Quotes by Women's Rights Activists

The only question left to be settled now is are women persons?
Susan B. Anthony
The history of all times and of today especially teaches that... women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.
Louise Otto
Independence is happiness.
Susan B. Anthony
Woman must not depend upon the protection of man but must be taught to protect herself.
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
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
Cautious careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing never can bring about a reform.
Susan B. Anthony
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down these women together ought to be able to turn it right side up again.
Sojourner Truth
Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff.
Sojourner Truth
Failure is impossible.
Susan B. Anthony
A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.
Lydia M. Child
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down these women together ought to be able to turn it right side up again.
Sojourner Truth
Religion without humanity is a poor human stuff.
Sojourner Truth
Failure is impossible.
Susan B. Anthony
A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.
Lydia M. Child
Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.
Lydia Maria Child
You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
Lydia Maria Child
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.
Lydia M. Child
An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
Lydia M. Child
No music is so pleasant to my ears as that word-father.
Lydia M. Child
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.
Susan B. Anthony
The cure for all ills and wrongs the cares the sorrows and the crimes of humanity all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.
Lydia M. Child
Pillars are fallen at thy feet Fanes quiver in the air A prostrate city is thy seat And thou alone art there.
Lydia M. Child
Ef women want any rights more'n dey got why don't dey jes' take 'em and not be talkin' about it.
Sojourner Truth
You will find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?...Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
Lydia M. Child
Ah how steadily do they who are guilty shrink from reproof!
Amelia Jenks Bloomer
If young men and young women are brought up to consider frugality contemptible, and industry degrading, it is vain to expect they will at once become prudent and useful, when the cares of life press heavily upon them.
Lydia Maria Francis Child
The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.
Lucretia Mott
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.
Lydia M. Child
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.
Lydia Maria Francis Child
And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the 'Peculiar Institution'? If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system - which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her minsters and churches - we wish to be shown where it can be found.
Sojourner Truth
Rights and empowerment are interconnected: unless a substantial number of women in a community come to believe that they have rights and demand to exercise them, right remains an abstraction.
Mahnaz Afkhami
We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
Lydia Maria Francis Child
The new information technology, indifferent to human suffering, does not accommodate humane needs unless we harness it and make it do so.
Mahnaz Afkhami
Every woman should have a purse of her own.
Susan B. Anthony
Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.
Lucretia Mott
Women’s status in society has become the standard by which humanity’s progress toward civility and peace can be measured.”-Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images
Mahnaz Afkhami
There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for anyone who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.
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
There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.
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
If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.
Sojourner Truth
Do not make children cross-eyed, by having hair hang about their foreheads, where they see it continually.
Lydia Maria Francis Child
When a man says to me, 'Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired any other woman,' then I shall say, 'I am yours truly'; but he must ask me to be his equal, not his slave.
Susan B. Anthony
In the true married relationship, the independence of husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.
Lucretia Mott
You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.
Sojourner Truth
The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less.
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
No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.
Susan B. Anthony
Then I will speak upon the ashes.
Sojourner Truth
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
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
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
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'm not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.
Sojourner Truth