No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

Susan B. Anthony used this line in the context of the U.S. woman suffrage movement, arguing that women were subject to laws and political authority without having any formal voice in choosing lawmakers. The wording echoes the American revolutionary principle of “consent of the governed,” but applies it pointedly to gender relations and to the legal/political subordination of women in the 19th century. Anthony’s speeches and writings repeatedly framed disenfranchisement as a form of unjust governance—men making rules about women’s property, labor, marriage, and bodily autonomy while denying women the ballot that would allow them to consent to or reject that rule.

The quote applies the democratic principle of consent to gender relations and law: legitimate authority over another person requires that person’s agreement. Anthony’s phrasing rejects paternalism—the idea that benevolent men can justly decide for women—and insists that moral character (“good enough”) cannot substitute for political rights. The line also broadens “govern” beyond formal office to include the everyday legal and social power men held over women. Its force lies in turning a familiar civic maxim into a feminist argument: if consent is required to govern men, it must be required to govern women as well, making suffrage and equal civil standing matters of justice, not courtesy.

1) “No man is good enough to govern a woman without her consent.”
2) “No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent, and no woman is good enough to govern any man without his consent.”