Quotes & Sayings About Women's Suffrage

It's not enough to have a few women's studies courses. Why is it more important to study Paul Revere's midnight ride than it is Susan B. Anthony's 50-year effort to transform the face of America for women? When you're in school, most of the events you study are about men. Men's activities lauded and repeated over and over. What about us? What about commemorating the decades-long struggle for suffrage? Why don't we hear those stories over and over and over again. It's almost inconceivable for men to understand what it would be like to live without that constant valorization. — Judy Chicago

The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. — Winston Churchill

If the day hadn't yet convinced him of the merits of women's suffrage, it had certainly convinced him of the justness of the movement for Rational Dress. — Graham Moore

I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women. — John Bright

Not being bothered to exercise your right to vote is a privilege that many women still don't have. Dismissing politicians as all the same is a luxury. Our votes may not seem very important to us, but our lives without them would be immeasurably worse. For we needed universal suffrage to be firmly and unarguably in place before we could demand equal rights. And while it may be tempting for people to mutter that feminism is old-fashioned, boring and a fight already won, we have have to look at the statistics to see that what is true for women is a very long way short of being true for us all. — Natalie Haynes

The evolution of national unity and equal rights is all about what America represents as a nation today: a manifestation of the historical episodes of Jefferson and Henry as well as the Civil War, the Women's Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights struggles. — Patrick Mendis

Proof that they do not understand the republic is that in their fine promises for universal suffrage, they forgot women. — Delphine De Girardin

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

Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women's suffrage. — W.E.B. Du Bois

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

In the end, then, suffrage for women came down to the vote of one young man, influenced by his mom. It was rumored that "the anti-suffragists were so angry at his decision that they chased him from the chamber, forced him to climb out a window of the Capitol and inch along a ledge to safety."15 Thus suffrage arrived in the United States, kicking and screaming. — Michael Shermer

If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government? — 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

When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men. — Clara Zetkin

It was the United States which first established general suffrage for men upon the two principles that 'taxation without representation is tyranny' and that governments to be just should 'derive their consent from the governed.' The unanswerable logic of these two principles is responsible for the extension of suffrage to men and women the world over. In the United States, however, women are still taxed without 'representation' and still live under a government to which they have given no 'consent. — Carrie Chapman Catt

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them. — Oscar Wilde

[Asked if American women would ever win full suffrage:] Assuredly. I firmly believed at one time that I should live to see that day. I have never for one moment lost faith. It will come but I shall not see itit is inevitable. — Susan B. Anthony

What is true of Mr. Mill's influence on the women's-suffrage question is true also of the other political movements in which he took an active interest. — Millicent Fawcett

In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage - often on religious grounds. — Gloria Steinem

We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It always seems to me when the anti-suffrage members of the Government criticize militancy in women that it is very like beasts of prey reproaching gentler animals who turn in desperate resistance when at the point of death. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Before the suffragettes came along, women were treated like dogs ... They were dolls, with no thoughts, or opinions, or voices of their own. Then the suffragettes marched in, full of loud, in-your-face ideas. They got arrested and thrown in jail, but nothing shut them up. They fought and fought until they earned the rights they should've had all along. — Laurie Halse Anderson

White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage. — Carrie Chapman Catt

So firm did Nivea's determination become that she wrote in her diary that she would give up marriage in order to devote herself completely to the struggle for women's suffrage. She was not aware that such a sacrifice would not be necessary, and that she would marry a man for love who would back her up in her political goals. — Isabel Allende

Suffrage is a common right of citizenship. Women have the right of suffrage. Logically it cannot be escaped. — Victoria Woodhull

The success of the suffrage movement would injure women spiritually and intellectually, for they would be assuming a burden though they knew themselves unable to bear it. It is the sediment, not the wave, of a sex. It is the antithesis of that highest and sweetest mystery - conviction by submission, and conquest by sacrifice. — John Boyle O'Reilly

Louis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence. — Jeffrey Rosen

It's unfortunate that we see a great many women settling. They think that simply because they have gotten the right to vote, own property and have gained some simple freedoms that the battle for women's suffrage is over. — Frederick Lenz

In my suffrage work, I learned beyond question that the news coming through the great press agencies was colored and distorted; and if this has been done on one subject, it has doubtless been done on others. A good many women, I think, learned a wholesome distrust of press reports during the suffrage struggle. — Alice Stone Blackwell

To get that word, male, out of the Constitution, cost the women of this country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign; 56 state referendum campaigns; 480 legislative campaigns to get state suffrage amendments submitted; 47 state constitutional convention campaigns; 277 state party convention campaigns; 30 national party convention campaigns to get suffrage planks in the party platforms; 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses to get the federal amendment submitted, and the final ratification campaign. — Carrie Chapman Catt

There is no power in the world like that of women ... this most potent constituency we seek to represent, and for their suffrages we sue. — Louisa Lawson

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

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

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

And Mother, I love her dearly, but she flies into a panic whenever I mention women's rights. As she sees it, it will be so much more difficult to marry me off if I am not only of a weak constitution but of a progressive mind as well. — Gwenn Wright

However benevolent men may be in their intentions, they cannot know what women want and what suits the necessities of women's lives as well as women know these things themselves. — Millicent Garrett Fawcett

While women's suffrage has not brought about the political millennium which its fondest backers predicted, its effects on the whole have been decidely beneficial. — Jessie Daniel Ames

When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress infavor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly! — Susan B. Anthony

I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon. (on women's suffrage) — Susan B. Anthony

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one. — Thomas P.M. Barnett

The first organised opposition by women to women's suffrage in England dates from 1889, when a number of ladies led by Mrs Ward appealed against the proposed extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women. — Millicent Fawcett

You know," he added reflectively, "we've got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we'd had to modernise a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bicameral legislature, proportional representation, women's suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the press, referendums ... "
"What is all that?" asked the Emperor.
"Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern. — Evelyn Waugh

The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a mask. Behind that mask was a formless invincible discontent with the lot of womanhood. It wanted, - it was not clear what it wanted, but whatever it wanted, all the domestic instincts of mankind were against admitting there was anything it could want. — H.G.Wells

If the nineteenth century was a time of education for women, it was no less a time of education for men. — Millicent Garrett Fawcett

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

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

There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers. — Susan B. Anthony

they were all just as ignorant as Blackstone was of the chancery law system that had long tempered the inequities of Blackstone's beloved Common Law in both England and the American colonies. Under the old doctrine of the femme covert, which Blackstone almost single-handedly revived, married women legally died; they lost their property rights, their rights to contract and sue, and even the right to custody of their own children and possession of their own bodies. At the same time, the states, one by one, acted to correct an "oversight" in their constitutions; in 1798 New York inserted the word male in the section dealing with suffrage. — Ann Jones