuesta, a letter to the bishop addressing itself to a letter he sent her praising Sor Juana for her brilliance but telling her that her duty was not to be brilliant but to serve God. The role of women was to be silent, not heard. Sor Juana very politely wrote back, "Surely you must know more than I; however, as I recall, Jesus did not say that women should be silent and not heard. You forget that the temple was a place of learning and discussion, and that women were preaching and talking to their people there, not just bowing their heads in silent prayer or absent-mindedly planning their week's activities. Jesus came into the temple and addressed himself to the people there, those who were speaking there, and those people were the women. Yes, it's my duty to be a servant of God, but how can I understand theology"-theology was a high point of learning in Mexico and in fact it still is-"how can I understand that, if I can't understand biology, geology, psychology? If the world's supposed to be a manifestation of God's great goodness, how can I understand that if I don't know anything about it? These are the prerequisites for my understanding of His great and beautiful powers." So she advocated that women have the right to education But women did not have this right until after the Revolution. During the eighteenth century they did open some convents where women could go and get educated, but the education was primarily in religious studies."

"Today, Chicana feminism is trying to rally enough women and get them to come out from behind the doors so that everybody can hear us say, "We're a legitimate body. No one can deny that any more. Ask us about our political stance, not our validity, as women fighting for women's rights within the Chicano community." Right now, we're in the process of making the Chicano movement responsible to Chicana issues, making it support issues that involve race, welfare rights, forced sterilization-making the Chicano movement address itself to the double standard about male and female workers, and making it live up to its cry of Carnalismo and community responsibility. We're saying, "Prove it! Let's carry it out! Let's support child care. Children are not our individual responsibility but the responsibility of our community." We are working to get women together to build up a base, and working to get the Chicano movement to support and advocate our issues as women."

"What is the Anglo women's movement? First, you have to understand that it is not a unified movement. There are at least three positions. There are the liberal feminists, who say, "I want access to power. I want access to whatever men have access to. I want women's oppression to end insofar as they do not have these things." Then there are radical feminists, who say that men have the power, and that men are responsible for the oppression of women. A third position is that of women's liberationists, which says that women's oppression is one of the many oppressions in the economic system of this country, that we must understand and support that system as well as correct it and unify people to end all oppressions."

"Here's the double standard: "If I have a meeting, you stay at the house and take care of the kids. If you have a meeting, have it at the house and take care of the kids at the same time." Male privilege is, "Let's fight for equal pay for me, and maybe later on for you." Male privilege sometimes makes the Chicano movement just like a male liberation movement."

"When was the last time you heard Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan talk about welfare rights?"

"Rape is an act of violent aggression, and it's something we have the right to defend ourselves against."

"In the middle class, the employment issue is social mobility, it's promotion, tenure. Women with Ph.D's don't want to be secretaries. The issue for the Chicana is just employment. "Give me a job. Give me a good-paying job. Let me have access to training." Again, pure class difference."

"If something in our culture that is advocating oppression is unable to be criticized, evaluated and changed, this is wrong."

"The roots of the psyche of la Chicana lies deep within the colonial period in Mexico."

"The veneration of the Virgin Mary defined the woman's identity as a virgin, as a saintly mother, as a wife-sex object, as a martyr."

"The popular image of Mexican woman is as somber-clad, long-suffering females praying in dimly-lit colonial churches. Church teachings have directed women to identify with the emotional suffering of the pure, passive bystander: the Virgin Mary."

"Marianismo forced Spanish women into acceptable sexual and social roles. The three basic images were of woman as virgin, woman as wife and woman as mother, all of which reinforced social, psychological and economic dependency for women."

"Because culture is a remnant which mirrors people's accumulative economic adaptations in history, the social-psychological roles of Mexican men and women are the products of the economic and class conditions of 300 years of oppression."

"Articles from Chicana print media and the development and publication of oral histories played a vital role in the development of the Chicana studies curriculum. The Chicana press included Francisca Flores's Regeneración, a magazine published in Los Angeles; Chicana newspapers such as Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and Pepita Martinez's El Grito del Norte from New Mexico; and journals such as Encuentro Femenil, a Chicana feminist journal from Long Beach, and San Francisco's Dorinda Moreno's La Mestiza. In addition, there were special edition community newspapers from all parts of the nation."

"Oral history was an important method because it created a body of knowledge about different types of Chicanas. Oral histories of Chicana leaders and their organizations illustrated the diverse political ideas Chicanas had about social change."

"At the 1972 conference, Marianna Hernandez spoke about the Chicana movement. She reassured Chicanas that they were doing the right thing. She asked Chicanas not to be taken aback at name-calling strategies, acknowledging that efforts to label the Chicana movement a "white women's movement" were attempts to discredit and stop the people who were organizing a new movement. She offered that one of the tasks of a new movement is to explain itself and that organizing Chicana conferences and publishing new ideas was an important way for the Chicana movement to do this."

"It is women's work to define what these feminist values are. What are these values? They are democratic values. Women and men are equally valued. Respect is not dependent on gender. Women are the decision makers of their individual lives. Women and children have the right to live in a violence-free environment."

"The Chicana feminist culture is still in development. There are stories of "men's work" yet to tell: of men creating a cultural forum to challenge male roles. It is the story of the democratic challenge to the authoritarian values that depend on the sexual inequality of women and violence."

"According to movement feminist Anna NietoGomez, Chicanas in search of a new identity or new role in society were accused of being engaged in an "Anglo bourgeois trip" and not to be trusted."

"In her effort to convince critics of the differences between Chicana and white feminists, NietoGomez produces a monolithic vision of Anglo women."

"Some of the women who led the movement in its early days were Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, Alicia Escalante with the Welfare Rights Organization, and Gracia Molina de Pick and Anna Nieto-Gómez with feminist activities. Women politicians like Virginia Muzquiz of Crystal City, Texas, Mariana Hernández, and Grace Davies put Chicanas in the political forum. Like these women, there have been hundreds of others who, in the late 1960s and 1970s, have proved that Chicanas have come of age politically in this country."

"Anna Nieto-Gómez is a pioneer in today's Chicana feminism."

"picking up the pen for Chicanas became a "political act." ...Women also founded and edited newspapers-El Grito (Betita Martinez); Encuentro Feminil (Adelaida del Castillo and Anna Nieto-Gómez); Regeneracion (Francisca Flores); and El Chicano (Gloria Macias Harrison). Through their writings, Chicanas problematized and challenged prescribed gender roles at home (familial oligarchy); at school (the home economics track); and at meetings (the clean-up committee),"

"Conflicts over gender or race, personal liberation or family first, did not stop the development of Chicana feminism. Caught between "maternal" and "paternal" movements, Ana Nieto Gómez declared: The Chicana feminist has been cautioned to wait to fight for her cause at a later time for fearing of dividing the Chicano movement. Also it has been recommended that she must melt into the melting pot of femaleness rather than divide the women's movement. At first these attitudes divided Chicanas themselves into two camps: feminists and loyalists. The loyalists believed that one should "stand by your man" and "have babies por la causa." They argued that Chicanas who needed "an identity" were "vendidas" or "falsas." Firing back, Nieto Gómez laid out the following scenario. "A girl may find that an open avenue to temporary status and distinction is to sleep with a noted 'Heavy.'... This is the traditional 'back door' open to all ambitious women.""

"In a poem "Youth Mirror," Ana Nieto Gómez reminded Chicanas of Mexican women warriors, Juana Gallo and Petra Ruiz, revolutionary commanders who had led both men and women. Nieto Gómez endeavored to link historical action with Chicana liberation."

"What are you using the opportunity to do? What have you done for your people? Now you have an opportunity, can’t you utilise and invest in the life of people, not just people only that are around you but those in the community and constituency on behalf of your husband."

"My husband Rt Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the DG Campaign for the president is working tirelessly but I want you even when this programme is over to pray for him because of the too many eyes that are on him not by any fault of his but because Gods favour is upon him. That the will of God will be done in Nigeria and that no man will take his position or take away what belongs to him."

"That is one moment I really do not always like to remember, but in all, God is faithful. To be very honest, it was a fine moment because it just came suddenly and I could not believe that we were in that position."

"The foundation has established an entrepreneur school which has over 9 departments, so we have trained people in other departments like fashion design, making of soap and cream, mechanical engineering and business management."

"I would like to express our profound gratitude for the continuous cooperation of our sponsors. A combination of their vital support have remained the driving force behind the success of our training and other programmes. We need your support, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, with your support, the number of trainees can be over 100 instead of 100 that it is today. I will now focus all my energy towards building and expanding the empowerment coverage of the ESI."

"Beyond political power, let us allow the power of God to reign supreme in our lives for our children to have the right direction."

"This centre will be built under the platform of Rivers State Women Association of Nigeria (RIVWAN) and will provide the enabling infrastructure and support for developing local content of our women."

"Strange things are happening in this land, and only when the truth is widely known, can we put a stop to them."

"I resigned in March 1947, thinking erroneously that I had the right to become a housewife and enjoy the privilege of being a grandmother. But that was a passing fantasy, for out of the blue sky, one early morning I received a summons to appear before Jack Tenney’s very un-American Committee. regardless of the Tenney Committee’s threats on my then pending citizenship, I refused to answer their $64 question on constitutional grounds. My answer was that the Constitution of the United States was more important to me than citizenship."

"Strange things are happening in this land. These threatened exiles of long time resident are conveniently cloaked with certain legalities. But it’s a rather thin coat, made out of some plastic fabric — the brand is the Smith Act of 1940. This was an omnibus bill, that if allowed to stand will eventually completely abolish the Bill of Rights and make drastic constitutional changes — changes, not amendments."

"Foreign intrigue plays too big a part in the affairs of Latin America. In most cases the people do not have a chance."

