Susan B. Anthony

“Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government: the ballot.”

“The principle of self-government cannot be violated with impunity. The individual's right to it is sacred - regardless of class, caste, race, color, sex or any other accident or incident of birth.”

“Woman must have a purse of her own, and how can this be so long as the law denies to the wife all right to both the individual and the joint earnings?”

“I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”

“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.”

“There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence.”

“I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.”

“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. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men.”

“I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”

“The day may be approaching when the whole world will recognize woman as the equal of man.”

“We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.”

“...the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.”

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

“You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and bigotry.”

“It is poor rule that won't work more ways than one.”

“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.”