The Quotes canon

Sourced and curated.

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
26 quotes
SortEditorial Year Length
Topic·Women's rights✕clear
Historical literature

Our ancestors refused to allow any woman to transact even private business without a guardian to represent her; women had to be under the control of fathers, brothers, or husbands. But we (heaven preserve us!) are now allowing them even to take part in politics, and actually to appear in the Forum and to be present at our meetings and assemblies!... Give a free rein to their unprincipled nature, to this untamed animal, and then expect them to set a limit on their own license!

Livy
Ab Urbe Condita · 9 BC
★ 2.0
Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her... As healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical wellbeing of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.

David J. Brewer
Muller v. Oregon · 1908
★ 3.4
Treatise

I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere... Of the jargon, namely about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do... Merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women... Woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is... Without attending to either of these cries.

★ 3.6
Speech · Political speech

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

★ 5.5