Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stonewas a prominent American orator, abolitionist, and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged and prevented from public speaking. Stone was known for using her maiden name after marriage, as the custom was for women to take their husband's surname...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth13 August 1818
CityWest Brookfield, MA
CountryUnited States of America
To make the public sentiment, on the side of all that is just and true and noble, is the highest use of life.
We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the tools belonged to those who could use them; that the possession of a power presupposed a right to its use. This was urged from city to city, from state to state. Women were encouraged to try new occupations.
The press, many-tongued, surpassed itself in reproaches upon these women who had so far departed from their sphere as to speak in public.
To make the public sentiment on the side of all that is just and true and noble is the highest use of life.
A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost
All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken fromus without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours.
Too much has already been said and written about women's sphere. Leave women, then, to find their sphere.
In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of women. 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.
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.
We ask only for justice and equal rights-the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law.
The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.
Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the healing of the nations.
The widening of woman's sphere is to improve her lot. Let us do it, and if the world scoff, let it scoff if it sneer, let it sneer.
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.