"From New York to Florida, from Florida to Texas and California, in several states in many cities and towns I became a part of the struggle to strengthen old AFL locals, to build and extend CIO locals — for better working conditions, for more pay, for improvements in the deplorable conditions of women workers, Negro workers, Mexican workers. Many times we tried and failed partially; but most of the time we were successful. Sometimes the struggle was mean. We fought in the midst of KKK terror. We were jailed for daring to strike. We fought desperately for the right to organize!"

"How poor is the memory of those right wing leaders that are blind to reason — who refuse to see that the interests of labor and the people are one"

"They fail to see that the attacks against some of us will later be extended to them and their unions. They have forgotten the story of Germany, the story of Spain, the story of France. They have forgotten that united we stand — that all the bona fide union in other civilized countries were crushed, and the labor leaders of the right and left shook hands in concentration camps!"

"the new Bridges case is a warning signal for all West Coast labor – that it symbolizes a desperate effort to tear down union conditions built in 15 years of struggle."

"Fear that slowly brews into terror as the Smith Act blankets the land, covering under its legal cloak, persecutions unheard of in America."

"the golden carrot that dangles, from the hands of reaction, covers a vicious rattlesnake; for no scab, stoolpigeon or renegade has ever been known to serve the interests of the people."

"The words of the great American socialist, Debs, comes to my mind: “THE COURT OF FINAL RESORT IS THE PEOPLE, AND THAT COURT WILL BE HEARD FROM IN DUE TIME . . .”"

"Luisa Moreno spent her storied career advocating for Latino workers' rights, organizing thousands of Louisiana sugarcane workers, Texas pecan shellers, Colorado sugarbeet workers, and a multiethnic union of thirteen thousand cigar makers in Florida."

"As the union's official representative, Moreno organized the strikers into a united, disciplined force that employers could no longer ignore."

"Public political leadership among Spanish-speaking women was not limited to an aspiring middle class or an elite gentry. Organized by Luisa Moreno, El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española (the Spanish-speaking Peoples Congress) represented the hopes and dreams of many working-class Latinos. By the late 1930s, Moreno was cognizant of both the strength of local institutions and the distance between immigrants and citizens as she endeavored to bring together community networks under the umbrella of a national civil rights congress. El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española was the first national civil rights assembly for Latinos in the United States…El Congreso brought together two dynamic women-Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright-whose life-long friendship was forged in the fire of community organizing."

"While Luisa Moreno took the lead in organizing the 1939 national meeting of El Congreso, Josefina Fierro de Bright proved instrumental in buoying the day-to-day operations of the fragile southern California chapters…Moreno and Fierro de Bright believed in the dignity of the common person and the importance of grass-roots networks, reciprocity, and self-help...The two women also shared an awareness of the positionality of women in U.S. Latino communities. El Congreso created a woman's committee and a woman's platform, a platform that expressly recognized the "double discrimination" facing Mexican women."

"Time was when woman worked in the home, with her weaving, her sewing, her candle making. All that has been changed, and she can no longer regulate her own conditions and her own hours of labor. She has been driven in o the market, with no voice in the laws, and powerless to defend herself."

"There is no death for such as she. There are no last words of love. The ages to come will revere her name. Unnumbered generations of the children of men shall rise up to call her blessed. Her words, her work, and her character will go on to brighten the pathway and bless the lives of all peoples. That which seems death to our unseeing eyes is to her translation. Her work will not be finished, nor will her last word be spoken while there remains a wrong to be righted, or a fettered life to be freed in all the earth...We have followed her leadership until we stand upon the mount of vision where she today leaves us. The promised land lies just before us. It is for us to go forward and take possession...Already the call to advance is heard along the line, and one devoted young follower writes: “There are hundreds of us now, her followers, who will try to keep up the work she so nobly began and brought so nearly to completion. We will work the harder to try to compensate the world for her loss.”"

"If a democracy is a government by the people, and if a republic is a representative democracy, then there is no such thing in our country except in the four states where both men and women elect their representatives. In all the other states government is by an aristocracy of sex, for there can be neither republic nor democracy where one fraction of the people governs another fraction."

"The value of the movement does not depend upon whether it is voted up or voted down; its importance depends on whether it is fundamentally right or not, and the heart of the human race is bound to be ultimately fundamentally right."

"To the frequent objection that women are not fitted for the suffrage, I answer that they are better fitted for it than any class of men in this country have been at the time that the suffrage was given to them. The negro, the laboring man, the Revolutionary soldiers at the time of their enfranchisement showed only a small proportion who could read and write."

"A democracy does not rest on force. It never did and it never will. Rather does it rest on the education of its people for righteousness, which Carlyle declared was a democracy’s only hope."

"Democracy stands for three things: the right of every human being to earn an honest living, the right of the individual to reach his highest development, and the right of the individual to serve the community in citizenship. Woman should have her chance at each one of these aspects of democracy, and the ballot will gain the chance for her. If a thousand years without the ballot has made her only the “lovely, incapable” creature that she is declared to be, then by all means let us see what the ballot can do for her. Doing creates fitness."

"The ideals of democracy of to-morrow will apply the principles of democracy of to-day, and to-morrow there is bound to come the true representative democracy wherein every member of society has his and her part."

"By some objectors women are supposed to be unfit to vote because they are hysterical and emotional and of course men would not like to have emotion enter into a political campaign. They want to cut out all emotion and so they would like to cut us out. I had heard so much about our emotionalism that I went to the last Democratic national convention, held at Baltimore, to observe the calm repose of the male politicians. I saw some men take a picture of one gentleman whom they wanted elected and it was so big they had to walk sidewise as they carried it forward; they were followed by hundreds of other men screaming and yelling, shouting and singing the “Houn’ Dawg”; then, when there was a lull, another set of men would start forward under another man’s picture, not to be outdone by the “Houn’ Dawg” melody, whooping and howling still louder. I saw men jump up on the seats and throw their hats in the air and shout: “What’s the matter with Champ Clark?” Then, when those hats came down, other men would kick them back into the air, shouting at the top of their voices: “He’s all right!!” Then I heard others howling for “Underwood, Underwood, first, last and all the time!!” No hysteria about it — just patriotic loyalty, splendid manly devotion to principle. And so they went on and on until 5 o’clock in the morning — the whole night long. I saw men jump up on their seats and jump down again and run around in a ring. I saw two men run towards another man to hug him both at once and they split his coat up the middle of his back and sent him spinning around like a wheel. All this with the perfect poise of the legal male mind in politics!"

"I have been to many women’s conventions in my day but I never saw a woman leap up on a chair and take off her bonnet and toss it up in the air and shout: “What’s the matter with” somebody. I never saw a woman knock another woman’s bonnet off her head as she screamed: “She’s all right!” I never heard a body of women whooping and yelling for five minutes when somebody’s name was mentioned in the convention. But we are willing to admit that we are emotional. I have actually seen women stand up and wave their handkerchiefs. I have even seen them take hold of hands and sing, “Blest be the tie that binds.” Nobody denies that women are excitable. Still, when I hear how emotional and how excitable we are, I cannot help seeing in my mind’s eye the fine repose and dignity of this Baltimore and other political conventions I have attended!"

"as Dr. Anna Howard Shaw said of Sacagawea at the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1905: "Forerunner of civilization, great leader of men, patient and motherly woman, we bow our hearts to do you honor!... May we the daughters of an alien race... learn the lessons of calm endurance, of patient persistence and unfaltering courage exemplified in your life, in our efforts to lead men through the Pass of justice, which goes over the mountains of prejudice and conservatism to the broad land of the perfect freedom of a true republic; one in which men and women together shall in perfect equality solve the problems of a nation that knows no caste, no race, no sex in opportunity, in responsibility or in justice! May 'the eternal womanly' ever lead us on!"

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment."

"Interestingly, Anna Howard Shaw, a much more conservative woman's rights leader than Stanton and a Protestant minister, echoed Elizabeth Cady Stanton's attack on interpreting the Bible as literal truth."

"(Was it true, as some historians of the movement maintain, that the National American’s president, Dr. Anna Shaw, was “suspicious” of unusual activity in the ranks?) AP: No, I don’t think she was. She came down to Washington frequently and spoke at our meetings, and she walked at the head of our 1913 procession. But I think we did make the mistake perhaps of spending too much time and energy just on the campaign. We didn’t take enough time, probably, to go and explain to all the leaders why we thought [the federal amendment] was something that could be accomplished. You see, the National American took the position—not Miss Anthony, but the later people—that suffrage was something that didn’t exist anywhere in the world, and therefore we would have to go more slowly and have endless state referendums to indoctrinate the men of the country."

"For seventy years, the women leaders of this country have been asking the government to recognize this possibility. Every great woman who stands out in our history-Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt-all have asked the government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare. All have felt that the energy, the thought, and the suffering that was spent in trying to obtain permission to serve directly should as quickly as possible be turned to the actual service."

"She was so able, so zealous, so utterly given to her cause that I had always had genuine admiration for her. Now I found her a most warm-hearted and human person, as well as delightfully salty in her bristling against men and their ways."

""I hate a lukewarm person," she declared when I persisted in balancing arguments. She did; she had never known for a moment in her life the frustration, the perplexities of lukewarmness."

"Except where there is some very strong reason to the contrary, it is generally admitted that every man has a right to be consulted in regard to his own concerns. The laws which he has to obey and the taxes he has to pay are things that do most intimately concern him, and the only way of being directly consulted in regard to them, under our form of government, is through the ballot. Is there any very good reason why women should not be free to be consulted in this direct manner?"

"I have no doubt that if women alone had made the laws, those laws would be just as one-sided as they are to-day, only in the opposite direction."

"it is said that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. The common sense of the world is slowly but surely working toward the enfranchisement of women."

