Susan B. Anthony - Quotes and Speech on Women's Right to Vote

Susan B. Anthony

 * I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.


* I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.


* I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.


* I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.


* I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.


* If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.


* Independence is happiness.


* Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.


* Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.


* Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.


* No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.


* Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.


* Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.


* Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.

Susan B. Anthony

On Women's Right to Vote

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.

For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.

To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Susan B. Anthony - 1873

More at:
http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/index.php
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/anthony.htm
http://www.rochester.edu/sba/suffragehistory.html
http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/sba/first.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15220
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony

Thoughts on Love for Valentine's Day

Birth of Venus - Redon

Fortune and love favor the brave.

Ovid

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Lao Tzu

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.

Euripides

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Voltaire

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

Khalil Gibran

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is my religion.

John Keats

Love is the poetry of the senses.

Honore de Balzac

Love is metaphysical gravity.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Love is love's reward.

John Dryden

An Interview with Richard Louv

Richard Louv

“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”

More at:
http://richardlouv.com/

Milton Nascimento

Milton Nascimento

San Vincete

Don Quixote

Calix Bento

Clube de Esquina No. 2 (Corner's Club)

Bridges (Tresvessia)

Qualquer Coisa a Ver com O Paraiso  (Things to do with paradise)

More at:

http://www.miltonnascimento.com.br/

Selected Bob Dylan Covers

Gotta Serve Somebody - Natalie Cole

Love Minus Zero/No Limit - Leon Russell

Just Like a Woman - Richie Havens

My Back Pages - The Byrds

All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

The Times They Are A Changing - Tracy Chapman

I Shall Be Released - The Band

Also see:
http://www.dylancovers.com/song/love-minus-zero-no-limit

Six Poems by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

Conrad Aiken

Variations: I
The moon distills a soft blue light,
The moon distills silence.
Black clouds huddle across the stars;
I walk in deserted gardens
Breaking the dry leaves under my feet ...
Leaves have littered the marble seat
Where the lovers sat in silence ...
Leaves have littered the empty seat ...

Down there the black pool, quiveringly,
Ripples the floating moon ...
Down there the tall trees, restlessly,
Shake beneath the moon ...
Beloved, I walk alone ...
What ghost is this that walks with me,
Always in darkness walks with me?


Variations: II
Green light, from the moon,
Pours over the dark blue trees,
Green light from the autumn moon
Pours on the grass ...
Green light falls on the goblin fountain
Where hesitant lovers meet and pass.

They laugh in the moonlight, touching hands,
They move like leaves on the wind ...
I remember an autumn night like this,
And not so long ago,
When other lovers were blown like leaves,
Before the coming of snow.


Variations: III
Wind in the sunlit trees, and the red leaves fall:
Shadows of leaves on the sunlit wall.
Wind in the turning tops of the trees ...
I am reminded, seeing these,
Of an afternoon, and you
Making the trees more scarlet, the sky more blue.


Miracles
Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,
And distant things seem near.
Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.
And now across old waters you may hear
The profound gloom of bells among still trees,
Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as though in evening contemplation
Weaves the bat under the gathering stars.
Silent as dew, we seek new incarnation,
Meditate new avatars.
In a clear dusk like this
Mary climbed up the hill to seek her son,
To lower him down from the cross, and kiss
The mauve wounds, every one.

Men with wings
In the dusk walked softly after her.
She did not see them, but may have felt
The winnowed air around her stir;
She did not see them, but may have known
Why her son's body was light as a little stone.
She may have guessed that other hands were there
Moving the watchful air.

Now, unless persuaded by searching music
Which suddenly opens the portals of the mind,
We guess no angels,
And are contented to be blind.
Let us blow silver horns in the twilight,
And lift our hearts to the yellow star in the green,
To find perhaps, if, while the dew is rising,
Clear things may not be seen.

Chance Meetings
In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?'
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer 'You too--I have known you,--I love you!--'
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.

The Dreamer of Dreams
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

"I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . ."
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

More at:
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-454
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/caiken.htm

Poems by Li Po (Li Bai)

Li Po chanting a poem (by Liang K'ai)

Alone Looking at the Mountain
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.

A Farewell to Meng Haoran on His Way to Yangzhou
You have left me behind, old friend, at the Yellow Crane Terrace,
On your way to visit Yangzhou in the misty month of flowers;
Your sail, a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky.
Till now I see only the river, on its way to heaven.

Mount Heaven’s Gate Viewed from Afar
Breaking through Heaven’s Gate, the Great River goes by,
Green water eastward flows and then turns to the north.
On both sides of the River blue cliffs tower high,
Leaving the sun behind, a lonely sail comes forth.

Viewing the Waterfall at Mount Lu
Sunlight streaming on Incense Stone kindles a violet smoke;
Far off I watch the waterfall plunge to the long river,
Flying waters descending straight three thousand feet,
Till I think the Milky Way has tumbled from the ninth height of Heaven.

Autumn River Song
The moon shimmers in green water.
White herons fly through the moonlight.
The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts:
into the night, singing, they paddle home together.

A Mountain Revelry
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.

More at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai