Suffragettes Quotes

• Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.

  Ethel Smyth

  Dog, Book, Winter

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• All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.

  Kate Sheppard

  Inspirational, Sex, Race

  "Women, Politics, And Power : A Global Perspective" by Melanie M. Hughes, (p. 47), 2007.

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• I would rather be a rebel than a slave.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Independent Women, Rebel, Slavery

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• The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Women, Window Panes, Broken

  Quoted in George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1936)

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• Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent.

  Violet Trefusis

  Drunk, Brave, Wicked

  Violet Keppel Trefusis, Mitchell Alexander Leaska (1991). “Violet to Vita: the letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1910-21”, Viking Adult

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• 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

  Mistake, Should Have, Gone

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• We have come far, but there is an ongoing battle to be fought. Many of the issues the Suffragettes were dealing with are still issues today across the globe: equal pay, parental rights, sexual abuse, etc.

  Sarah Gavron

  Equal Pay, Issues, Rights

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Snow, Reform, Paper

  "Great speeches of the 20th century: Emmeline Pankhurst's Freedom or death". www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2007.

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• Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities. Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent. Live fully, live passionately, live disastrously. Let's live, you and I, as none have ever lived before.

  Violet Trefusis

  Drunk, Giving, Brave

  Said to Sackville-West. "Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson". Book by Nigel Nicolson, p. 148, 1998.

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• During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I[urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enactingthat all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Women, Numbers, Body

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• 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

  Fighting, Trying, Locks

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• Nothing-was more degrading than for a woman to have to marry for a home. Love should be the sole reason. Surely those with a brain-to think, eyes to see and a mind-to reason must realise that the capitalist system must cease and a co-operative system prevail in its place.

  Vida Goldstein

  Love, Marriage, Women

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• "Suffragette" is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fight for the right to vote.

  Sarah Gavron

  Drama, Fighting, Feet

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

  Anna Quindlen

  Mother, Children, Grateful

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• 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

  Men, Important, Looks

  "SISTER GIANT: Consciousness and Politics". Interview with Gabrielle Bernstein, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 6, 2012.

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• And Jet, I thought the Major was a lady suffragette.

  Paul McCartney

  Jet, Majors

  Song: Venus And Mars Rock Show Jet

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• 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

  Wedding, Ghouls, Gowns

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• I have worn my white and purple, colors of the Suffragettes, in honor of the fact that we have our first woman president, soon to be, Hillary Clinton, elected president of the United States.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Purple, White, Color

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Valentine's Day is a sham created by card companies to reinforce gender stereotypes. [..] I'll buy some cookies, but NOT for Valentine's Day. These cookies celebrate the February 14th birthday of Anna Howard Shaw, famed American suffragette.

  Anna Howard Shaw

  Valentine, Cookies, Cards

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• 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

  Thinking, People, Choices

  "Bob Brown and the media: 'I'll take them on ... they've crossed the line'". Interview with John Keane, theconversation.com. June 2, 2011.

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• The suffragettes were women of action. Their motto was "Deeds not Words," and the film reflects that with a number of big set pieces, from the smashing of windows in central London to a riot at the Houses of Parliament.

  Sarah Gavron

  Numbers, House, Pieces

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I was no suffragette, but I was pretty sure the he-can’t-control-himself defense was a big, stinky load of horseshit.

  Rachel Vincent

  Defense, Bigs, Stinky

  Rachel Vincent (2012). “Soul Screamers Volume Two: My Soul to Keep\My Soul to Steal\Reaper”, p.519, Harlequin

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• 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

  Joy, House, Firsts

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Until I was about eighteen, yes [I didn't want to get married]. But not because I felt like a suffragette, but because I wanted to devote all my energies to the struggle to free India. Marriage, I thought, would have distracted me from the duties I'd imposed on myself.

  Indira Gandhi

  Struggle, Energy, India

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• 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

  School, Taught, Hats

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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