Emmeline Pankhurst > Quotes

“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, My Own Story

“Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“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.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst

“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, The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement

“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.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“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.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst

“Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or death

“It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it - I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“I do not remember a time when I could not read, nor any time when reading was not a joy and a solace.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“I incite this meeting to rebellion.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst

“I want to say right here, that those well-meaning friends on the outside who say that we have suffered these horrors of prison, of hunger strikes and forcible feeding, because we desired to martyrise ourselves for the cause, are absolutely and entirely mistaken. We never went to prison in order to be martyrs. We went there in order that we might obtain the rights of citizenship. We were willing to break laws that we might force men to give us the right to make laws.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst

“Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Justice and judgement lie often a world apart."
~ Emmeline Pankhurst”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Justice and judgement lie often a world apart.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“At last it is realized that women are fighting for freedom, as their fathers fought. If they want twelve women, aye, and more than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that act and sent to prison for three months, they can be found.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Patrick Henry, summed up the causes that led to the American Revolution. He said: "We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne, and it has all been in vain. We must fight—I repeat it, sir, we must fight.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Well, we are showing them that government does not rest upon force at all: it rests upon consent”
― Emmeline Pankhurst

“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.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Mr. Lloyd-George said that he agreed with everything Mr. Churchill had said "both relevant and irrelevant." He made the amazing assertion that the Conciliation Committee that had drafted the bill was a "committee of women meeting outside the House." And that this committee said to the House of Commons not only that they must vote for a women's suffrage bill but "You must vote for the particular form upon which we agree, and we will not even allow you to deliberate upon any other form.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“I continued: "Mr. Asquith has said that the parents of children have a right to be consulted in the matter of their children's education, especially upon such questions as the kind of religious instruction they should receive. Women are parents. Does not Mr. Asquith think that women should have the right to control their children's education, as men do, through the vote?”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Is there not a single man in the House of Commons," I cried, "one who will stand up for us, who will make the House see that the amendment must go forward?”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story

“Everywhere I found the Americans kind and keen, and I cannot say too much for the wonderful hospitality they showed me.”
― Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story