Flora Tristan Quotes

Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man's yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!

With my union project in my hand, from town to town, from one end of France to the other, to talk to the workers who do not know how to read and to those who do not have the time to read....I will go find them in their workshops; in their garrets and even, if needed, in their taverns, and there, face to face with their poverty, I will compel them, in spite of themselves, to escape from this frightful poverty which is degrading and killing them.

The Woman is the Proletarian of the Proletariat

What a revolting contrast exists in England between the slavery of women and the intellectual superiority of women writers.

Prostitution is the most hideous of the afflictions produced by the unequal distribution of the world's goods; this infamy stigmatizes the human species and bears witness against the social organization far more than does crime.