I remember looking back at my mother's face... often during my young babyhood I would watch as she suckled me.
Victoria Woodhull
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Victoria Woodhull quotes
A thing is oonly as strong as its weakest link and that family was the weakest link.
A very large proportion of present social relations are commendable. Do you not perceive that the law has nothing to do in continuing the relations which are based on continuous love?
By what right do you refuse to accept the vote of a citizen of the United States?
Denounce me for advocating freedom if you can, and I will bear your curse with a better resignation.
Everything, to the external view, was at the height of prosperity. But we exposed one nefarious scheme after another.
For a woman to consider a financial question was shuddered over as a profanity.
From the very first moment, I seemed to know all the future without being able to give any expression in words.
Had I been ambitious to become the next president I should have proceeded very differently to accomplish it.
How would you like to come into this world not knowing who your mother or father was?
I admit he was my accepted lover. A woman who could not love Theodore Tilton must indeed be dead to all the sweeter impulses of our nature.
I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please.
I am fully persuaded that the very highest sexual unions are monogamic, and that these are perfect in proportion as they are lasting.
I am subject to tyranny!
I and others of my sex find ourselves controlled by a form of government in the inauguration of which we had no voice.
I ask the rights to pursue happiness by having a voice in that government to which I am accountable.
I believe in Spiritualism; I advocate free love in the highest, purest sense, as the only cure for the damnation by which men corrupt God's most holy institution of sexual relations.
I believed that a husband must necessarily be an angel, impossible of corruption or contamination.
I boldly entered the arena of business and exercised the rights I already possessed.
I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I decline to stand up as the frightful example.
I did not desire to arouse all the petty fiendishness that has developed itself.
I do not assume to speak for anyone. I know I speak in direct opposition to the wishes of many by whom I am surrounded.
I do not intend to be made the scapegoat of sacrifice, to be offered up as a victim to society.
I do not shake hands from a sanitary standpoint.
I endeavor to make the most of everything.
I expect to no fair analysis and examination, even if the scalpel be a little merciless.
I have a consciousness within which is above all such petty malice.
I have been in such a rush of matters that my brain really whirls with their admixture.
I imagined that the priestly ceremony was perfect sanctification, and that the sin of sins was for either husband or wife to be false to that relation.
I know that my companions from the moment of birth were heaven's choicest souls. I grew side by side with them, in fact all the education and inspiration came over them.
I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question.
I remember looking back at my mother's face... often during my young babyhood I would watch as she suckled me.
I retain not one ill-will recollection. I gave America my youth. It was sweet and gallant and fruitful.
I shall make it my business to take my chances in the matter of libel suits.
I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.
I soon learned that what I had believed of marriage and society was the nearest sham, a cloak madeby their devotees to hide the realities andto entice the innocent into their snares.
I supposed that to marry was to be transported to a heaven not only of happiness but of purity and perfection.
I was divorced from Dr. Woodhull for reasons which to me were sufficient, but I was never his enemy.
I went with my husband and an innocent child to California. I went to a theatrical manager and asked him to allow me to earn money enough on the stage to buy our tickets home. He did.
I would like above any other place to go to Hartford. I want to face the conservatism there centered and compel it into decency.
If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?
If women would today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation, the men would be compelled to grant it.
Is it fair to treat a woman worse than a man, and then revile her because she is a woman?
It is extremely unfortunate that an editor's own life and practice should be notoriously at variance with his written principles.
It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love.
It was never intended that we would remain permanently in Wall Street.
Late last week some new affairs began to develop themselves which have kept me continually engaged ever since. I cannot tell you all about what is going on now, but watch for next week's paper.
Let women issue a declaration of independence sexually, and absolutely refuse to cohabit with men until they are acknowledged as equals in everything, and the victory would be won in a single week.
Men will always respect women when they compel it, by their actions.
My judges preach against free love openly, practice it secretly.
My mother was impelled to talk to me, not as a child, but as her own heart, pouring out all her woman's desires and bemoaning her failures.
My opinions and principles are subjects of just criticism. I put myself before the public voluntarily.
One of the charges made against me is that I lived in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woodhull, and my present husband, Col. Blood. The fact is a fact.
Political matters are developing so fast that we must not let a single thing slip without use.
Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul.
She took it upon herself to vouch for Mr. Beecher's faithfulness to his marriage vows, though I compelled her to admit she had no positive knowledge which could justify her so doing.
So after all I am a very promiscuous free lover. I want the love of you all, promiscuously.
Strike as much and as hard as you please, only don't do it in the dark so that I cannot know who is my enemy.
Suffrage is a common right of citizenship. Women have the right of suffrage. Logically it cannot be escaped.
The excellencies pretended to misunderstand and undertook to impugn was their defect, not mine.
The women of the country have the power in their own hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order.
There must be no screws used when embark my ashes by loving hands I wish thrown into the sea. I do not want the world family to annoy my child; they have never understood her.
These young, for whom I plead, will in after years bless Victoria Woodhull for daring to speak for their salvation.
Those weeds have the courage to grow in the path of man, and you have murdered them.
To go behind a man's hall-door is mean, cowardly, unfair opposition.
Various editors have stigmatized me as a living example of immorality and unchastity.
We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead.
We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times greater scale than was that of the south.
We might make the money that it would be necessary to have to start and maintain a newspaper.
We realized companies were floated to work mines that did not exist.
We shall in no instance descend to personal journalism in our remarks on the opinions and conduct of other newspapers.
What do present profits amount to when it costs us over $2,600 a month to live?
When I am ready to make my appearance in this dress no police will touch me.
When I first came to Wall Street not 100 women in the whole of the Unted States owned stocks or dared to show independence in property ownership.
When I first saw the light of day on this planet, it seemed as if I had been rudely awakened from a death-like sleep.
When I found I had given birth to a human wreckage, to a child that was an imbecile, my heart was broken.
While others of my sex devoted themselves toa crusade against the laws that shackle the women of our country, I asserted my individual independence.
While others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it.
Why is a woman to be treated differently? Woman suffrage will succeed, despite this miserable guerilla opposition.
Woman, no less than man, can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life.
Women have no government.
You are all aware that my private life has been pictured to the public by the press of the country with the intent to make people believe me to be a very bad woman.
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