Faith & Spirit Quote by Susan B. Anthony

Certainty is the tell Anthony is hunting. The line skewers a familiar pose: people who speak in God’s voice as if it were a personal megaphone. She doesn’t argue theology; she indicts a social tactic. “I distrust” is a moral posture, not a debate prompt, and it flips the burden of proof onto the self-anointed righteous. The acid in the sentence is structural: divine instruction that “always coincides” with private appetite. That “always” turns individual hypocrisy into a pattern, a cultural operating system.

The intent is strategic. Anthony is an activist who spent her life colliding with institutions that laundered power through piety. In 19th-century America, appeals to God’s will were routinely used to keep women in prescribed roles, to sanctify “separate spheres,” and to frame political rights as rebellion against nature and heaven. By pointing out how conveniently revelation aligns with desire, she makes religious certainty look less like faith and more like self-interest dressed up for public consumption.

The subtext is sharper than a simple anti-clerical jab. Anthony isn’t saying believers are wrong; she’s saying certainty is suspect when it conveniently protects status, comfort, and control. It’s a warning about rhetorical authority: if you can claim God wants what you want, you skip argument, evidence, and empathy. In a democracy, that move doesn’t just win conversations; it forecloses them.