Benjamin Harrison Quotes

The right to vote is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in the struggle for civil rights.

Suffrage is the pivotal right.

If you protect a person's right to vote, then he'll protect himself better than you can.

The American nation, in its march onward and upward, can not publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of half its citizens by narrow statutes.

A man without a vote is in this land like a man without a hand.

The consciences of the American people will not be permitted to slumber until this great constitutional right, the equality of the suffrage, equality of opportunity, freedom of political action and political thought, shall not be the mere cold formalities of constitutional enactment as now, but a living birthright which the poorest and humblest, white or black, native born or naturalized citizen, may confidently enjoy, and which the richest and most powerful dare not deny.

The continued vitality of our Constitution and the survival of each freedom it protects depend upon the right to vote and the vibrant democracy it affords us. In short, the right to vote underlies each of our other rights.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

The right to vote is the right upon which all of our rights are leveraged - and without which none can be protected.

Elections shall be open, free and equal, and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent an un-trammeled exercise of the right of suffrage.

Give the woman the ballot and you will make her more important in the eyes of the world.

The right to vote is one of our nation's most important civil rights.

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

We do believe that freedom, the right to choose, the right to vote, respect and justice is the fundamental right of all people. All people must obtain these rights.

I've always been opposed myself to prisoners having the vote.

Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.'

We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well.

We have a legacy to uphold: the people who died so that we could have the right to vote; the people who sacrificed so that we would one day realize the dream of a black president.

If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.

This nation ... has not yet reached the point of giving all men their rights by a suffrage amendment; three-fourths of the States are not ready

All of our freedoms – All of the time.

There was a price paid for the freedom that we have. And that price was paid in blood…. Somebody paid a price for us to have access to that ballot box.

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning...We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.

Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.