"Alice Blackwell was an exception to me. I saw during my personal acquaintance with her that she was apt to embrace the whole world with her beautiful heart, her strong soul; to press it to her bosom, and never be tired of working for it. But she did too much for her human strength, and now she must rest a while."

"Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though we hope the time will soon come when citizens of the twenty-one republics will no longer need translators. There is no reason for our not speaking each other's language. Among these translators we may mention Alice Stone Blackwell, Isaac Goldberg, the late Thomas Walsh..."

"For seventy years, the women leaders of this country have been asking the government to recognize this possibility. Every great woman who stands out in our history-Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt-all have asked the government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare. All have felt that the energy, the thought, and the suffering that was spent in trying to obtain permission to serve directly should as quickly as possible be turned to the actual service."

"Today, at eighty-three, she is still a vigorous champion of human rights. Just last year I had a wonderful visit with her at her home in Boston, discussing our precious heritage of great American women."

"I cannot give up myself and my soul simply because I need some exposure."

"If I wait for someone else to validate my existence, it will mean that I’m shortchanging myself."

"Fine artists deal with finery, but I deal with painful material."

"It is personal issues that makes me do what I do, for I have been raped more than 50 times by just listening to what women who have confessed and confirmed their love for other women have been through."

"But the fact that we have one of the most advanced constitutions has had little impact on mindsets in townships. Members of our community are celebrating the constitution, but it is very different in the society."

"It is being both black and gay which is problematic."

"They should hold workshops on the constitution in all the townships - people are not aware of our rights and needs."

"It is said we can conquer without emancipation. The rebellion is almost crushed — our armies are pressing southward — the end approaches, when all things will be restored as of old. The South, having been deceived in regard to Mr. Lincoln and the aims of the Republican party, went to war to protect slavery. Now, perhaps, they are beginning to see that Mr. Lincoln is not so far from a slave-catcher, after all. The loyalty of the South is a myth. It will of course grow, as our armies advance, because between hanging and loyalty the advocates of a sinking cause can have but one choice"

"We may beat their armies everywhere, take every city and seaport: what then? Subjugated, are they subdued? They would rise in sixty days again, should the military arm be withdrawn. Success cannot gild our banners while the shadow of the blacks obscures it."

"Kentucky, which fished the halter for liberty in the person of John Brown (abolitionist), has strangled her again, through her representative in the Presidential chair!"

"In the field, Gen. Mitchell rejects the bondmen who flee to him for protection. everywhere those who bring us the most important intelligence are liable to be thrust back into slavery, there to be whipped, tortured, burned to death."

"What are our sufferings to those of the slave girl, or the slave mother, lashed from the embrace of her children? Has your purity no feeling for purity outraged? — your parental affections no sympathy for the lacerated love of the slaves? Can you hesitate to speak the word — Be free? God has put slavery into our hands to choke it. He alone should be able to take it out again alive. Let us storm the slave system, as Smith took Fort Donelson. If the President will not give us the order, let us go ourselves."

"The march of events has at length brought us face to face with the question which cannot be said to be one of public expediency and of military necessity. To-day the question presented to us is one of abstract right and wrong. The republican party must proclaim as its watchword universal liberty if it ever hopes to win, and if it ever repudiates that watchword it must die."

"Slavery is a poor school teacher. No one denies that these men must, to a great extent, are in the condition of the prisoners of St. Mark, who, after being long imprisoned in the dark and filthy dungeons for months and years, ten, twenty and thirty years, when brought into the great square of St. Mark, and standing in the sunshine so long shut out from their eyes, they stood stricken blind for ever. It is not strange that these slaves, freed from the dungeons and caverns of slavery, brought into the full blaze of light, into the bright sunlight of liberty should be dazzled and lose their eyesight at least for a little time, and confound friends with foes. T"

"Our history, the history of our fathers, who to a man loved liberty yet sustained slavery, who prayed that justice might be established in the time to come yet secured the oppression of the present, and who said the men who come after us will secure it."

"All we want to-day is to have the temple erected to liberty perfect and entire. There is but one way for the right to go, that is straight ahead, whatever may stand in our way."

"Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d’Are of the nineteenth century."

"I have toiled from morn to night, from week to week, from year to year, without any bright memories of the past or dreams for the future. Like you, I have lived to work. Every day brought forth the same dull program; the only variation being the time when work was slack, and then the fear of the morrow made matters still worse. We girls of the same workroom often rebelled against our nerve and body tearing tasks, often wishes for a glimpse of the clear sky and the bright sunshine, the green fields and shady woods, which very few of us ever got a chance to enjoy. But what was the use of complaining? We saw no remedy for it, and what was more, didn’t care to look for one."

"It is true there was the possibility of marriage, but how many of us look for the married life as a relief from hard burdens, as easier living. What with the housework and small babies, that come soon enough, a few boarders or some homework, or the job of a janitress, there is little time for recreation, or thought for better things."

"Toilers live the life of animals — that is work, and sleep, with short intervals for food. Now let us put our heads together and see if this is right; if things out to, and will, go on forever in this way."

"We are too tired to think, or read what others have brought out for us; when bones ache and the head reels, the bed, even if it is a hard one, is more inviting that then most attractive lecture room."

"Just as the philosopher or scientist must once in a while occupy himself with manual labor, so it is necessary for working girls to have some brain work to relieve their physical fatigue. If we come home with no other thought but the grind that awaits us again tomorrow, the best thing for us to do is to find forgetfulness in sleep."

"It is entirely different however, if you become absorbed in something which turns your mind into a different channel of thought, which makes you blood run faster in your veins, and makes life worth living. Try it, girls. I am talking from experience."

"Some day we will work to live; there is a beautiful world ahead of us, a world with plenty for all. It is in your, in mine, in everybody’s power to bring it about, but we must all utilize our power, we must all put our shoulders to the wheel."

"There are millions of men and women who give up what is best in them for that very purpose. Girls, why not join hands with them? Every atom of their breath is devoted to the cause of the working class. They, too, work for a living and are tired when night comes; but within them burns a holy fire which gives them the strength and energy to go forth and proclaim the message of truth, to sound the trumpet announcing the coming of freedom, and, take it from me, sister workers, it is glorious to be one of them. The daily grind becomes only an incident in your life, there opens a far broader field to absorb your entire being; with millions of comrades, ready to welcome you in any part of the world you cannot help feeling that you are higher than the mere tool, or band that you are supposed to be, from the boss’s point of view; instead of looking up to him, and often forgiving him his liberties with you, you learn to look down at him, and pity him for his ignorance and shortsightedness."

"Again and again we will hear a despondent voice exclaiming: “What is the use? Life is too dull and empty; it is hardly worth living.” And yet there is so much to live for, there is so much to be accomplished in this wide, wide world, and neither father, brother, husband or sweetheart can do our art for us. She who wants to be free must herself strike the blow; and strike we will, my sisters. Not with swords and hatchets, as man was wont to do, but through our intelligence and energy, through our efforts to rise above the spirit of greed and exploitation."

"Come, my sisters, let us shake off our fetters; let us rise and assert our rights. It is time! The bugle call sounds louder and louder; my toiling sisters of the world, arise!"

"Following the general deduction that the majority of children go to work because of the immediate need of bread, we must give them their daily bread if they are to live."

"We, the Socialists, claim that since child labor is a blot upon our civilization and since the children are sent to work because they must have bread and clothing immediately the State should assume the responsibility of supplying them with food and clothing, as it supplies them with books and instructors at present. We go a step further and say that since the children of today are the men and women of tomorrow it is in the interest of society at large to give each new born child an equality of opportunity, whereby it would be enabled to receive bodily care and a thorough education in order to fit it to take its place on the battlefield of life."

"The aim of Socialism is to place the adult worker in the possession of the necessary tools of production, so that he would not be compelled to part with the lion’s share of t his wage for the mere privilege of their use. Socialism proposes to offer each adult worker a certainty of livelihood and thus enable him to take care of his own."

"Your forefathers achieved independence by fighting with muskets, but you live in an age when the guns are in the possession of your opponents. You don’t need guns, for you can accomplish more than your forefathers did, by the use of your ballots."

"If we continue to let children go to their deaths and thousands of women to their degradation, a clash is bound to come sooner or later. Why not avert it with your ballots?"

"Hundreds of thousands, nay millions of American children, are sacrificed yearly on its altar."

"There were a number of outstanding Jewish women among American socialists, chief among them Theresa Malkiel, who began her career as a union organiser in the 1890s, and Rose Pastor Stokes, who later became a leading figure in the Communist Party, but their involvement in union affairs was less important than their role as propagandists."

"In Malkiel's (fictitious) Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker, a work of propaganda, she puts into the mouth of her narrator, an American 'Mary', admiration for the Jewish girls who seemed to have in"

"Their blood, 'like Jesus Christ the spirit of sacrifice'. In real life, such admiration was often tempered by prejudice and hostility."

"Malkiel wrote of women as victims of 'the breeding beast', took a Jewish fellow socialist to task for praising women as 'instinctual, intuitive creatures' and looked forward to a socialist society in which 'women would cease to be idle candidates for marriage, children no longer a burden, and women would return to a primeval freedom'."

"Our social structure has been based on the theory that “all men support all women,” a theory which has never been true, and which is farther from being true to-day than ever before."

"It is regarded as a misfortune when a boy grows to manhood content to live on the labor of others. With girls it has been otherwise. It has been assumed that they would marry and be “supported” by competent husbands. The only training necessary for them with this inevitable future before them should be such as would fit them to be wives, mothers, and housekeepers – “sweet dependents,” held perpetually in “soft subjection.” The practical working of this theory has weighted women with heavy disabilities, for many men make neither good nor competent husbands."

