A biography for Ernestine Rosehasn’t been written yet.
“When a man comes to me and tries to convince me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers.”
“She had her reward! - that reward of which no enemie could deprive her, which no slanders could make less precious - the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty.”
“If they are unsuccessful in married life, who suffers more the bitter consequences of poverty than the wife? But if successful, she has not a dollar to call her own.”
“All that I can tell you is, that I used my humble powers to the uttermost, and raised my voice in behalf of Human Rights in general, and the elevation and Rights of Woman in particular, nearly all my life.”
“I suppose you all grant that woman is a human being. If she has a right to life she has a right to earn a support for that life. If a human being, she has a right to have her powers and faculties as a human being developed. If developed, she has a right to exercise them.”
“Blind submission in women is considered a virtue, while submission to wrong is itself wrong, and resistance to wrong is virtue alike in women as in man.”
“But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea.”
“Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.”
“If you allow one single germ, one single seed of slavery to remain in the soil of America... that germ will spring up, that noxious weed will thrive, and again stifle the growth, wither the leaves, blast the flowers and poison the fair fruits of freedom.”
“Why should women not be a martyr for her cause?”
“Much is said about the burdens and responsibilities of married men. Responsibilities indeed there are, if they but felt them: but as to burdens what are they?”
“The main cause is a pernicious falsehood propagated against her being, namely that she is inferior by her nature. Inferior in what? What has man ever done that woman, under the same advantages could not do?”
“Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation - the one is life, the other death.”
“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”
“I asked God if it was a sin and He didn't say anything.”
“Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle. I go for recognition of human rights, without distinction of sect, party, sex, or color.”