In his ignorant, undeveloped condition, intellectually, he has been led to yield himself in obedience to others whom it seemed to him were able by their superiority, mentally, to better administer to these prime necessities than he could…
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
gutenberg.org
Whatever else he may be free to perform he can never be emancipated from the necessity of yielding obedience to the demands of this existence.
First, then, and that which is the basis of all other tyranny, is the fact that man, individually considered, is, in the strictest sense of the term, a slave to the conditions of his existence.
It was a grand—almost a fatally grand—mistake which the people made when they considered that they had obtained complete freedom when they emancipated themselves from the so-called “tyranny” of England.
The acquisition of knowledge has ever tended to the liberalization of existing orders of things, and it was not until something akin to its general diffusion was obtained that any adequate ideas of the advantages of freedom became fixed in…
Not only should they inherit this right but the government should see to it that the right is obtained, compulsorily if need be.
Every child, whether born of wealth or poverty, should inherit the right from government of a complete education in all the important branches of education.
It is for this reason that the general diffusion of knowledge among the common people should receive so much more attention than it has or does.
So, too, is it with the mass of laborers; they do not know their real power and they yield obedience to the power of assumption aided by a superior intellect.
It is a singular fact, and one to be regarded with a feeling bordering on astonishment, that it is possible for all legislation to be either conducted in the interests of capital or controlled by it, when the capitalists of the country are…
As intelligence becomes more and more generally diffused the domination of capital over labor becomes weaker and weaker, and the dignity of labor more and more apparent, and, as a necessary result of the growth of this sentiment, labor is…
The difficulty with all present systems of government is that they are built upon the supposition that capital is the primarily controlling power; while the fact is that behind capital labor stands first and strongest.