"The old-time theory that “all men support all women” led to the enactment of laws which gave all the earnings of the married woman to her husband; in most instances gave him control of her property, always legal possession of her person, and legal ownership of her minor children; the righto decide the location of their joint domicile; the power, in short, the become the arbiter of her fate;"

"When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as 1838 Angelina Grimké and Abby Kelley, who were the first women orators I ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti-slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby condemned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty. Ten years later, when the first Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, and occasion commemorated by this weeks’ International Conference, women reiterated the protest and the denunciation, and demanded political equality as a remedy for these wrongs. Two years later another Woman’s Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., and again there rang out the demand for equal political rights for men and women, equal educational opportunities, and “partnership in the labors and gains, risks and remunerations, of productive industry.” It is impossible to-day to describe the fierce outburst of ridicule with which the public received these demands. Press and pulpit, legislatures and courts, public men and private citizens, society and fashion, all hastened to wash their hands of these innovators, and to label them with the opprobrious epithets so lavishly affixed to those who inaugurate a reform."

"Clara Barton, doing clerical work in a department of the Government and declining to receive compensation therefor, attracted no attention. But Clara Barton in hospitals an don hospital transports, bringing order out of chaos, hope our of despair, and holding death in abeyance; Clara Barton at Andersonville, where 13,000 soldiers had yielded up life under the prolonged horrors of a military prison, and had been ignominiously buried in long trenches, uncared for, united and unknown, attracted the attention and aroused the gratitude of the nation. For she ordered the trenches opened, the unknown dead exhumed and decently buried, each man in a separate grave, with a headstone recording his name, his rank, and the date of his death."

"Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan d’Are of the nineteenth century."

"the last statue of w:Anne Whitney, unveiled a few months ago, the ideal statue of the Norseman Leif, the son of Eric, is regarded by man competent critics as the most exquisite work of art that has come from the studio of any American sculptor."

"Only a little over a quarter of a century ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its institutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find the occupying a very subordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery; they could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book binderies."

"The ancient commercial dimensions of the earth are swept away forever, and competition is now world-wide. This will compel the thorough training of American working people in industrial education, based on art and science. We need technical schools as we find them in the Old World, abundant and open alike to old and young, rich and poor, and as free to women as to men."

"to working women, as indeed to all women, the ballot is a necessity. It is the only synonym of legal equity that a republican government can know."

"Above all, at the present time, should women cultivate what they grievously lack, a fine esprit de corps. They should stand together in a solidarity that can not be shaken by difference of opinion, nor weakened by jealousy, nor undermined by the cruel gossip and scandal of the world. “Any stone is good enough to throw at a dog,” says Frances Power Cobbe, ” and there is yet a spirit in the world that regards any slur, innuendo, or hint of baseness as legitimate if uttered concerning a woman.” “the woman Thou gavest me, she gave me of the tre and I did eat,” is still the pitiful plea of the shirk and the coward. It should not be echoed by women, nor exalted by them to the dignity of an accusation. I lack language in which to express my sense of reprobation of the course pursued by those women who, from their soft and easy homes, where they are anchored in the love of manly husbands, enter the arena of public life only to beat back their sisters who seek larger opportunities than suffice for themselves; who make their own opinions and wishes the measure of all women’s needs, and cry out to legislatures and courts, parliaments and congresses: “Hold, enough! Concede to women no more of their demands, for we have all the rights we want!” “Whenever a wrong is done To the humblest and the weakest ‘neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base, Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race.”"

"It is more than fifty years since Margaret Fuller, standing, as she said, “in the sunny noon of life,” wrote a little book, which she launched on the current of thought and society. It was entitled “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; and as the truths it proclaimed and the reforms it advocated were far in advance of public acceptance, its appearance was the signal for an immediate widespread newspaper controversy, that raged with great violence. I was young then, and as I took the book from the hands of the bookseller, wondering what the contents of the thin little volume could be, to provoke so wordy a strife, I opened the first page. My attention was immediately arrested, and a train of thought started"

"that grander type of woman, towards which to-day the whole sex is moving, —consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, — because the current sets that way, and there is no escape from it."

"humanity has moved forward to an era where wrong and slavery are being displaced, and reason and justice are being recognized as the rule of life. Science is extending immeasurably the bounds of knowledge and power; art is refining life, giving to it beauty and grace; literature bears in her hands whole ages of comfort and sympathy, industry, aided by the hundred-handed elements of nature, is increasing the world’s wealth, and invention is economizing its labor. The ages looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and the tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time. It could not be possible in such an era, but that women should share in the justice and kindliness with which the time is fraught. A great wave is lifting them to higher levels. The leadership of the world is being taken from the hands of the brutal and low, and the race is making its way to a higher ideal than once it knew."

"the prophecies of evil always inspired by a growing reform"

"“What shall we do with our daughters?” is really the sum and substance of what, I popular phase, is called “the woman question.”"

"Obedience to the behests of duty gives peace, even when love is lacking; and peace is a diviner thing than happiness."

"Nature has so constituted us that the sexes act and react upon each other, making every “woman’s cause” a man’s cause, and every man’s cause a woman’s cause"

"Good health is a great prerequisite of successful or happy living."

"While it is undoubted true that the practice of tight lacing is regarded with growing disfavor, it is also true that the corsets in vogue, at present, are more objectionable than those worn even half a century ago."

"Children require simple food, early hours for retiring, and abundance of sleep, as well as freedom from social and religious excitements."

"Health is a means to an end. It is an investment for the future. That end is worthy work and noble living. And life has little to offer the young girl who has dropped into physical deterioration, which cuts her off from the activities of the time, and makes existence to her synonymous with endurance."

"no phase of the great movement for the advancement of women has progressed so slowly, as that which demands their technical and industrial training."

"The very highest function of woman is to raise and train the family; it is the very highest function of man also."

"“Do you expect to train boys to the same standard of morality as girls?” I am asked. “It cannot be done. Boys will be boys, and young men will have their time of sewing wild oats.” And this is said as cavalierly, as if “wild oats,” when sowed, never come to harvest. As Gold lives, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap,” — “wild oats,” or whatever else. It is possible to train boys to the same standard of purity that is upheld for their sisters. It is not safe, and it is indeed cruel, to ignore this, when we consider the physical consequences and the moral debasement of a dissipated life. Every boy should be trained to courtesy, self-possession, and a regard for the rights and wishes of others."

"Every boy should have a special fitting for some aim in life. ..Industry is a great means of grace."

"In short, the training of our boys should be toward manliness, — towards gentle-manliness; so that they will be tender to children, courteous to women, helpful to the unable, and quick to recognize those in need of assistance. They should be so strong morally as quickly to repel temptation; so trained in the habit of doing right that it will not be easy for them to do wrong."

"Some one once asked Charles Sumner what bribes had been offered him in the course of his political career. “What bribe!” he replied. “No bribe has ever been offered me. I have never been solicited, with promise of payment, to pursue any course whatever. ” It could not have bene otherwise with Sumner. He as not a man to solicit temptation, or to dally with it, and people knew it. Usually, the people who are tempted are known to be in the market with principles to sell. But Charles Sumner, like some other great men of course country, had not a reputation of this kind."

"Thomas Hughes, the author of “Tom Brown at Rugby,” has written a little book called “The Manliness of Christ” It would be an excellent thing if our young men became sufficiently interested in this book to read it."

"The feminist compilers were no less present-minded. The most ambitious work from their ranks was published in 1893 by Frances Willard, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and Mary Livermore, a reformer and woman's rights leader…The editors considered the 19th century to be the century of opportunities for women and set out to compile "this rosary of nineteenth century achievement... the self-conscious celebratory tone of the essays and the selection of persons to be included reveal the authors' didactic intent. This volume celebrates women active in religious, welfare and educational work, the kind of women honored in the cultural programs of the women's clubs then springing up in every community in the United States. The omissions are equally telling: there is not one African-American woman listed, and all the famous women to whom any touch of "scandal," such as a divorce, adhered were excluded. Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Frances Kemble, Margaret Fuller did not pass the "respectability" test and were omitted."

""How does it feel to be known as the husband of Mary Livermore?" was the snide question asked by a reporter of the Rev. Mr. Livermore, whose wife, a famous and popular writer, reformer and lecturer, often helped fill his pulpit and co-edited a periodical with him. Mr. Livermore responded with a charming smile: "Why, I'm very proud of it. You see, I'm the only man in the world who has that distinction." His reply is as notable for its good spirit as for its rarity."

"For seventy years, the women leaders of this country have been asking the government to recognize this possibility. Every great woman who stands out in our history-Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Catt-all have asked the government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare. All have felt that the energy, the thought, and the suffering that was spent in trying to obtain permission to serve directly should as quickly as possible be turned to the actual service."

"In these times of ours, when all classes in society, from the Bowery Socialists to the highest professors of science, seem to vie with one another in demanding State interference, State protection, and State regulation, when the ideal State to the workingman is that proposed by the authoritarian Marx, or the scarcely less authoritarian George, and the ideal State to the scientist is the Germany of today, where the scientists are under the government’s special protection, it would seem idle to hope that the voices of those who prize liberty above an things, who would fain call attention to the false direction in which it is desired to make the world move, should be other than “voices crying in the wilderness.” But, nevertheless, it is not by accident that we who hold the ideas that what is necessary to progress is not the increase, but the decrease, of governmental interference have come to be possessed of these ideas. We, too, are “heirs of all the ages,” and it is our duty to that society of which we form a part to give our reasons for the “faith that is in us.”"

"It is always important that the position of devil’s advocate should be well filled."

"Responsibility is the parent of morality"

"As Leslie Stephen has demonstrated, to suppress one truth is to suppress all truth, for truth is a coherent whole."

