“All power inebriates weak man; and its abuse proves that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.”

True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.

Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with.

We must all be in love once in our lives.

The man who had some virtue whilst he was struggling for a crown, often becomes a voluptuous tyrant when it graces his brow.

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.

I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before.

Men of genius and talents have started out of a class, in which women have never yet been placed.

Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?

Only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves.

Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.

Like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty.

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.

I never wanted but your heart-that gone, you have nothing more to give.

I have done a great deal of work, as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all.

A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.

The other states look to New York for the progressive direction. New York made a powerful statement [legalizing marriage equality], not just for the people of New York, but for people all across this nation.

We need marriage equality in every state in this nation. Otherwise, no state really has marriage equality, and we will not rest until it is a reality.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and or young, our women as well as our men.