It is one thing to say, "Some men shall rule," quite another to declare, "All men shall rule," and that in virtue of the most primitive, the most rudimentary attribute they possess, that namely of sex.
To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise.
No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitutea political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.
... my whole existence is governed by abstract ideas.... the ideal must be preserved regardless of fact.
... [the] special relation of women to children, in which the heart of the world has always felt there was something sacred, serves to impress upon women certain tendencies, to endow them with certain virtueswhich will render them of special value in public affairs.
During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men--that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit.
... men, accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex, and nothing else.
... the danger of illicit sex influences is, and always has been, in inverse proportion to the degree to which women approximatedto equality with men, in social dignity and in opportunity for public responsibility.
Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,--not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us--the Irish!
