Daily Inspiration Quote by Susan B. Anthony

Anthony’s line doesn’t politely request inclusion; it stages exclusion as public humiliation. The bite is in the comparison: “dogs baying the moon” turns political speech into useless noise, instinctive and ignored. It’s an image designed to sting both ways. It mocks a system that invites women to “petition” while denying the one tool that makes a petition consequential. And it needles any listener tempted to praise women’s moral influence while keeping them legally powerless: if you truly believe in our virtue, why treat our voices like animal sounds?

The rhetoric is ruthlessly practical. Anthony collapses the sentimental pedestal into a procedural truth: rights don’t run on respectability; they run on leverage. “We might as well” is doing heavy work here, flattening the era’s favorite compromise position (speak, persuade, influence) into futility. Her target isn’t just male lawmakers; it’s the entire civic script that frames women’s political engagement as decorous appeal rather than rightful participation.

Context sharpens the intent. Post-Civil War America was rewriting citizenship through the 14th and 15th Amendments while leaving women outside the franchise. Anthony’s movement had spent years circulating petitions, giving speeches, and lobbying Congress - the sanctioned channels of dissent. By likening that labor to moon-baying, she exposes how “access” can be theater: the state allows the performance of democracy while withholding its mechanism.

The subtext is a warning: without the vote, moral argument becomes background sound. With it, women stop pleading at the door and start holding the keys.