Suffragettes Quotes

A few British suffragettes everybody laughed at started the cause of equality between men and women. ~ Antonio Munoz Molina

The suffragettes didn't starve themselves for the vote, so that you girls could starve yourselves for a man. ~ Liane Moriarty

The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Feminism is as old as sexual repression. In this country, women's liberation flowered best in the soil prepared by black liberation the mid-19th century abolitionist movement yielded suffragettes. The mid-20th century civil rights movement yielded women's liberation. Both movements were loudly championed by black men no white men so distinguished themselves. But both abandoned Black Civil Rights and regarded the shift away from the race problem as an inevitable and necessary development. An opportunity to concentrate on exclusively sexist issues. Each time that shift took place, it marked the first stage of divisiveness and heralded a future of splinter groups and self-sabotage. ~ Toni Morrison

When men in Congress come to blows at somemthing someone said,
I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red;
But if two women disagree, with very little noise,
It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise. ~ Alice Duer Miller

We petitioned to get access to film [Suffragette] at the Houses of Parliament and we whooped with joy when we were allowed in, as this is the first ever commercial film to shoot there. ~ Sarah Gavron

A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns. ~ Marguerite Young

I was taught nothing about the suffragettes in school. The version I eventually got was mainly about the peaceful campaigning of the constitutional suffragists. Their work was vital, but there was this other, not widely known story of the women who risked everything, who were prepared to break every taboo. ~ Sarah Gavron

I had wanted to make this film [Suffragette] for over a decade. There has never been a cinematic rendition of this story. I had not been taught any of the history of the movement at school, and the version I had gleaned had been the Mary Poppins story of women in large hats, petitioning. There was another version. ~ Sarah Gavron

Just as we tell women today to vote, in honour of the suffragettes who campaigned for the right to do so, we owe it to these female sports pioneers to draw inspiration from their stories, to continue the fight. ~ Anna Kessel

The English prison system is altogether mediaeval and outworn. In some of its details, the system has improved since they began to send the Suffragettes to Holloway. I may say that we, by our public denunciation of the system, have forced these slight improvements. ~ Emmeline Pankhurst

Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men?
Yes, it is true.
Is not a woman's place the home?
No, not when men need her services outside the home.
Will she never be told again that her place is the home?
Oh, yes, indeed.
When?
As soon as men want their jobs back again. ~ Alice Duer Miller

The suffragettes were quite strategic about documenting their events, and there were some good photos. And we developed a roll of film that had never been developed before! ~ Sarah Gavron

The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can't speak up for your right to be silent. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The suffragettes endured 50 years of broken government promises and not being heard. The press never reported on their activities. ~ Sarah Gavron

Years ago I predicted that these suffragettes, tried out by victory, would turn out to be idiots. They are now hard at work proving it. Half of them devote themselves to advocating reforms, chiefly of a sexual character, so utterly preposterous that even male politicians and newspaper editors laugh at them; the other half succumb absurdly to the blandishments of the old-time male politicians, and so enroll themselves in the great political parties. A woman who joins one of these parties simply becomes an imitation man, which is to say, a donkey. ~ H.L. Mencken

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration. ~ Marvin Ammori

Every time I get a bit worried about having made some second rate choices in life I go back and read about the Suffragettes or William Wilberforce, people who were 'wrong' in their own time, and think, 'Ah well.' ~ Bob Brown

I can be a little prickly when people make assumptions about women. ~ Michael Pryor

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

First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminists before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called "foremothers" of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called "gender equality," it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea that women of colour all of a sudden realized "we are women," and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other "feminist" notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. The mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of color and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live. ~ Erin Konsmo

We will have gone from men telling us condescendingly to not bother our pretty little heads about important things like politics, to not bothering our pretty little heads without even being told not to! The suffragettes struggled and suffered so much on our behalf; what a travesty of everything they stood for, if we simply look away as though we can't be bothered. ~ Marianne Williamson

Change always follows the same pattern. If you come up with something new they try and put you off.If that doesn't work they call you stark raving bonkers.If that doesn't work they lock you up like the suffragettes.Then, after a pause, the change happensand you can't find anyone that doesn't claim to have been fighting for it with you. ~ Tony Benn

I would rather be a rebel than a slave. ~ Emmeline Pankhurst

And Jet, I thought the Major was a lady suffragette. ~ Paul McCartney

It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement. ~ Sarah Gavron

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

Bah! Suffragettes. I've no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power! ~ Jennifer Worth