A collection of sayings and quotes by Emmeline Pankhurst on historians, story, suffragettes, Sylvia, movement, women, contribution, power, giving, justice, rights.
34 Insightful Quotes By Emmeline Pankhurst For Those Who Believe In Meliorism
Quick Facts
Famous As:
Leader of the British Suffragette Movement
Emmeline Pankhurst was a distinguished leader of the British suffragette movement and a political activist. She is accredited with helping women to win the right to vote in elections. In 1999 she was ranked amongst the ‘100 Most Important People Of The 20th Century’ by ‘Time’. Her works, viewpoints, opinions and thoughts are considered to have played a pivotal role in Britain in achieving women’s suffrage. She was also the founder of ‘Women’s Franchise League’, which worked towards fighting for the rights of married women to vote in local elections. In order to achieve her goals, she went on numerous hunger strikes and was also arrested a number of times. Here is a corpus of quotes and sayings by Emmeline Pankhurst which have been excerpted from her works, thoughts and life and are till date quoted widely. Go through the quotes and thoughts by Emmeline Pankhurst on history, politics, mother, crime, lie, world, punishment, thankful, children, education, very, war, government, mind, injustice etc that will incite you to stand for your rights.
When you have warfare, things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war.
Emmeline Pankhurst
I had to get a close-hand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it.
I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity.
We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half."
~ Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst
I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting. Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I begged her to let me go along.
Emmeline Pankhurst
From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession.
Emmeline Pankhurst
The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent.
We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion.
One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten.
Emmeline Pankhurst
I suppose I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my temperament and my surroundings, I could scarcely have been otherwise.
Emmeline Pankhurst
The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.
Emmeline Pankhurst
I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation of social injustice.
Emmeline Pankhurst
The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness.
You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country. It is the only way.
Emmeline Pankhurst
If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like today if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear.
My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all.
Emmeline Pankhurst
I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Window-breaking, when Englishmen do it, is regarded as honest expression of political opinion. Window-breaking, when Englishwomen do it, is treated as a crime.
Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.
Emmeline Pankhurst
One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first. That is the whole history of politics.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.
Emmeline Pankhurst
There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy. Be militant each in your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.
It is perfectly evident to any logical mind that when you have got the vote, by the proper use of the vote in sufficient numbers, by combination, you can get out of any legislature whatever you want, or, if you cannot get it, you can send them about their business and choose other people who will be more attentive to your demands.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case.
Every principle of liberty enunciated in any civilized country on earth, with very few exceptions, was intended entirely for men, and when women tried to force the putting into practice of these principles, for women, then they discovered they had come into a very, very unpleasant situation indeed.
Emmeline Pankhurst
Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very weakest woman. You can kill that woman, but she escapes you then; you cannot govern her. No power on earth can govern a human being, however feeble, who withholds his or her consent.
Emmeline Pankhurst
My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.
Often I have heard the taunt that suffragists are women who have failed to find any normal outlet for their emotions, and are therefore soured and disappointed beings. This is probably not true of any suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me. My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world.
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
Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in.
