Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity.... Nothing in the world was irrelevant: t...he stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds.... Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by a...n independent and virtuous Judiciary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience is held by the same ...tenure with all our rights. [The legislature] are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred, [or] we must say, that they may control freedom of the press, may abolish the trial by jury, may swallow the Executive and the Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage ... or we must say, that they have no authority to enact [a religious assessment].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The judiciary has fallen to a very low state in this country. I think your part of the country has suffered especially. The federa...l judges of the South are a disgrace to any country, and I'll be damned if I put any man on the bench of whose character and ability there is the least doubt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were wo...men, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in... Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The absence on the panel of anyone who could become pregnant accidentally or discover her salary was five thousand dollars a year ...less than that of her male counterpart meant there was a hole in the consciousness of the committee that empathy, however welcome, could not entirely fill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have been here over forty years, a longer period than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, coming to this Ca...pitol pleading for this recognition of the principle that the Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr. Chairman, we ask that you report our resolution favorably if you can but unfavorably if you must; that you report one way or the other, so that the Senate may have the chance to consider it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not revolutionary on our part to ask a share in our Government. We are demanding it because it is in accord with American id...eals and absolutely essential to the establishment of true democracy. A democratic form of government is right or it is not right--it is either right that the people should be self- governed or that they should not. If it is not right, then we ought to know it; the whole people ought to know it. If it is right, then the whole people ought to have equal opportunities in self-government.... Some one asked Wendell Phillips if Christianity were not a failure and he replied, "It has not yet been tried." So we can say in regard to democracy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a vo...ter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »