Top 10 Greatest Speeches
As the political season heats up, TIME takes a tour of history's best rhetoric
Women's Rights to the Suffrage, 1873
Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for casting an illegal ballot in the 1872 presidential election. Seething at the injustice, she embarked on a speaking tour in support of female voting rights, during which she gave this speech. The 19th Amendment enfranchised women in 1920. Anthony never paid the fine.
Best Line: "It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people — women as well as men."
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