Susan B. Anthony Quotes

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will he recognized as the legal equals of men.

Women have not had their rights come easily.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.

This position is untenable, and there can be no pause in the agitation for full political power and responsibility until these are granted to all the women of the nation.

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist…. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing

The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.

We do not know whether the present House of Commons will be prepared to do justice to women. A few months ago there can be little doubt that it would, and nothing that has since happened supplies any adequate reason for a change of purpose. The follies and excesses of a small section of women, deeply resented and regretted by the vast majority of women, ought not to be allowed to weigh in the balance against a claim which has been admitted to be just.

To-day is holden at Worcester [MA] the "Woman's Convention." I think that as long as they have not equal rights of property and right of voting they are not on the right footing.

I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!

All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious representation fall, before the fact that woman has been grossly wronged by man. That being the case, the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to say, "Henceforward have a voice in making your own laws." Till this is done, she has no sure safeguard, since otherwise the same men who made the old barbarous laws may at any time restore them.

I not only advocate it now, but have advocated it earnestly for the last fifty years. As to the militant suffragettes, I have noted that many women believe in militant methods. You might advocate one way of securing the rights and I might advocate another, they both might help to bring about the result desired. To win freedom always involves hard fighting. I believe in women doing what they deem necessary to secure their rights.

… the male abolitionists encouraged women to participate, not as equals, but to participate by creating resources, having sewing circles, bazaars, raising money so that the men could go out and lecture and create newspapers. And women accepted this for a while and then gradually they began to speak out. Women formed their own antislavery societies and within these societies they voiced their opinion about abolition.

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.

I sent him a List of Female Grievances. I even threatened fomenting a Rebellion in case we were not considered, and assured him we would not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we had neither a voice, nor representation.

The rights of women are to the 21st century what civil rights were to the 20th.

Women shall have the same rights and privileges under the law as men in the exercise of suffrage ... and in all other respects.

I know that many honorable members have viewed the advent of women to the legislative halls with something approaching alarm;

The role of women is not to be circumscribed.

It would need more than the 19th Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account.

We [women] seek equality. We don't seek sameness.

We are not crusading for the rights of the women of New England or of old England but of the world.

Women were really the backbone of the civil rights movement, although the leadership was predominantly male. At the rallies, the audience was women and children. The platform was predominantly men.

If we should see ladies attending conventions, traveling about the country in great carts drawn by many yoke of oxen, waving their pocket handkerchiefs to assembled multitudes, it would greatly shock our sensibilities.

I tell you that men will always respect women when they compel it by their actions; and if women today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation the men would be compelled to grant it. The women of the country have the power in their hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order.