Emmeline Pankhurst quotes

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist and leader of the suffragette movement that fought for women's right to vote. Her bold tactics and tireless advocacy played a crucial role in advancing women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is remembered as a pioneering figure in the struggle for gender equality and social justice. Here are 24 of her quotes:

Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.

Emmeline Pankhurst

One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first. That is the whole history of politics.

Emmeline Pankhurst

If it is right for men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would be like today if men had not, since time began, fought for their freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the freedom of the children they bear.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.

Emmeline Pankhurst

My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.

Emmeline Pankhurst

We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.

Emmeline Pankhurst

We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help free the other half.

Emmeline Pankhurst

You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country. It is the only way.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Trust in God - she will provide.

Emmeline Pankhurst

The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness.

Emmeline Pankhurst

The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion.

Emmeline Pankhurst

It is perfectly evident to any logical mind that when you have got the vote, by the proper use of the vote in sufficient numbers, by combination, you can get out of any legislature whatever you want, or, if you cannot get it, you can send them about their business and choose other people who will be more attentive to your demands.

Emmeline Pankhurst

There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy. Be militant each in your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I suppose I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my temperament and my surroundings, I could scarcely have been otherwise.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I have never advised the destruction of life, but of property, yes.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation of social injustice.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Often I have heard the taunt that suffragists are women who have failed to find any normal outlet for their emotions, and are therefore soured and disappointed beings. This is probably not true of any suffragist, and it is most certainly not true of me. My home life and relations have been as nearly ideal as possible in this imperfect world.

Emmeline Pankhurst

I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting. Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I begged her to let me go along.

Emmeline Pankhurst

The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors ... bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time ... I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world ... Of course the babies are very badly protected ... These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant.

Emmeline Pankhurst