"Do you think that a country, one of whose most distinguished professors, Virchow, is afraid of giving voice to the doctrine of evolution, because he sees that it inevitably leads to Socialism (and Socialism the government has decided is wrong, and must be crushed out), is in the way of long maintaining its supremacy as a scientific light, when the question which its scientific men are called upon to decide is not what is true, but what the government will allow to be said?"

"It is our duty to truth to cultivate the spirit which questions all things"

"We still have no evidence on record to prove that great men are endowed with more than the ordinary share of common sense, which is so necessary in conducting the ordinary affairs of life. Indeed, if the gossip of history is to be in any way trusted, great men have usually obtained less than the ordinary share of this commodity. Frederick the Great is reported to have said that, if he wished to ruin one of his provinces, he would hand its government over to the philosophers. Is it into the hands of a Bacon, who had no more sense than to expose himself (for the sake of a little experiment which could have been made just as well without the exposure), a Newton who ordered the grate to be removed when the fire became too hot for him, a Clifford, who worked himself to death, that the direction of the affairs of a people is to be given, with the assurance that they will be carried on better than now?"

"Will advance by having no opinion protected from discussion and agitation, by having the greatest possible freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press."

"Dr. Gertrude Kelly, a surgeon of great skill and a supporter of the Irish Republic."

"In basing their demands on a claim of justice-women are human beings; therefore they ought to possess all the rights and privileges of human beings-the anarchist-feminists refused to make any extravagant claims for social and political benefits that would flow from equality. But they thereby lost an opportunity to appeal to men on the grounds most likely to gain their attention, those of self-interest. The early feminists had faced the same problem and their arguments also had failed to win masculine support. As a result, the suffragists at the end of the century often felt it necessary to exploit their womanhood in an attempt to render feminism more palatable to men. Such tactics were unacceptable to the anarchist-feminists, but a few of them did try to persuade their male comrades that women's equality was essential to a radical platform. Gertrude B. Kelly, for example, argued that a successful revolution would depend on a commitment to feminism, contending that unless radical men began to take steps to end the oppression of women, their attempts to remake the world would end in failure. She agreed with her male comrades who said that there was "properly speaking no woman question as apart from the question of human right and human liberty." But men often used such statements to try to persuade women to mute their demands for sexual equality until after the liberation of the "people" had been accomplished, implying that while the concerns of male revolutionaries were by their very nature universal, those of women were at best parochial. Kelly, on the other hand, insisted that without sexual equality no liberation could take place. Men hurt themselves as well as women by their refusal to recognize this: "No wrong can be done to any class in society without part at least of the evil reverting to the wrong-doers."...Gertrude Kelly's earnest attempt to enlist male support through appeals to self-interest was unusual. The anarchist-feminists recognized for the most part that women must seek their own emancipation. They placed (accurately as it turned out) little faith in the enlightenment of radical men. The significance of their approach may be seen most clearly by an examination of the anarchist-feminists proposals for the reorganization of society based on the premise of economic and psychological independence from men."

"Anarchist-feminists found it difficult to persuade their male corevolutionaries to take the Woman Question seriously...Gertrude Kelly berated them because she believed that by ignoring the demands of women radical men were actually retarding the revolution"

"The enthusiasms of the social feminists for example temperance, protective legislation for women and children workers, and social purity usually drew a negative response from the anarchist-feminists, both communists and Individualists. Although like the more conventional feminists they abhorred prostitution, anarchists believed it to be a predictable result of both capitalism and societal repression of sexuality that could only be removed by the overthrow of both. The Individualist Gertrude Kelly argued in 1885 that social purity advocates possessed the evidence to show "that destitution is the chief cause of prostitution" but that they refused to follow the logic of their findings. "When we come to examine the remedies proposed, we find not a word on the subject of... making their wages equal to those of a man for the same work.""

"Voltairine de Cleyre possessed one of the best minds among the American anarchists, and her essays, particularly in the early twentieth century, were sophisticated and subtle. On the other hand, the other anarchist-feminists who attempted to explain anarchist ideas tended to approach every problem as a separate issue without reconciling, or in some cases even noticing, disharmonies and contradictions. They espoused feminism and the standard anarchist remedies for social ills without troubling to look for connections. It almost seems as if they deliberately avoided those questions that would force them to confront anarchist ideology as a whole. Gertrude B. Kelly, for example, concentrated on questions of finance when she was not writing about women. She was enthusiastic about the innovation of checking accounts, which she viewed as the harbinger of the Mutual Bank, an institution that, for Individualists, was at the heart of anarchist economics. Yet she not only found it unnecessary to explain the effect of new bank practices on the overall power structure, but she also failed to connect monetary issues with questions about the redistribution of wealth or the economic role of women.'..Where Gertrude B. Kelly had confined herself to specific details of anarchist thought without attempting an inclusive analysis, Florence Finch Kelly offered sweeping generalities without touching on their application."

"It is so obvious that to treat people equally is the right thing to do."

"I wondered why people made speeches in favor of something so obviously right,...Women breathed the same air, got the same education; it was ridiculous, spending so much energy and elocution on something rightfully theirs."

"Social welfare—that's the chief interest I have ever had. People are wrong in thinking that the best incentive is competition. Competition is good, but only as the instrument for the common good."

"every...act should be an expression of the God, or goodness, in us."

"men should look into their own lives, see their many doings, their sins (if you will), repent of them, [and] lead bettter lives than [in] their past."

"Being finite ourselves, we human beings cannot know God directly, but only through the phenomena, or manifestations of God in our universe. These manifestations range from the distant world of the milky way to the tiniest blade of grass, from the vast oceans to the dew drop, from the grandest mountain to the soft skin of a baby's cheek; they include every act of kindness and generosity and sacrificial devotion of a human being to another human being, the love of a man for his wife, the love of a mother for her child. They include our very search for God—They include all the beauty and the glory and the mystery of the universe around us and within us. The more we grow in wisdom and in the understanding of these things, the more nearly we can approach to a knowledge of God."

"Information and Communication Technology (ICT) not only affects the way we do business on the continent, but also plays a role in supporting services including education, health, disaster management and resource management.("Itumanaho n’ikoranabuhanga (ICT) ntibigira uruhare mu buryo dukora ibijyanye n’ubucuruzi ku mugabane, ahubwo biri no kugira uruhare mu gushyigikira serivisi zirimo uburezi, ubuzima, kurwanya ibiza no mu icungamutungo.")"

"Seeing my name in the credits [of the cartoon series] was a big moment for me and I am so thankful I had that opportunity,"

"But there is still hope that newer developments in the field of IT can now [see] women [working] alongside men,"

"If women are part of and can make up a huge part of the market for ICT products, they can also enjoy the available opportunities alongside men in the ICT industry from both developer and end-user perspective,"

"My commitment is to encourage more girls and women to join the ICT sector, but I also get the feeling that by establishing an animation studio this will showcase my innovations to help Rwandan children, by creating characters and settings that they can relate to and stories to entertain and inspire them"

"“I struggled with understanding the tax system. I made a lot of expensive mistakes,”"

""As a child there were hardly any cartoons that were representative of my culture and I want to be part of changing that for the children growing up today,”"

"Innovation has become a buzzword that entrepreneurs and policy makers are fond of using. It is not enough to create something new as a business person, it needs to be valuable to your market. Therefore, at least for entrepreneurs, innovation should be focused and targeted"

"Technology can, and already does, play a huge role in Africa’s development,” she explains. “As is often said in Rwanda, it is cross cutting – in other words, it can come into play in all the other sectors of the economy. Technology is a tool and when used well, it improves the efficiency and impact of other development initiatives."

"Many women do use technology, but we also need to be more involved in its development"

"I beat several other bidders to the tender. That’s when I realised that in Rwanda people don’t offer you a job based on your gender, age or financial muscle of your company."

"For my first job I even used my client’s laptop; they were only interested in my skills... It was an exciting experience"

"Yes, ICT has certainly played a role in my career through a number of ways, it has allowed me gain clients outside the country and helped promote my business ideas through social media and other platforms"

"This is one of the many reasons I think it is important for both women and men to be involved in using ICT to find new approaches to tackling our nation’s challenges. I would encourage girls and women of any age to take some short ICT courses online or offline which can help build their confidence."

"ICT is full of so many opportunities for everyone. If you have an analytical mind, go for programming, if you have a creative mind, go for graphic designing; find where you belong and go for it."

"Besides that, I wanted to give opportunity to others since I was given chance to realize my dream at the start."

"I especially want to promote ICT among girls and women because many think that it is a man’s world—and it still is. But if you look at the history of computing you will find that women played an integral role as well."

"The militant policy is bringing success. . . . the agitation has brought England out of her lethargy, and women of England are now talking of the time when they will vote, instead of the time when their children would vote, as was the custom a year or two back."

"When the Quakers were founded…one of their principles was and is equality of the sexes. So I never had any other idea…the principle was always there.”"

"if women who are Republicans simply help the Republican Party, and if women who are Democrats help the Democratic Party, women’s votes will not count for much. But if the political Parties see before them a group of independent women voters who are standing together to use their vote to promote Suffrage, it will make Suffrage an issue — the women voters at once become a group which counts; whose votes are wanted."

"(When did you actually become involved in suffrage work?) AP: Well, after I got my master’s in 1907, my doctoral studies took me to the School of Economics in London. The English women were struggling hard to get the vote, and everyone was urged to come in and help. So I did. That’s all there was to it. It was the same with Lucy Burns."

"to me it was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote. Seems almost unthinkable now, doesn’t it? With all these millions and millions of women going out happily to work today, and nobody, as far as I can see, thinking there’s anything unusual about it. But, of course, in some countries woman suffrage is still something that has to be won"

"we did hear a lot of shouted insults, which we always expected. You know, the usual things about why aren’t you home in the kitchen where you belong. But it wasn’t anything violent. Later on, when we were actually picketing the White House, the people did become almost violent. They would tear our banners out of our hands and that sort of thing."

