Jeannette Rankin Quotes

• If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Would Be, Nasty, Ifs

  214 Copy quote

• You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, Military, War

  Quoted in Hannah Josephson, Jeannette Rankin: First Lady in Congress (1974)

  56 Copy quote

• I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won’t be the last.

  Jeannette Rankin

  May, Lasts, Firsts

  26 Copy quote

• Men and women are like right and left hands: it doesn't make sense not to use both.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Men, Hands, Left Hand

  25 Copy quote

• I worked for suffrage for years, and got it. I've worked for peace for 55 years and haven't come close.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, Years, Suffrage

  14 Copy quote

• We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Justice, Diversity, People

  24 Copy quote

• The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, War, Patriotic

  22 Copy quote

• The individual woman is required . . . a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Respect, Independent, Self

  24 Copy quote

• You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Leadership, Peace, People

  13 Copy quote

• Go! Go! Go! It makes no difference where, just so you go! go! go! Remember, at the first opportunity, go!

  Jeannette Rankin

  Opportunity, Differences, Firsts

  14 Copy quote

• There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  23 Copy quote

• Men are not killed because they get mad at each other. They're killed because one of them has a gun in any dispute.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Gun, Men, Mad

  6 Copy quote

• Killing more people won't help matters.

  Jeannette Rankin

  People, Matter, Helping

  16 Copy quote

• As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.

  Jeannette Rankin

  War, Justice, Diversity

  Quoted in Hannah Josephson, Jeannette Rankin: First Lady in Congress (1974)

  6 Copy quote

• The most disappointing feature of working for a cause is that so few people have a philosophy of life. We used to say, in the suffrage movement, that we could trust the woman who believed in suffrage, but we could never trust the woman who just wanted to vote.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Philosophy, People, Movement

  19 Copy quote

• War is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.

  Jeannette Rankin

  War, Enemy, Scales

  8 Copy quote

• Establish democracy at home, based on human rights as superior to property rights. . . .

  Jeannette Rankin

  Women, Home, Rights

  13 Copy quote

• What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, Philosophy, Ubuntu

  9 Copy quote

• Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Race, Democracy, Use

  17 Copy quote

• There can be no compromise with war.

  Jeannette Rankin

  War, Compromise, No Compromise

  7 Copy quote

• It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.

  Jeannette Rankin

  War, Boys, Jail

  6 Copy quote

• I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Country, War, Personality

  Quoted in Hannah Josephson, Jeannette Rankin: First Lady in Congress (1974)

  5 Copy quote

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