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.

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 go behind the scenes in the government schools, in the workhouses and other charitable institutions; 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.

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 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.

It was my awakening to one of the most terrible facts of life--that justice and judgment 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.

Deeds, not words, was to be our permanent motto.