"(You were once quoted to the effect that in picking volunteers you preferred enthusiasm to experience.) AP: Yes. Well, wouldn’t you? I think everybody would. I think every reform movement needs people who are full of enthusiasm. It’s the first thing you need. I was full of enthusiasm, and I didn’t want any lukewarm person around. I still am, of course"

"if we had universal suffrage throughout the world, we might not even have wars."

"during that time we opened—and by “we” I mean the whole women’s movement—we opened a great many doors to women with the power of the vote, things like getting women into the diplomatic service. And don’t forget we were successful in getting equality for women written into the charter of the United Nations in 1945."

"I feel very strongly that if you are going to do anything, you have to take one thing and do it."

"(how would you describe your contribution to the struggle for women’s rights?) I always feel ... the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end."

"NAWSA opposed Paul's tactics, but many historians concur in the opinion that these militant actions helped to spur the urgency of the moment."

"Woman suffrage is an almost forgotten issue today, and yet the battle is not won. Despite the capitulation of Congress last June, nearly three-fourths of the women of these States will be denied the right to vote in the Presidential Campaign of 1920, unless a miracle is accomplished in the next two months. The miracle will not fall from Heaven. If it occurs, it will be the result of hard work on the part of those same good fighters who picketed the White House and went to jail and finally wrung the Federal Amendment out of a distressed and embarrassed government,-Alice Paul's gallant band of militants."

"Alice Paul is a leader of action, not of thought. She is a general, a supreme tactician, not an abstract thinker. Her joy is in the fight itself, in each specific drawn battle, not in debating with five hundred delegates the fundamental nature of the fight. "The Executive Committee have provided a good enough phrase-To remove all the remaining forms of the subjection of women.' Let the delegates with the least possible debate adopt this phrase to serve for purpose, program and constitution." Of course she said nothing, but that, I believe, was Alice Paul's notion of what the Convention's action should be. "I will let you know what the first step is to be, how to act and when. Go home now and don't worry." These words were not printed in the program, but they seemed to be written between the lines...Is Alice Paul a radical? Is she even a liberal? Is she really a reactionary? These vague reformist terms are inappropriate in describing Alice Paul. Let us use the definite terms of the revolution. She is not a communist, she is not a socialist; if she is class-conscious at all her instincts are probably with the class into which she was born. But I do not think she is class-conscious. I think she is sex-conscious; she has given herself, body and mind and soul, to the women's movement. The world war meant no moment's wavering in her purpose, in fact she used the war with serene audacity to further her purpose. I imagine she could even go through a proletarian revolution without taking sides and be found waiting on the doorstep of the Extraordinary Commission the next morning to see that the revolution's promises to women were not forgotten! Alice Paul does not belong to the revolution, but her leadership has had a quality that only the revolution can understand."

"Alice Paul comes of Quaker stock and there is in her bearing that powerful serenity so characteristic of the successful Quaker. Like many another famous general she is well under five foot six, a slender, dark woman with a pale, often haggard face, and great earnest childlike eyes that seem to seize you to her purpose and hold you despite your own desires and intentions. During that seven year suffrage campaign she worked so continuously, ate so little and slept so little that she always seemed to be wasting away before our eyes... Indifference is harder to fight than hostility, and there is nothing that kills an agitation like having everybody admit that it is fundamentally right. If you can so frame your issue or so choose your method of attack as to precipitate discussion and difference of opinion among honest men, so that all your followers become passionate explainers, you have put life into a movement. Alice Paul knows this and she is a master at framing a meaty issue. As I look back over that seven-year struggle I sometimes suspect that many bold strategies were employed more to revive the followers than to confound the enemy...Alice Paul's active leadership in the American feminist movement was almost an accident. She was a student at an English university intending to pursue the career of a scholar when she was caught up in the English militant movement and served a brief apprenticeship in jail. It was during this experience that she began to plan what she would do for women suffrage in America. American women owe much to the English militants, but this above all."

"I may add that Alice Paul's visit to London has brightened the lives of such Woman's Party exiles as Hazel Hunkins, Betty Gram and myself. To see this wonder-worker-so quiet, so indefatigable, so sure, once more beginning to move mountains, revives one's faith in the future."

"Other evidences of changes in women’s status were more immediately apparent. The legendary ‘‘flapper’’ made her debut in the postwar decade, signaling with studied theatrical flourishes a new ethos of feminine freedom and sexual parity. The Nineteenth Amendment, enacted just in time for the 1920 presidential election, gave women at least formal political equality. The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed by Alice Paul of the National Women’s Party in 1923, sought to guarantee full social and economic participation to women. An organized movement for the promotion of birth control, founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921 as the American Birth Control League, heralded a growing feminine focus on reproductive control and erotic liberation. Countless women, especially if they were urban, white, and affluent, now used the new technologies of spermicidal jelly and the Mensinga-type diaphragm, both first manufactured in quantity in the United States in the 1920s, to limit the size of their families. This development worried the authors of Recent Social Trends, who feared that the old-stock, white, urban middle class would be demographically swamped by the proliferation of the rural and immigrant poor, as well as blacks."

"Miss Alice Paul, Ph.D., D.C.L., author of the Equal Rights Treaty, and a founder of the National Woman's Party of the United States, is chairman of the committee on nationality of the Inter-American Commission of Women, and to her indefatigable labor in research and the compilation of material is due the commission's monumental report now ready for presentation at the first plenary session. This report covers the nationality of women throughout the world. In every case, it gives actual excerpts from the law in the original language, with translation. This applies even to laws in Japanese, Greek, Siamese, Bulgarian, Russian, etc., with the original text in the original script facing the translation on the opposite page. Synopses of the laws are included also with important original chapters by Miss Paul so that the juridical information is made easily understandable to all readers, whether familiar with legal terms or not. Comprehensive tables on nationality prepared by Miss Stevens and Miss Paul are another novel and important feature of this report which is as plain as daylight, as thrilling as an air race, and as fascinatingly involved as a detective story."

"I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?” This was the reaction of two white women to Mary Church Terrell’s telling of the lynching of a pregnant Black woman whose baby was then torn from her body. That was in 1921, and Alice Paul had just refused to publicly endorse the enforcement of the Nineteenth Amendment for all women — by refusing to endorse the inclusion of women of Color, although we had worked to help bring about that amendment."

"In 1940, at the World's Fair held in New York City, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, addressing a receptive audience, declared that it is woman's main task to stop war...Though more militant than Mrs. Catt as a leader in the suffrage movement, Alice Paul was no less certain that war sprang from men's nature and that women were under obligation to put a stop to wars. When, in April, 1941, she was interviewed on her return from Geneva, where she had spent two years directing the organization of an international movement for equal rights for women, she declared, relative to the war in Europe: "Women's instincts are constructive and tend to build and create, not to tear down." The guilt of war she laid wholly on men, saying: "This war was brought about without the women having anything to say or do about it, and now they are the greatest sufferers.""

"We women leaders must rise up to the task of reshaping our country by providing our intuitive ideas to support the developmental ideals of Nigeria."

"We must endeavour to raise good children and of course inspire them to do the same to their children. Through this, we shall raise a generation of conscientious leaders who will have the fear of God in them to do all the needful to develop our dear Nation."

"..….let me point out that nothing can be achieved without the following: a clear vision, burning desire, an unquenchable passion and corresponding actions."

"When I started, so many people did not understand and asked questions like how can human beings be trafficked? Many people were taken aback and not until when the real thing started. The moment I started it, the Italian government were very impressed and they started repatriating our girls back to Nigeria. The first batch of girls that were repatriated were 70 and were accompanied by 140 Policemen because these children were very reluctant, they enjoyed the life out there and didn’t want to go back home and it was something else and since then we brought it to the front burner of the government and work started and that is how WOTCLEF came about."

""WOTCLEF is my fervent prayer, dream and aspiration to restore human dignity"."

""In WOTCLEF, we have strategies we use to accomplish our mission, through sensitization, we create awareness, and we assist the trafficked victims and the vulnerable persons, and we rehabilitate and we re-integrate them into the society and even with their parents or guardians, we bring them together all to re-integrate them back into society. Apart from advocacy, we do capacity building for these children, we partner with stakeholders, both national and international agencies and the work is very easy for us. Through this WOTCLEF has earned accolades in the United Nations (UN). We have a seat at the UN and if they are having any discussions or forum on women trafficking or child labour, we are invited to come and have a say in whatever they are doing"."

""So amazed, I asked if this is what these people do to these children so it hurt my feelings and I said to my God given self that one day, when I am in position, I will help these young vulnerable children"."

"In our troubled days it is good to have something outside our planet, something fine and distant for comfort."

"Oh! Be A Fine Girl — Kiss Me!"

"The oppression of women, economic or personal, is not solely a White-Black Race confrontation although the oppression of Black Women is deeply tied to the variable of race in the history of imperialism."

"The liberation of women is conceived as the desire of women to reduce men to housekeepers. Since most men despise manual work for feudal and middle class reasons, women’s liberation is feared as an effort by women to ‘feminise’ men, that is, degrade them."

"What we want in Africa is social transformation. It is not about warring with men, the reversal of role, or doing to men whatever women think that men have been doing for centuries, but it is trying to build a harmonious society."

"The transformation of African society is the responsibility of both men and women and it is also in their interest."

