A Few Thoughts from Some Notable Women
Quotable Quotes

“Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.” ~Jane Addams

“Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.” ~Jane Addams

“I do not believe that women are better than men.  We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.” ~Jane Addams

“Failure is impossible.” ~Susan B. Anthony

“Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
~Susan B. Anthony

“There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.” ~Susan B. Anthony

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we the whole people, who formed the Union.” ~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

“It will not do to say that it is out of woman’s sphere to assist in making laws, for if that were so, then it should be also out of her sphere to submit to them.” ~Amelia Jenks Bloomer

“When you find a burden in belief or apparel, cast it off.” ~Amelia Jenks Bloomer

“Although the doctrine of innate equality of the race has been proclaimed, yet so far as woman is concerned it has been a standing falsehood.” ~Amelia Jenks Bloomer

“Do not stand in the way of the next step in human progress.  No one living who reads the signs of the times but realizes that woman suffrage must come.  We are working for the ballot as a matter of justice and as a step for human betterment.” ~Carrie Chapman Catt

“The world taught women 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 genius.  It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility, and then called her weak.  It taught her that every pleasure must come as a favor from men and when, to gain it, she decked herself in paint and fine feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain.”
~Carrie Chapman Catt

“The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.”
~Julia Ward Howe

“I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing in religion which puts one sex above another.” ~Julia Ward Howe

“When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings.” ~Julia Ward Howe

“I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.” ~Julia Ward Howe

“Good manners will often take people where neither money nor education will take them.”
~Fanny Jackson-Coppin

“Love wins when everything else will fail.” ~Fanny Jackson-Coppin

“We should strive to make known to all men the justice of our claims to the same employment as other men under the same conditions.  We do not ask that any one of our people shall be put in a position because he is a colored person, but we do ask that he shall not be kept out of a position because he is a colored person.  ‘An open field and no favors’ is all that is requested.”
~Fanny Jackson-Coppin

“The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.” ~Lucretia Mott

“If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?” ~Lucretia Mott

“We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by truth.” ~Lucretia Mott

“Learning, while at school, that the charge for the education of girls was the same as that for boys; and that, when they became teachers, women received only half as much as men for their services, the injustice of this distinction was so apparent.” ~Lucretia Mott

“Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees.” ~Francis Perkins

“Most of man’s problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.” ~Francis Perkins

“The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.” ~Francis Perkins

“I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.” ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.” ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”
~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.” ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman’s thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.” ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“I think 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.” ~Lucy Stone

“’We, the people of the United States.’  Which ‘we the people?’  The women were not included.” ~Lucy Stone

“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 difference.” ~Lucy Stone

“I cannot help wondering sometimes what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race; that had allowed me to reach any height I was able to attain.” ~Mary Church Terrell

“The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens…because the word ‘people,’ by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicon graphical acrobatics, has been turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white instead of black.” ~Mary Church Terrell

“Truth is powerful and it prevails.” ~Sojourner Truth

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again.” ~Sojourner Truth

“I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring I will step into the pool.” ~Sojourner Truth

“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.  So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.” ~Sojourner Truth

“The education of females has been exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty ... though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest.” ~Emma Hart Willard

“Genuine learning has ever been said to give polish to man; why then should it not bestow added charm on women?” ~Emma Hart Willard


Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association
P.O. Box 753
Johnstown, NY 12095-0753
© 2010