Lucy Stone quotes

Lucy Stone was an American suffragist and abolitionist, recognized as a pioneering advocate for women's rights. A passionate orator, she was one of the first women in the United States to earn a college degree and to keep her maiden name after marriage. She inspired future generations through her activism and leadership in the fight for equality. Here are 36 of her quotes:

I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. (Lucy Stone)
I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body. View quote
Lucy Stone
I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power. View quote
Lucy Stone
Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things. View quote
Lucy Stone
Make the world better. View quote
Lucy Stone
All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. View quote
Lucy Stone
Too much has already been said and written about women's sphere. Leave women, then, to find their sphere. View quote
Lucy Stone
We have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind. View quote
Lucy Stone
A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost. View quote
Lucy Stone
But I do believe that a woman's truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children, and with large freedom, pecuniary freedom, personal freedom, and the right to vote. View quote
Lucy Stone
Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation? (Lucy Stone)
In Massachusetts, where properly qualified "persons" were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a "person," and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar. But today women are lawyers. View quote
Lucy Stone
It is not quite the same when we are seventy-two as when we are twenty-seven; still I am glad of what is left, and wish we might both hold out till the victory we have sought is won, but all the same the victory is coming. In the aftertime the world will be the better for it. View quote
Lucy Stone
Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the healing of the nations. View quote
Lucy Stone
We want rights. The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest. View quote
Lucy Stone
The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman... I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an immortal being-every employment was closed to me, except those of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer. View quote
Lucy Stone
To make the public sentiment on the side of all that is just and true and noble is the highest use of life. View quote
Lucy Stone
I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. View quote
Lucy Stone
If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. View quote
Lucy Stone
The idea of equal rights was in the air. View quote
Lucy Stone
While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it. (Lucy Stone)
When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York, she was regarded as fair game, and was called a "she doctor." The college that had admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women; and supposed they were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great personal worth and a level head. How good it was that such a woman was the first doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to contend with prejudice and every opposing thing. View quote
Lucy Stone
The commencement of the last fifty years is about the beginning of that great change and improvement in the condition of women which exceeds all the gains of hundreds of years before. View quote
Lucy Stone
We believe in marriage for life, and deprecate all this loose, pestiferous talk in favor of easy divorce... Be not deceived - free love means free lust. View quote
Lucy Stone
Abby Kelly once entered a church only to find herself the subject of the sermon, which was preached from the text: " This Jezebel is come among us also." They jeered at her as she went along the street. They threw stones at her. They pelted her with bad eggs as she stood on the platform. Some of the advocates of the very cause for which she endured all this were ready to drive her from the field. View quote
Lucy Stone