"We must remember that there were radical outlets for women in indigenous African cultures, and in our colonised societies, contact with Europe brought with it the inheritance of European movements and social concerns. So there were inheritors of the British suffragette movement in Nigeria, while my mother, a teacher's college professor, was a practitioner of many of the radical ideas of the Victorian period about women. My perceptions of gender hierarchies were sharp growing up. I was raised with a male sibling as well as female and male wards living with my mother. I was much of a tomboy then. I did not have any important position in my nuclear family of five children, meaning I was neither first nor last boy or girl. No position! I could also see that boys had advantages, even though my progressive mother made all the boys in her house, including my other brothers, do housework. They learned to sew, knit and embroider! She also made us share the housework with the house help or servants. She said her children could not grow up spoilt while others learnt to be effective and efficient. So from very young I had a healthy attitude towards class differences, having been raised to respect everybody in the work they did.Gender hierarchies were so sharp for me that I always wondered as a pre-teen whether marriage was a good idea. Many folktales and other forms of informal educational modes existed to help prepare women for accepting male dominance in marriage. I saw marriage in the Christian world I was in as restrictive, though my mother was a suffragette, if there was any such thing. I say "Christian" world because I could also see that women in the local, unWesternised society around us had different values and freedoms. Within Yoruba marriage, the woman was culturally expected to defer to the husband. Yet Christian marriage restricted Yoruba women of my mother's generation in an unusual way (dress, freedom of movement, association, and gainful work outside the home beyond the financial control of the husband). There were dignifying and structurally important roles for women in Yoruba culture, even within its patriarchal assumptions, and some would say, androgynous cultural practices and cosmology of the Yoruba, expressed in the philosophical fount to the culture that Ifa Divination Poetry with its thousands of verses. One argument is that women were weighted equally with men as human beings, but had to defer to men in certain contexts, while men deferred in others."

"My mother took her place very firmly as a leader in many structures, though in the"

"Every human being has autonomy, whether in a marriage or a single people. That you are married does not take out your human right."

"Just speak out. You owe it to yourself and to no one, whenever you are able to share your story or even to say I need help. There is absolutely freedom in asking for help. There is no shame and no self-guilt."

"The Nigerian policemen and women are a representation of our society. And until our society begins to push back, against their violence and saying no more will you disrespect our women and girls then, of course, our society’s silence emboldens the culture of abuse against women."

"What we need to do as individuals is to continue to educate people on the importance of respecting women’s rights. We need to hold people accountable."

"We live in a country that is wearing a veil of silence."

"...guarding yourself against partnerships that want to suck the life out of you not because they share the same value, but because they like the fame you’re getting. So you need to be discerning in terms of working with people."

"Take care of your own mental health and well being because that is very important."

".....there’s nothing impossible to do except you don’t just have the will to do it."

"Mental health is not for ‘mad people’. It is basically your psychological and emotional wellbeing."

"For us girls, there were no praises, just criticism"

"As African women, we don’t have to live up to other people’s expectations. We too can question the status quo"

"I’m a human being; there isn’t any number of cows that will determine my value"

"It’s possible to question cultural practices if they don’t align with our values"

"In Rwanda, there is good political will in terms of gender equality and women’s rights thanks to the President who advances women’s rights and is a believer in gender equality."

"Actually in most countries, women wish to get half of what Rwanda has."

"When we see African Union putting women rights at the centre of their deliberations, it has taken our push and advocacy over previous years."

"Gender rights and women rights ought to be understood and implemented holistically. You cannot ask women what right to have; they should enjoy all rights, rights to their reproductive health, leadership, education, food among other rights."

"Issues of sexual reproductive health continue to be a major challenge in Africa, especially issues that regard safe abortions, where there are issues brought about by religion, patriarchy, culture among other aspects."

"We continue to see women miss out on human rights due to lack of due attention."

"We need to have men understand gender equality and cease to be oppressors and perpetrators. This will increase the involvement of human rights affairs."

"Je pense qu’une constitution ne doit pas rester figée, car la société d’aujourd’hui n’est pas celle de demain et les jeunes de demain n’auront pas les mêmes aspirations que ceux d’aujourd’hui."

"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver."

"She was like an extinct volcano, her former violent self burnt out ... What she had fought for had not really come into being; maybe nothing on earth could have brought it into being, so romantic and heroic was it."

"...condemned to death, Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant."

"Armed for the battle, kneel we before thee / Bless Thou our banners, God of the Brave"

"You have a hatred of the Catholic Church, ... But, for your poetry you will be forgiven. But sin no more."

"More and more I realized that Ireland could rely only on force, in some form or another, to free herself."

"Injustice eats me internally. I get very restless when I come in touch with it."

"There's no doubt about it, we're living in times where…the lives of innocent civilians are sacrificed in the wars of their masters. Yes in Ukraine, but not only. Since the last plenary tens of thousands of Afghani citizens have been forced to flee in search of food and safety, five million children face famine, an agonizing and painful death, a five hundred percent increase in child marriages and children being sold just so they can survive, and not a mention of it, not here, not anywhere, no wall-to-wall TV coverage, no emergency humanitarian response, no special plenaries, not even a mention in this plenary, no Afghani delegations and no statements. My God, they must be wondering what makes their humanitarian crisis so unimportant. Is it the color of their skin, is it that they’re not white? They're not European? That their problems come from a U.S. gun or a U.S. invasion? Is it that the decision to rob their country's wealth was taken by a despotic U.S. president rather than a Russian one? Because my God, all wars are evil, and all victims deserve support and until we get on that page, we have no credibility whatsoever."

"Our point of view is if people from Ukraine or anywhere else want to join the European Union, and that’s a free choice decided by the majority, and it's done on terms that don't bankrupt its populations, well, then that's a matter for them. Of course, that's not what's on the table at the moment. The vote is being used to ratchet up the tension with Russia. Many people in Ukraine are fighting to defend their country, and that's actually legitimate in many ways. But I highly doubt that any of them are fighting or dying for European values – in a sense, because it is not stopping the war, Europe is forcing them to die. The president of Zambia came in … and he criticized the war. He said we should be for peace. He spoke about food insecurity in Africa and the global consequences of this war. He obviously was sympathetic with the victims in Ukraine, and said that we need to work together as an international community to end the war and to have a negotiated peace. Yet the overwhelming majority, like 95% of the Parliament, sat on its hands and did not applaud that sentiment. These are warmongers. And the tone in the European Parliament, being led mainly by the Baltics, is that they want the war to continue. They're deluded. Anybody who argues for peace is being accused of appeasing Russia, of being a Putin puppet, when in actual fact the continuation of the war is killing and damaging Ukrainians more than anyone else. So it's utter lunacy."

"The simple answer is this war will end when the US wants it to end. You might have thought that Europe, because it's engaging in a sort of a collective suicide, at least economically, with this war, might be pushing for it to end. Right now there’s a whole wave of strikes all across Europe, which will only escalate the longer the war continues on. I think turmoil in the Global South has to be a cause for concern for all of these actors. I suppose Italy, France and Germany have been less warmongering than the others, and are getting enormous abuse for that, by the way, by their European friends. You'd hope that maybe they could take the lead."

"At this precise moment, of course, as usual, the voices challenging the rush to war are attacked and silenced, smeared as traitors, cronies, Putin puppets, Kremlin stooges, Russian agents. Frankly, it's pathetic, And I don't make the comparison lightly, but the crudeness and cynicism of these slurs coming from mainstream E.U. parties might as well have been written by [Nazi war criminal] Hermann Goring, who infamously said that even though people never want war, they can be brought to war with threats and smears. This house should be ashamed of this debate. Words are being twisted, meanings subverted, and the truth turned on its head. Opposing the horrible madness of war is not anti-European, it's not anti-Ukrainian, it's not pro-Russian: it's common sense. The working class of Europe has nothing to gain from this war and everything to lose. And I find it laughable that those calling for arms to Ukraine never call for arms for the people of Palestine, or for the people of Yemen. Unlike you, I oppose all war. I want it stopped. I make no apology for that."

"State sponsorship of terrorism is a term of US law. It doesn’t exist in EU law, but a Zelensky advisor called for it in the Parliament... And here we are again reporting for duty. And all it will do is make peace harder to achieve. Exactly, of course, what the extremists want. No peace. No off ramps, all bridges burning and Ukraine a permanent abattoir in a suicidal holy crusade against Russia. So, if you want to start naming state sponsors of terrorism, let's do it. European sponsorship of Israeli terrorism in Palestine, Western sponsorship of Saudi terror in Yemen, ISIS, the product of French, American, British, Turkish and Gulf sponsorship in Syria and Iraq, decades of right-wing US-backed terrorism against the Cuban Revolution. The Contras in Nicaragua, death squads in Guatemala, in El Salvador. Remember Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, horror after horror, terror after terror. There's nothing constructive about the pot calling the kettle black, would ye ever cop on, start championing peace, an end to the war which is patently in the interests of the EU, Ukrainian, and Russian citizens."

"You had no interest in talking to me for five years, so I've no interest in talking to you."

"Reality star George Galloway has dubbed Irish MEP Clare Daly a "Joan of Arc who has come back to walk among us" for her take on the war in Ukraine. The ex-MP called the politician "crusading" for speaking "so powerfully the walls of the European Parliament shake." Big Brother star George played a clip of Clare Daly addressing the European Parliament on his online talk show The Mother of All Talk Shows."

"The Titanic disaster was a tragedy that was as unnecessary as turning the Brown Palace Hotel into Pikes Peak."

"Investing in girl-child education has immediate and long term benefits. It does not only build the assertiveness of the girls, it also builds self-confidence and empowers them to properly position themselves to be active participants in nation building,"—— "As an educationist, my joy knows no bounds when I see girls excel and as First Ladies and agenda shapers of our respective countries, we must resolve to continue to give more meaning to girl-child education and not only pay lip service to it."

"My late husband and I loved God’s word and after his demise, the Bible remains my most important source of comfort and encouragement; by the word of God, you can overcome any challenge that you face in life and it will help you take responsibility of your own lives."

"Another's estimate has never the rich completeness of the sudden word from the inner self."

