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Quote#World

The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing…

Quote byVictoria Woodhull · 1838–1927

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Tried As By Fire, or The True and The False, Socially, speech, 1874, quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 , p. 222 & n. [20] (each ellipsis or set of suspension points so in original).

English (original)

The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invests men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality!

— Victoria Woodhull

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