Jeannette Rankin Quotes

I ran because I became convinced after King was shot and killed, and Martin Luther King was one of the great heroes of my life, that politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. If we don't like how we live, we can participate in the perfect most revolutionary act in a democracy, it's called voting.

In no sense of the word am I in sympathy with women’s suffrage ….I have no vote and I’ve raised hell all over this country.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people.

I can't imagine anything that would make the world look more different than if women and girls were unequivocally enfranchised.

We fully believed, so soon as we saw that woman's suffrage was right, every one would soon see the same thing, and that in a year or two, at farthest, it would be granted.

Don't stand back with your arms folded; step forward... There is hope and light to resist injustice and promote peace without violence.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.

If you care about women's rights, you can't not vote.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

My own adhesion to the Suffrage Cause was given largely because I saw that only through political equality may we hope to see established a true understanding and a happier relationship between the sexes.

I want more people to speak up about issues, like equal pay.

If you only make fights that you're going to win, there would be no women's vote in America, there would be no civil rights laws in the country.

I would rather be known as an advocate of equal suffrage than to speak every night on the best-paying platforms in the United States and ignore it.

The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.

We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.

It is our hope that when people read "March" - Book One, Book Two, and Book Three - that they will understand that another generation of people, especially young people, were deeply inspired by the work of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.

I've always considered myself a feminist, I always considered myself somebody who is a reproductive rights activist, and I've spent the past 25 years of my life speaking truth to power. And using humor to do that.

I'm like a bit of a feminist, I have kinds of highly political dreams. I'm a dreamer about taking on the patriarchy and all that kinda stuff. So I actually have the secret belief that there are enough people who would consider themselves quote-unquote "other" to support my particular taste.

This is also something I've learned from experience. Didn't they perhaps give us the vote because we went too far?

We are told it will be of no use for us to ask this measure of justice--that the ballot be given to the women of our new possessions upon the same terms as to the men--because we shall not get it. It is not our business whether we are going to get it; our business is to make the demand.... Ask for the whole loaf and take what you can get.

With all my heart I beseech and beg my two hundred million female compatriots to assume their responsibility as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise!

Look at what I've done my entire life. I have been working on behalf of civil rights, women's rights, human rights for years and I know how challenging it is to change our political system and I have the highest regard for those who have put themselves on the line.

We have prayed, we have coaxed, we have begged, for the vote, with the hope that men, out of chivalry, would bestow equal rights upon women and take them into partnership in the affairs of the state. We hoped that their common sense would triumph over prejudices and stupidity. We thought their boasted sense of justice would overcome the errors that so often fetter the human spirit; but we have always gone away empty handed. We shall beg no more.