Liz Carpenter Quotes

Is it right that your mother, your sister... should be classed with criminals and lunatics...? Is it right that while the loafer, the gambler, the drunkard, and even the wife-beater has a vote, earnest, educated and refined women are denied it?... Is it right... that a mother... should be thought unworthy of a vote that is freely given to the blasphemer, the liar, the seducer, and the profligate?

Women shall have the same rights and privileges under the law as men in the exercise of suffrage ... and in all other respects.

The Equal Rights Amendment is a necessity of life…

We got the vote, which we should've been born with, in 1920. Everything we've had to struggle for - it's ridiculous.

This position is untenable, and there can be no pause in the agitation for full political power and responsibility until these are granted to all the women of the nation.

Women are born, living their lives, and dying without the justice which they have been waiting for since the time of the caveman.

There can be no question that women should have equal rights with men.... Especially as regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man's name.

To-day is holden at Worcester [MA] the "Woman's Convention." I think that as long as they have not equal rights of property and right of voting they are not on the right footing.

We [women] seek equality. We don't seek sameness.

It is quite time that we [women] had our own party, our own platform, and our own nominees. We shall never have equal rights until we take them.

I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!

Such is the boasted chivalry of the Land of Freedom, which has left its women to strive against tradition, prejudice, conservatism, self-interest, political power and in addition all the forces of corruption combined, to secure the privilege which was conferred upon vast numbers of men who never even demanded it and many of whom knew nothing of its significance after it was granted.

Yes, I'm a suffragist.

I tell you that men will always respect women when they compel it by their actions; and if women today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation the men would be compelled to grant it. The women of the country have the power in their hands, in spite of the law and the government being altogether of the male order.

I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.

… no civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.

My commitment to gender equality is rooted in the quintessentially American principle of equal justice under law.

It was a feeling of loyalty to our own sex and an enthusiasm to have every degradation that was put upon our sex removed.

I believe that all men and women are created equal, but it took our country until 1920 to acknowledge this for women. And then it took until 1964, the year before I was born, to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And same-sex marriage became the law of the land in 2015.

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.

Proof that they do not understand the republic is that in their fine promises for universal suffrage, they forgot women.

Mr. President how long must women wait to get their liberty? Let us have the rights we deserve.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

The Constitution did not mention women when it was first written, and it still doesn't.

I liked the name of the amendment. I couldn't help feeling uneasy that the church was opposing something with a name as beautiful as the Equal Rights Amendment.