Susan B Anthony

Susan B Anthony (1820-1906), full name Susan Brownell Anthony, was a US social reformer and an American suffragist leader of the American women’s suffrage movement. She was also involved in temperance and abolitionist movements. She campaigned for women's rights throughout her life. Traveling and lecturing for this purpose became part of her life.

To make the movement more powerful, she founded National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1869), International Council of Women (1888), and International Woman Suffrage Alliance (1904). She compiled the History of Woman Suffrage (1881-1902) with Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Failure is impossible.
• The true Republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

- caption on the front page of her newspaper, Revolution

• 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.
• There will never be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect law-makers.
• No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence.
• Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conviction comes: Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man.
• The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.
• 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… not to give the blessing of liberty, but to secure them… to the whole people - women as well as men.
• Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform.
• Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.

- speech, July 1871

• The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?
• I pray every single second of my life - not on my knees but with my work. …Work and worship are one with me.
• Join the union, girls, and together say, 'Equal Pay for Equal Work!'

- The Revolution, March 18, 1869

• The queens in history compare favourably with the kings.

- History of Woman Suffrage

• Marriage, to woman as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; and incident of life, not all of it.

- speech, 1875

Friedrich Engels