Quotes & Sayings About Woman Suffrage

A large portion of those who demand woman suffrage are persons who have not been trained to reason, and are chiefly guided by their generous sensibilities. — Catharine Beecher

The woman suffrage movement in the United States was a movement of the spirit of the Revolution which was striving to hold the nation to the ideals which won independence. — Carrie Chapman Catt

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. — Susan B. Anthony

Woman was the test, but not every woman seemed to qualify. Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage. As for white working-class women, the suffrage leaders were probably impressed at first by the organizing efforts and militancy of their working-class sisters. But as it turned out, the working women themselves did not enthusiastically embrace the cause of woman suffrage. — Angela Y. Davis

The most disappointing feature of working for a cause is that so few people have a philosophy of life. We used to say, in the suffrage movement, that we could trust the woman who believed in suffrage, but we could never trust the woman who just wanted to vote. — Jeannette Rankin

As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

American suffragist, speech "Is Woman Suffrage Progressing?" at Stockholm, Sweden Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom. — Marcus Garvey

Socialists find me too far left; Trotskyites not far enough; ecologists say I am too happy eating foie gras, defending nuclear energy and GM plants; feminists find I am not enough of a woman; anarchists a petit-bourgeois who has sold out because I believe in universal suffrage. — Michel Onfray

I expect to do more work for woman suffrage in the next decade than ever before. — Susan B. Anthony

Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians. — Emma Goldman

Do not stand in the way of the next step in human progress. No one living who reads the signs of the times but realizes that woman suffrage must come. We are working for the ballot as a matter of justice and as a step for human betterment. — Carrie Chapman Catt

Why is a woman to be treated differently? Woman suffrage will succeed, despite this miserable guerilla opposition. — Victoria Claflin Woodhull

Women are afraid. It is unpopular to question the bible. They are creatures of tradition. They fear to question their position in the testament, as they feared to advocate suffrage fifty years ago. Now they are quarreling as to which were among the first to advocate it. You see they are not used to abuse as I am. In Albany, fifty years ago, when I went before the legislature to plead for a married woman's right to her own property, the women whom I met in society crossed the street rather than speak to me. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[woman suffrage] has made little difference beyond doubling the number of voters. There is no woman's vote as such. They divide up just about as men do. — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise ... — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit. — Emma Goldman

We fully believed, so soon as we saw that woman's suffrage was right, every one would soon see the same thing, and that in a year or two, at farthest, it would be granted. — Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend. — Emmeline Pankhurst

The "first woman judge" was a colorful figure whose activities inspired longer stories than the spare announcements that had followed the passage of the woman suffrage bill. — Taft Alfred Larson

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does. — Emma Goldman

Just as the world war is no white man's war, but every man's war, so is the struggle for woman suffrage no white woman's struggle, but every woman's struggle. — Carrie Chapman Catt

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity. — John Boyle O'Reilly

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial. — Emma Goldman

Extending over more than a century and including most nations of the globe, the cause of woman suffrage has been one of the great democratic forces in human history. — Ellen DuBois

So then the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which personally I think is rather a mouthful,' Adelaide said as she set down her wineglass.
'I'm sure others have much shorter terms,' the doctor said, sawing into his steak with more vigor than necessary.
'Such as?' Grace asked.
'There are plenty who just call us bitches, dear. — Mindy McGinnis

They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton