Clara Zetkin Quotes

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

The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

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?

Real freedom for women is possible only through Communism.

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.

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

Woman was the first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave before the slave existed.

No longer should women be denied the right to vote, no longer should women be treated as second class citizens, no longer should women not be allowed to be a citizen at all.

All women, regardless of her economic status or racial background, have a right to vote, and no politician or regressive law should prevent her from doing so.

We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.

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.

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.

A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will he recognized as the legal equals of men.

The revolution... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Naturally I knew it was ridiculous to deprive half the people of the country of any voice in the laws they had to live under, merely on account of a trifling difference in sex, but I did not think anything I could do about it was likely to be helpful.

The great majority of their sex do not want the ballot, and that to force it upon them would not only be an injustice to women, but would lessen their influence for good.

Harmony? No! Class war! Hatred to the death for the criminal bourgeoisie!

Once women got the right to vote, the kind of relaxed about everything. It was not until after World War II that women discovered that they did not have equal opportunity in the workplace.... The result was almost a revolution.

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!

All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill.

England, the country that turns whole nations into its proletarians … seems to be the rock against which the revolutionary waves break.

I feel that the present government is not acting in accordance with the first principles of Liberalism, by refusing the right of representation to women taxpayers. I have joined no other party and I still claim to be a Liberal woman but a Liberal woman on strike

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other. Resolved, That woman is man's equal was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such. Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

You may talk about Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote. Today we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it as long as you please.