Any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.
Interpretation
True religion upholds the dignity and rights of all individuals, rather than sacrificing some for the benefit of others.
This quote by Julia Ward Howe emphasizes that any religion that permits the harm or subjugation of certain groups of people, particularly women, for the benefit of others is fundamentally flawed. True religion should promote equality, justice, and compassion, rejecting practices that devalue human life in any form.
In practice
During a speech on women's rights, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of equality.
The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed, _x000D_ Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed: _x000D_ 'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe; _x000D_ And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know.
When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord -
I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another.
I shall stick to my resolution of writing always what I think no matter whom it offends.
I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made of layers, cells, constellations.
I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.
If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and woman we have created for ourselves; the image has nothing to do with the reality of people.
Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
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