Susan B. Anthony Quotes & Sayings

Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry. — Susan B. Anthony

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. — Susan B. Anthony

The anti-suffragist talk of sheltering women from the fierce storms of life is a lot of cant. I have no patience with it. These storms beat on woman just as fiercely as they do on man, and she is not trained to defend herself against them. — Susan B. Anthony

Every generation of converts threshes over the same old straw. — Susan B. Anthony

Disfranchisement means inability to make, shape, or control one's own circumstances ... That is exactly the position of women in the world of work today; they cannot choose. — Susan B. Anthony

Cyling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world — Susan B. Anthony

I look for the day ... when the only criterion of excellence or position shall be the ability and character of the individual; and this time will come. — Susan B. Anthony

We shall some day be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past. — Susan B. Anthony

Better lose me than lose a state. — Susan B. Anthony

Oh, yes. I'd do it all again; the spirit is willing yet; I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It's too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever. — Susan B. Anthony

I can't say that the college-bred woman is the most contented woman. The broader her mind the more she understands the unequal conditions between men and women, the more she chafes under a government that tolerates it. — Susan B. Anthony

Just as long as newspapers and magazines are controlled by men, every woman upon them must write articles which are reflections of men's ideas. As long as that continues, women's ideas and deepest convictions will never get before the public. — Susan B. Anthony

We need a daily paper edited and composed according to woman's own thoughts, and not as woman thinks a man wants her to think and write. — Susan B. Anthony

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. — Susan B. Anthony

It is cruel for you to leave your daughter, so full of hope and resolve, to suffer the humiliations of disfranchisement she already feels so keenly, and which she will find more and more galling as she grows into the stronger and grander woman she is sure to be. If it were your son who for any cause was denied his right to have his opinion counted, you would compass sea and land to lift the ban from him. — Susan B. Anthony

The worst enemy women have is in the pulpit. — Susan B. Anthony

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, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences ... — Susan B. Anthony

I have encountered riotous mobs and have been hung in effigy, but my motto is: Men's rights are nothing more. Women's rights are nothing less. — Susan B. Anthony

This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago. They threw things at me then but they were not roses. — Susan B. Anthony

For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive. — Susan B. Anthony

In your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, mycivil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government. — Susan B. Anthony

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these. — Susan B. Anthony

Gentlemen, no one objects to the husband being the head of the wife as Christ was the head of the church
to crucify himself; whatwe object to is his crucifying his wife. — Susan B. Anthony

A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion, having never blushed behind a Turkish mask, nor pressed her feet in Chinese shoes, cannot brook any disabilities based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it. — Susan B. Anthony

Independent bread gives independent morals: - while pecuniary dependence makes moral subserviency; - So get money - get wealth — Susan B. Anthony

I pray every single moment of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me. — Susan B. Anthony

The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race. — Susan B. Anthony

Governments never do any great good things from mere principle, from mere love of justice ... You expect too much of human nature when you expect that. — Susan B. Anthony

Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you ... increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future presidents, senators and congressmen. — Susan B. Anthony

[Asked if American women would ever win full suffrage:] Assuredly. I firmly believed at one time that I should live to see that day. I have never for one moment lost faith. It will come but I shall not see itit is inevitable. — Susan B. Anthony

For twelve successive Congresses we have appeared before committees of the two Houses making this plea, that the underlying principle of our Government, the right of consent, shall have practical application to the other half of people. Such a little simple thing we have been asking for a quarter of a century. For over forty years, longer than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, we have been begging and praying and pleading for this act of justice. We shall some day be heeded. — Susan B. Anthony

I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have giventhemselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States. — Susan B. Anthony

Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them. — Susan B. Anthony

The women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776. — Susan B. Anthony

Whoever controls work and wages, controls morals. — Susan B. Anthony

We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. — Susan B. Anthony

This oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every house of the nation. — Susan B. Anthony

Resistance to tyranny ius obedience to God — Susan B. Anthony

I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women. — Susan B. Anthony

There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth. — Susan B. Anthony

Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval. — Susan B. Anthony

It is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better. — Susan B. Anthony

I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro, speak of her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation. — Susan B. Anthony

The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South. — Susan B. Anthony

Of all my prosecutorsnot one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. — Susan B. Anthony

