I only read short sections of this work. But it is jam packed with quotable quotes.

      1. "Their nineteenth-century descendants followed the interpretation sanctioned by Jefferson, Paine, and others that each generation had the duty to free itself of the dead hand of the past, to search anew for the proper forms of government." page 2

      2. "Internal unity was, moreover, constantly threatened by principled disagreements. Natural rights advocates treasured above all the individual autonomy of woman in all her social relations. Moral reformers, on the other hand, considered woman to be the natural guardian of the family and by virtue of this position the agent of purified civilization. Hence, the institution of marriage was for some reformers a mere civil contract, for others a holy sacrament. In these opposite perspectives, divorce was either a woman' right of a violation of a higher law. Similarly, the sanction for women's rights was disputed: did they need to find justification in the Bible or could the Word be treated as a mere historical metaphor describing a stage of human events long since passed?" page 13

      3. Regarding the drift toward conservatism and respectability in the suffrage movement during the early 20th century, Buhle writes

      "Strategically, these moves were largely self-defeating. If, as the most conservative suffragist supporters argued, women's vote meant mere preservation of existing institutions, then women's energies could more easily be turned to their traditionally causes like temperance and social purity, while men continued to conduct politics. Southern men, at any rate, did not need southern white women's vote to maintain their predominance over Blacks, any more than northern industrialists needed women's moral contribution to hold sway over the foreign-born working class. Attempts to draw on public fears of "race-suicide" were merely self-contradictory for a movement making claims for a wider democracy." page 31

From Document 1 (I: 25-42): Preceding Causes written by Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1881

      1. "In all periods of human development, thinking has been punished as a crime, which is sufficient to account for the general passive resignation of the masses to their conditions and environments.

      Again, "subjection to the power that be" has been the lesson of both Church and State, throttling science, checking invention, crushing free thought, persecuting and torturing those who have dared to speak or act outside of established authority. Anathemas and the stake have upheld the Church, banishment and the scaffold the throne, and the freedom of mankind has ever been sacrificed to the idea of protection. So entirely has the human will been enslaved in all classes of society past, that monarchs have humbled themselves to popes, nations have knelt at the feet of monarchs, and individuals have sold themselves to others under the subtle promise of "protection" - a word that simply means release from all responsibility, all use of one's own faculties - a word that has ever blinded people to its true significance." page 51

      2. "Hence, the Church made free thought the worst of sins, and the spirit of inquiry the worst of blasphemies; while the state proclaimed her temporal power of divine origin, and all rebellion high treason alike to God and king, to be speedily and severely punished. In this union of Church and State mankind touched the lowest depth of degradation." page 52

      3. "The opposition of theologians, though first to be exhibited when any change is proposed, for reason that change not only takes power from them, but lessens the reverence of mankind for them, is not in its final result so much to be feared as the opposition of those holding political power. The Church, knowing this, has in all ages aimed to connect itself with the State. Political freedom guarantees religious liberty, freedom to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience, fosters a spirit of inquiry, creates self-reliance, induces a feeling of responsibility.

      The people who demand authority for every thought and action, who look to others for wisdom and protection, are those who perpetuate tyranny. The thinkers and actors who find their authority within, are those who inaugurate freedom. . . . .A recent writer, speaking of Turkey, says: "All attempts for the improvement of that nation must prove futile, owing to the degradation of is women; and their elevation is hopeless so long as they are taught by their religion that their condition is ordained of heaven. . . .

      The two great sources of progress are intellect and wealth. Both represent power, and are the elements of success in life. Education frees the mind from bondage of authority and makes the individual self-asserting. Remunerative industry is the means of securing to its possessor wealth and education, transforming the laborer to the capitalist. Work in itself is not power; it is but the means to an end. The slave in not benefited by his industry; he does not receive the results of his toil; his labor enriches another - adds to the power of his master to bind his chain still closer. Although woman has performed much of the labor of the world, her industry and economy have been the very means of increasing her degradation. Not being free, the results of her labor have gone to build up and sustain the very class that has perpetuated this injustice. . . . Taught that education for her was indelicate and irreligious, she has been kept in such gross ignorance as to fall prey to superstition, and to glory in her own degradation. . . .

      Women have been the great unpaid laborer of the world. . . ." page 53

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