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“The question rests with women themselves—to be decided by their own experience, and by the use of their own faculties.”
Mill argues that women themselves must test capacities and choices through experience rather than having those possibilities defined in advance by others.
Source note: The Subjection of Women, Chapter I; the sentence belongs to Mill’s case for free development rather than prescriptive claims about women’s nature.
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“I WAS A MAN NOW.”
The emphatic line records Douglass’s restored sense of manhood and dignity after resisting physical domination; it belongs to a specific autobiographical struggle against enslavement.
Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom, immediately after Douglass describes his resistance to Covey; capitalization follows the represented Project Gutenberg text.
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“Personal independence is a virtue.”
Douglass values personal agency and self-dependence while rejecting the idea that anyone creates a life entirely alone, placing independence within a wider network of social assistance and obligation.
Source note: Self-Made Men lecture, commonly dated to 1872 in edited versions. The compact statement occurs within an argument that values self-dependence while the lecture’s opening explicitly denies that anyone is literally or completely self-made; Library of Congress manuscript materials anchor the source identity and preserve later versions.
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“We do not want all men to be alike.”
Human development should not be forced into one standardized mold because individuality and creative difference are themselves goods worth protecting.
Source note: Political Ideals, early discussion of individual development. Russell immediately criticizes the bad teacher who imposes one opinion and produces pupils giving the same answer to doubtful questions.
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“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.”
Du Bois refuses the premise that racial exclusion determines intellectual belonging: in the world of culture and thought he claims equal access to Shakespeare and other major writers without asking permission from the color line.
Source note: The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Training of Black Men,” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence opens a longer passage in which Du Bois moves “across the color line” among Shakespeare, Balzac, Dumas, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius; the context is Black cultural and intellectual dignity under segregation.
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“You may give them your love but not your thoughts.”
Care can be generous without requiring another person to inherit every belief or preference.
Source note: The Prophet, “On Children.”