Women S Rights Activists

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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.”"

"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."

"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 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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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,"."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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.""

"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."

"(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.""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

"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?"

"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."

"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!!”"