No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent. — Susan B. Anthony

It would be ridiculous to talk of male and female atmospheres, male and female springs or rains, male and female sunshine ... how much more ridiculous is it in relation to mind, to soul, to thought, where there is as undeniably no such thing as sex, to talk of male and female education and of male and female schools. [written with Elizabeth Cady Stanton] — Susan B. Anthony

There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence. — Susan B. Anthony

To think, I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel. — Susan B. Anthony

Why should we not pray to our mother who are in heaven, as well as to our father? — Susan B. Anthony

When society is rightly organized, the wife and mother will have time, wish and will to grow intellectually, and will know that the limits of her sphere, the extent of her duties, are prescribed only by the measure of her ability. — Susan B. Anthony

A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people — Susan B. Anthony

I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder ... We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it. — Susan B. Anthony

I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman. — Susan B. Anthony

All we demand are the same rights as men, and slightly more stalls per restroom. And tampon machines. And those little things in the stalls so we can put our used tampons in them. And, okay, just go ahead and make the bathrooms out of tampons. — Susan B. Anthony

We should be miserable but for the consciousness that we have done all in our power to help forward every measure for the freedom and equality of the races and the sexes. — Susan B. Anthony

I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet. — Susan B. Anthony

Another writer asserts that the tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master. — Susan B. Anthony

When woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her own thoughts. — Susan B. Anthony

It will be the mistake of your life if you go into print in your own defence [sic]. Your denial will reach a new set of people andstart them to talking, while the ones who read the original charges will never see the refutation of them. — Susan B. Anthony

I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she became a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. Had I married at twenty-one, I would have been either a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years. Think of it! — Susan B. Anthony

Gentlemen ... Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? — Susan B. Anthony

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain. — Susan B. Anthony

Now, Mr. President, we don't intend to trouble you during the campaign but after you are elected, then look out for us! — Susan B. Anthony

I can see that "reap" and "deep," "prayers" and "bears," ... do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily. — Susan B. Anthony

It has always been thought perfectly womanly to be a scrub- woman in the Legislature and to take care of the spittoons; that is entirely within the charmed circle of woman's sphere; but for women to occupy any of those official seats would be degrading. — Susan B. Anthony

The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes. — Susan B. Anthony

When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress infavor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly! — Susan B. Anthony

It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave
subject
inferior
dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. — Susan B. Anthony

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel ... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. — Susan B. Anthony

Marriage, to woman as to man, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. — Susan B. Anthony

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. — Susan B. Anthony

Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. — Susan B. Anthony

We are told it will be of no use for us to ask this measure of justice
that the ballot be given to the women of our new possessions upon the same terms as to the men
because we shall not get it. It is not our business whether we are going to get it; our business is to make the demand ... Ask for the whole loaf and take what you can get. — Susan B. Anthony

Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done. — Susan B. Anthony

Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself. — Susan B. Anthony

Independence is happiness. — Susan B. Anthony

An oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household ... carries discord and rebellion into every home of the nation. — Susan B. Anthony

Even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat from the hands of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O, Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of conscience! — Susan B. Anthony

No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature. — Susan B. Anthony

Had I represented twenty thousand voters in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or whether my bonnet came from the Ark or from Worth's. — Susan B. Anthony

I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon. (on women's suffrage) — Susan B. Anthony

I don't want to die as long as I can work; the minute I can not, I want to go. — Susan B. Anthony

What you should say to outsiders is that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself shall not stand upon it. — Susan B. Anthony

Nothing is hopeless that is right. — Susan B. Anthony

If I could only live another century! — Susan B. Anthony

There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it. — Susan B. Anthony

Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his sexand take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. — Susan B. Anthony

I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows. — Susan B. Anthony

You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry. — Susan B. Anthony

Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother. — Susan B. Anthony

I can not imagine a God ... made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great'. — Susan B. Anthony

Failure is Impossible — Susan B. Anthony

When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she bcame a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. — Susan B. Anthony

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. — Susan B. Anthony

Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work. — Susan B. Anthony

Every woman should have a purse of her own. — Susan B. Anthony

What words can express her [the white woman's] humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question. — Susan B. Anthony

I deplore the horrible crime as child murder ... no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed ... but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime. — Susan B. Anthony

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals. — Susan B. Anthony