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.

We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half." ~ Emmeline Pankhurst

Be militant in your own way! Those of you who can break windows, break them. Those of you who can still further attack the secret idol of property...do so. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. Take me if you dare! (Emmeline Pankhurst, 1912)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would rather be a rebel than a slave.

Once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.

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.

I do not remember a time when I could not read, nor any time when reading was not a joy and a solace.

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

I incite this meeting to rebellion.

Justice and judgement lie often a world apart." ~ 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 didn’t chain herself to those railings so we could spend our lives as a tiny cog in someone else’s wheel. Be your own boss. Create something. Employ people. Be fearless. Do something you really love. Make it all worthwhile. So, she had done it.

Well, we are showing them that government does not rest upon force at all: it rests upon consent

Justice and judgement lie often a world apart.

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.

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.

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?

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?

Everywhere I found the Americans kind and keen, and I cannot say too much for the wonderful hospitality they showed me.

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.

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.

Many people in India are demanding independence, so Sir Henry Cotton15 calls them extremists. But in England too there is another political movement that can be called ‘Extremist.’ They recently had a huge meeting in Hyde Park. Large numbers of English women have joined this new movement. They want political rights at par with men (the Suffragette movement). Miss Emmeline Pankhurst spoke at the meeting at Hyde Park. She said, ‘We know that pitiable condition of women in England is a result of our political slavery. We want political freedom and men folk to co-operate with us for achieving it. But if they do not give us that freedom, we are quite capable of snatching it from their hands. If we wish we can bring England to a halt within a day and seize our political freedom.’ Listen fellow countrymen! An Englishwoman is saying this and we call ourselves moderate Indian men!! Never again should any country grind under slavery.16