"...of poetry as daily fare-of poetry as being as much the daily bread as the white hyacinths of life."

"There is nothing to be afraid of in the name of poetry, though it is in all languages and in all ages a name for wisdom and beauty. Whether we know it or not, poetry is a part of the everyday life of all of us. It is about us, and inside us, all the time. More often than not, we do not recognize it. Even when it is most present, we may not realize that what we are seeing or hearing or even saying is poetry. But we can learn to recognize and realize it: and to the extent to which we may do so, we ourselves become poets. In an essay familiar to most high-school students, Carlyle declared that everyone who reads a poem understandingly becomes a co-creator of the poem, and so a poet. We are creators in greater degree; and, therefore, poets the more, when we open our eyes and ears and minds to the innumerable little things as well as the big things that make life."

"This working partnership of facts and imagination gives us reality, which I think is another word of poetry. I do not believe that poetry can ever be anything but truth. When poetry speaks in parables, or in metaphors or in similes, it is not to lead you away from what is real to what is unreal, but rather to lead you by the quickest path to the very core of reality. Poetry does not give us fanciful falsehood instead of truth: poetry is a shorthand for truth itself. When we depart from truth, we depart from poetry."

"It is poetry to express an entire philosophy in simple words"

"For the world, which seems so various, is made up to a large extent of a few patterns used over and over again in innumerable combinations. We need not falsify in order to find the identities. We need only to look with comprehending eyes. Poetry is this recognition, and expression, of identities. The common words of our language, and of the language of every other people, is full of such poetry..."

"The lack of understanding that comes from actual ignorance is notorious. Most North Americans know nothing even of Puerto Rico, which has been under the Stars and Stripes for thirty years; so it is hardly surprising that they are apt to confuse Uruguay with Uganda."

"Science of course is the great international bond."

"Translators, again-the most abused and patient lot of folk on earth-are helpful in making us better acquainted; though we hope the time will soon come when citizens of the twenty-one republics will no longer need translators. There is no reason for our not speaking each other's language."

"Puerto Rico is Spanish American in its past, Anglo-Saxon in its present, and, I trust, in the deepest sense Pan-American in its future"

"Many temples have been built to shelter Pan-Americanism. Some of them have been built with marble, some with words. But deep and true friendship is no less than beautiful. It does not come even to temples merely because it is summoned, nor even because each country of our continents may sincerely desire its coming. International friendship to be real must be unselfish, and complete unselfishness is hard of attainment when interests differ; as hard for nations as for individuals. But here, today, you have before your eyes a concrete demonstration of that very thing: a Pan-Americanism that includes all, that excludes none, that makes not the slightest difference between one and another. The women of all the Americas have one need. Every enlightened woman of this hemisphere desires for her sister of another country, the same good which she craves for herself. The woman of no country of our Americas believes that equal rights for herself will in any way give her or her country an advantage over her sisters to the north or to the south. She does not wish such advantage. She does not ask for one thing and pay with another; she is not carrying on a barter of power, of friendship, of advantage. She asks for herself and for every other woman in all of our countries, one thing, for the good of all-and for the good of those countries which we women have helped upbuild and are helping uphold."

"Our petition as women, amongst you free citizens of Pan America, is like the petition of my Puerto Rico in the community of American States. We have everything done for us and given us but sovereignty. We are treated with every consideration save the one great consideration of being regarded as responsible beings. We, like Puerto Rico, are dependents. We are anomalies before the law. We, the women of the Americas, ask for a treaty granting us equal rights before the law. We ask this not for one woman, not for one country, not for one race, but for the women of Pan America, for the women who are proving to you here today by their solidarity and mutual trust that Pan-Americanism is a fact. We offer you a new definition: Pan-Americanism is the deep desire of every country for the common good of all, favoring none and slighting none. It is the oneness of purpose that makes of us all responsible citizens of the spiritual commonwealth of Pan America. We offer you a definition and we offer you an opportunity; the opportunity of acting with unparalleled generosity and vision. We, the women of America, ask of you, the men of America, a treaty guaranteeing us our equal human rights."

"a visionary and fervent Pan-Americanist...one of the most extraordinary and creative figures of the twentieth century, a builder of bridges and hopes...a magnificent woman.'"

"What I keep thinking is: why didn't I know about you? I have needed you and I didn't know. I grew up in the Puerto Rican independence movement, in a home full of books, speaking English and knowing other families who did, pacifists, university people, circles you would have moved through. I am a poet, a translator, a feminist historian studying women's resistance, women's voices, and I never heard that Luis Muñoz Marín had a first wife, far less one like you...The world is full of opportunities to be of use, but I believe with you that poetry has a special power to reconnect our severed bonds, and I will practice it, because for myself and also for the world, you have reminded me that poetry is bread."

"Traditional media in Ghana has a reputation for being politicized, particularly during elections. That’s why social media initiatives like Ghana Decides are important. They offer a good balance for Ghanaians at home and abroad: non-partisan, factual, and issue based information, with none of the ‘politricks’."

"Wearing green uniforms they blended with the trees and when women collected firewood, the soldiers would jump out and rape them, laughing like it was a game,"

"Our village has turned into a shelter," Lolosoli says. Women and girls fleeing forced marriages, or ostracized for being raped, or trying to save themselves from female genital mutilation, come to Umoja in Kenya for safety. Sons are welcome—as long as they are willing to follow the village's rules and do not try to dominate the women"

"We knew it would be dangerous"

"We are like property because we are part of the dowry"

"A Samburu woman does not have a single right"

"Education is most important so they won't be in the dark like us"

"Even in danger, I've never stopped"

"Rebecca Lolosoli: The Beadmaker's Refuge for Women,Published Mar. 8 2011,by Eliza Griswold"

"When female media practitioners – who better understand the problems of women – take interest in highlighting the challenges of women in society, it would help in addressing same."

"Women’s rights must be respected and their place should not be in the shadows, but in the light."

"“We are tried of being bombarded every single day with news of how much money we are losing that should be going to fight the COVID pandemic,”"

"“Theft doesn’t even stop during a pandemic,”...“We have people dying while some are stealing.”"

"extremely personally lewd, body shaming me and my family"

"I kept asking myself if there was anything I could have done. Perhaps if I had stepped in, he would still be alive"

"not being able to sleep well and sometimes, not sleeping at all! When I get any of these episodes online, I am hardly able to sleep. I spend my nights worrying and dreading getting back online when morning comes"

"you don’t wake up and say, I’m going to be an activist, that is the career that I want. It doesn’t work like that really. You find yourself in these spaces because you’re angered by something or you want to change something"

"I had just entered my car then rolled down the window. That was at Langata mall, outside a supermarket called Cleanshelf at 8pm. Some well built, tall and dark man just approached me. I had seen him standing near my car but he was not a suspicious person. He then mumbled something like Wacha kelele, ama tutakumaliza (stop making noise otherwise we will kill you). He hit me on my left eye and walked away. He was not in a hurry to run or hide"

"The public support I get is what keeps me going"

"There are two types of men; the one who can spoil you financially now and the one who can do that in the future. Don't miss out on your soulmate cos you're blinded by material things!"

"Guys, don't let the internet rush you oooooo!!!!! Life is not a competition!!! Life is working for you in your own time zone. You're not too late or too early."

"My story is a typical grass to grace and from poverty to financial independence or success. Typically, mine is just from zero to hero, a nobody to somebody."

"When I started taking this journey, there was something that was my motivation and my motivation was poverty. I was a broke women, I was poor. There were days when I didn't know where the next meal was going to come from. I used to live with friends."

"None can be compared to me; whether the old or the new generation. I am second to none. My fans on various social media platforms are solidly behind me."

"There is this sudden craze for superficiality. This has resulted in women undergoing surgeries to remove fat from the tummy. Since when did we get here? It is something I can never do because let's just say I am an outmoded woman. I am just focused on my job. I am a very grounded and simple personality."

"My values of authenticity and originality align with Vlisco’s brand personality. It is an honour to join the league of Dr Mrs Ellen Hagan; Eugenia Tachie-Menson; Elizabeth Akua-Nyarko Patterson; Regina Honu; Edith Uyovbukerhi and Yawa Hansen-Quao, who I am taking over from as Brand Ambassador. It is exciting to be recognised for the work we do and what we stand for as women. I look forward to shaping the future of this nation with my experience under the umbrella of the Vlisco brand."

"I strongly believe that every individual possesses untapped potential, and by helping them realise their full potential, communities, industries, countries, and the continent can make sustainable economic progress that creates true prosperity."

"Young people are demonstrating their creativity, leadership, and desire to lead the change that our continent (Africa) desperately needs. They want an opportunity to come together in a way that allows them to think, share and co-create solutions to the problems such as youth unemployment, building scalable enterprises and driving systemic change in their countries."

"All of life comes together to form who we are but sometimes, it's significant events that have a bigger impact than the normal day-to-day brand and I think coming to Ghana, the biggest thing that set me off was the fact that Ghana had that famine in 1983."

"You live in a connected world where your competition is not the guy sitting next to you, for you the human factor or your competition could be someone sitting in Canada, the UK or Australia. The human factor is bridged and access to a job is no longer dependent on location. Increasingly you will find people who are able to do your job remotely. That is a real fact and challenge which means over time your career will face competitive pressure that is not local."

"Some of the jobs we have today will be eroded, sometimes by technology but mostly by someone else who has found a more efficient way of doing and delivering it over the internet. Globally, people are paying attention to trends including skillsets required for jobs in Africa in the next decade. You cannot afford to be left out of this conversation. As young people, you need to position yourselves to take advantage of the current and future opportunities by staying relevant and informed."

"I am ... proud of the fact that over the years, I have been able to demonstrate to Ghana and the world that leadership is not a function of gender. I believe that black women, African women, are able to lead big businesses."