Anna Howard Shaw Quotations

Around me I saw women overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not because their work was inferior, but because they were women.

It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct.

A gentleman opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, women have never produced anything of any value to the world. I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value.

If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought upunder monarchical forms of government, then there is no good in liberty.

On every side, and at every hour of the day, we came up against the relentless limitations of pioneer life.

The idealists dream and the dream is told, and the practical men listen and ponder and bring back the truth and apply it to human life, and progress and growth and higher human ideals come into being and so the world moves ever on.

Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox.

Before I had crossed the threshold of my church I was made to realize that I was shepherd of a divided flock.

If we ever get to the polls once, you will never get us home.

Work ... has always been my favorite form of recreation.

It is useless to talk virtue to a starving girl.

I spoke at a woman's club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards, "Well, that sounds very nice, but don't you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?" I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.

I would rather be known as an advocate of equal suffrage than to speak every night on the best-paying platforms in the United States and ignore it.

I have everything in the world that is necessary to happiness--good faith, good friends, and all the work I can possibly do.

When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country, I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages.

The millennium will not come as soon as women vote, but it will not come until they do vote.

[When asked: "If women voted, would they not have to sit on juries?":] Many women would be glad of a chance to sit on anything. There are women who stand up and wash six days in the week at 75 cents a day who would like to take a vacation and sit on a jury at $1.50.

But we are learning from the teaching and example of Jesus that life itself is a religion, that nothing is more sacred than a human being, that the end of all right institutions, whether the home or the church or an educational establishment, or a government, is the development of the human soul.

Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace.

Any woman who does not live for unselfish service is a useless cumberer of the earth.

And looking into the face of ... one dead man we see two dead, the man and the life of the woman who gave him birth; the life she wrought into his life! And looking into his dead face someone asks a woman, what does a woman know about war? What, what, friends in the face of a crime like that, what does man know about war?

I care nothing for all the political parties in the world except as they stand for justice.

What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism?

Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a great cause more than life itself.

Valentine's Day is a sham created by card companies to reinforce gender stereotypes. [..] I'll buy some cookies, but NOT for Valentine's Day. These cookies celebrate the February 14th birthday of Anna Howard Shaw, famed American suffragette.

I wake up every morning with a great desire to live joyfully.

God made a woman equal to a man, but He did not make a woman equal to a woman and a man. We usually try to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down ...