Joseph Cook Quotes

The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights

The young intellectuals are all chanting, "Revolution, Revolution," but I say the revolution will have to start in our homes, by achieving equal rights for women.

Women had always fought for men, and for their children. Now they were ready to fight for their own human rights. Our militant movement was established.

I have known nothing the last thirty years save the struggle for human rights on this continent. If it had been a class of men whowere disfranchised and denied their legal rights, I believe I should have devoted my life precisely as I have done in behalf of my own sex.

If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled.

Women have the same privileges and opportunities as men, given the New Testament. Relegating women to second-class citizenship was abolished when Jesus died on the cross.

Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination.

If you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.

Old ideas die hard. We've had thousands of years of women having almost no rights. Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn't even there yet. And it's going to take a long time to change these attitudes.

I grew up so thoroughly imbued with women's rights that it was the most important question of my life from a very early day.

Feminism is a revolutionary movement which is different from the class struggle movement, the proletarian movement, but which is a movement which must be leftist. By that I mean at the extreme left, a movement working to overthrow the whole society.

I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring, I will step into the pool.

There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.

Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.

If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it.

Feminists want to be treated as equals, but at the same time they want special treatment.

... being a feminist means that you believe in civil rights and social justice.

Feminism is one way of attacking society as it now exists.

We don't have a clear path forward, and that's been the case for feminism since the 18th century, when the idea of the rights of women actually began.

World War II put feminism on hold for a long time; the men went away to fight, a lot of women in those years got jobs both in teaching and in factories - at all social levels - which they enjoyed very much. A lot of them were quite happy during the war.

...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but ratherintellectual biologists and psychologists.

I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.

Feminism isn't called the longest revolution for nothing.

I'm not a total feminist, but I believe in rights for females.

Sisters, I ain't clear what you be after. If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?