Delphine de Girardin Quotes

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.

We do not know whether the present House of Commons will be prepared to do justice to women. A few months ago there can be little doubt that it would, and nothing that has since happened supplies any adequate reason for a change of purpose. The follies and excesses of a small section of women, deeply resented and regretted by the vast majority of women, ought not to be allowed to weigh in the balance against a claim which has been admitted to be just.

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

When a battle for suffrage is conducted, it should only be conducted according to socialist principles, and therefore with the demand of universal suffrage for women and men.

If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the 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.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.

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.

The vote, I thought, means nothing to women, we should be armed.

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.

Is it right that your mother, your sister... should be classed with criminals and lunatics... ? Is it right that while 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?

Yes, I'm a suffragist.

All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious representation fall, before the fact that woman has been grossly wronged by man. That being the case, the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to say, "Henceforward have a voice in making your own laws." Till this is done, she has no sure safeguard, since otherwise the same men who made the old barbarous laws may at any time restore them.

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.

American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

Remember what Susan B. Anthony said? 'Failure is impossible.' Failure is possible if women don't vote.

Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.

Through persistent dedication, Susan B. Anthony, and other remarkable leaders, women were finally granted the right to vote in 1920.

I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman.

In the laws of the land, she has no rights; in government she has no voice. And in spite of another principle recognized in this Republic, namely, that 'taxation without representation is tyranny,' she is taxed without being represented.

But say some, would you expose woman to the contact of rough, rude, drinking, swearing, fighting men at the ballot box? What a humiliating confession lies in this plea for keeping woman in the background!

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?

The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.