“Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...”

“Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...”

“Did I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women's wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation. - Seneca Falls Convention, 1848”

“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.”

“The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.”

“We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?”

“The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.”

“The best protection any woman can have... is courage.”

“The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.”

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

“Women of all classes are awakening to the necessity of self-support, but few are willing to do the ordinary useful work for which they are fitted.”

“The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.”