Ernestine Rose Quotes

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Ernestine Rose

Profession : Activist

Birth : January 13, 1810

I know that some endeavor to throw the mantle of romance over the subject and treat woman like some ideal existence, not liable to the ills of life. Let those deal in fancy who have nothing better to deal in; we have to do with sober, sad realities, with stubborn facts.

Ernestine Rose

When a man comes to me and tries to convince me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers.

Ernestine Rose

If God is pleased in making you sick and unhappy, I hate God.

Ernestine Rose

If you allow one single germ, one single seed of slavery to remain in the soil of America... that germ will spring up, that noxious weed will thrive, and again stifle the growth, wither the leaves, blast the flowers and poison the fair fruits of freedom.

Ernestine Rose

It is high time to compel man by the might of right to give woman her political, legal and social rights. She will find her own sphere in accordance with her capacities, powers and tastes; and yet she will be woman still.

Ernestine Rose

Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation - the one is life, the other death.

Ernestine Rose

It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.

Ernestine Rose

She had her reward! - that reward of which no enemie could deprive her, which no slanders could make less precious - the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty.

Ernestine Rose

I asked God if it was a sin and He didn't say anything.

Ernestine Rose

Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle. I go for recognition of human rights, without distinction of sect, party, sex, or color.

Ernestine Rose

No! on Human Rights and Freedom, on a subject that is as self-evident as that two and two make four, there is no need of any written authority.

Ernestine Rose

Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.

Ernestine Rose

All that I can tell you is, that I used my humble powers to the uttermost, and raised my voice in behalf of Human Rights in general, and the elevation and Rights of Woman in particular, nearly all my life.

Ernestine Rose

I suppose you all grant that woman is a human being. If she has a right to life she has a right to earn a support for that life. If a human being, she has a right to have her powers and faculties as a human being developed. If developed, she has a right to exercise them.

Ernestine Rose

Again, I shall be told that the law presumes the husband to be kind, affectionate, and ready to provide for and protect his wife. But what right, I ask, has the law to presume at all on the subject?

Ernestine Rose

Away with that folly that her rights would be detrimental to her character - that if she were recognized as the equal to a man she would cease to be a woman!

Ernestine Rose

Blind submission in women is considered a virtue, while submission to wrong is itself wrong, and resistance to wrong is virtue alike in women as in man.

Ernestine Rose

But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea.

Ernestine Rose

But say some, would you expose woman to the contact of rough, rude, drinking, swearing, fighting men at the ballot box? What a humiliating confession lies in this plea for keeping woman in the background!

Ernestine Rose

Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.'

Ernestine Rose