“Women's rights, that antediluvian topic.”

“Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment.”

“She had been to a tea-party with an antediluvian monster, and that they had been waited on by up-to-date men-servants.”

“After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.”

“The suppression of women's rights began with the suppression of women's rites.”

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard. [From 'Women's Rights Are Human Rights' Speech Beijing, China: 5 September 1995]”