The essence of a democracy is a free electorate. — Arlen Specter
This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies. — Lyndon B. Johnson
Popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men. — Camille Desmoulins
No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws. — Thaddeus Stevens
The rights of democracy are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people. — Olof Palme
There is no power in the world like that of women ... this most potent constituency we seek to represent, and for their suffrages we sue. — Louisa Lawson
The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress. — Charles Fourier
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility. — Olympe de Gouges
It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom. — Lucy Burns
Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. — Naomi Klein
All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection. — James K. Polk
Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition. — Mercy Otis Warren
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none — Thomas Jefferson
True Democracy makes no enquiry about the color of the skin, or the place of nativity. Wherever it sees a man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights — Salmon P. Chase
Suffrage Quotes
Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts. — Anna Quindlen
I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! — Sojourner Truth
I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved. — George Bernard Shaw
I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon. (on women's suffrage) — Susan B. Anthony
Why is a woman to be treated differently? Woman suffrage will succeed, despite this miserable guerilla opposition. — Victoria Woodhull
A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire. — Vilfredo Pareto
... a large portion of those who demand woman suffrage are persons who have not been trained to reason, and are chiefly guided by their generous sensibilities. — Catharine Beecher
Women’s suffrage is about feminism, but feminism is about fairness. — Meghan Markle
When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country. — Noah Webster
Woman Suffrage Quotes
Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Do not stand in the way of the next step in human progress. No one living who reads the signs of the times but realizes that woman suffrage must come. We are working for the ballot as a matter of justice and as a step for human betterment. — Carrie Chapman Catt
... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold. — Catharine Beecher
Believe you deserve it and the universe will serve it.
The most disappointing feature of working for a cause is that so few people have a philosophy of life. We used to say, in the suffrage movement, that we could trust the woman who believed in suffrage, but we could never trust the woman who just wanted to vote. — Jeannette Rankin
The first organised opposition by women to women's suffrage in England dates from 1889, when a number of ladies led by Mrs Ward appealed against the proposed extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women. — Millicent Fawcett
As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy. — Frances Harper
Everything in the universe is whithin you. Ask all from yourself.
All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. — Lucy Stone
Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. — Susan B. Anthony
Just as the world war is no white man's war, but every man's war, so is the struggle for woman suffrage no white woman's struggle, but every woman's struggle. — Carrie Chapman Catt
The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased. — Ida B. Wells
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. — Nelson Mandela
I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. - is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation. — Mark Steyn
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. — Clara Zetkin
Universal suffrage is the government of a house by its nursery. — Otto von Bismarck
Universal suffrage is counter-revolution. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Once I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers; now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy and impartial justice. — Salmon P. Chase
A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested. — Edmund Barton
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.' — Ernestine Rose
The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage. — C. L. R. James
A declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed! ... Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the end of the people or the feminine, works in favor of universal suffrage, i.e. the domination of the inferior men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light and the bar of judgment. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Everyone says Francois Mitterrand had huge charisma. But before he was president they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic and say he knew nothing about the economy until the day he was elected. It's called universal suffrage. When you're elected, you become the person that embodies France. — Francois Hollande
Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right. — Rutherford B. Hayes
Proof that they do not understand the republic is that in their fine promises for universal suffrage, they forgot women. — Delphine de Girardin
In fact, the gravest obstacle to the restoration of civilization in North America is universal suffrage. Letting everybody vote makes no sense. Obviously they are no good at it. The whole idea smacks of the fumble-witted idealism of a high-school Marxist society. — Fred Reed
Universal manhood suffrage, by establishing an aristocracy of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more absolute and cruel despotism than monarchy; in that, woman finds a political master in her father, husband, brother, son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above education, and the son above the mother who bore him. — Susan B. Anthony
Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. — May Wright Sewall
In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage - often on religious grounds. — Gloria Steinem
It's been a long time since universal suffrage, and I'm sick of the old white men running the show. — Cate Blanchett
Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure. — H. L. Mencken
The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. — Emma Goldman
I need [Beijing's] trust in order to develop universal suffrage. The more suspicions being expressed, the more difficulty we'll have in moving towards the final destination. — Donald Tsang
It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please. — Charles Caleb Colton
Meiklejohn's position is that free speech in a democracy is not an absolute flowing from the boundless source of some presumed 'natural right.' It is a practical necessity of 'self-government by universal suffrage,' for if the citizens are not permitted to argue out the issues of government, how can they be what they must be in a democracy - the rulers as well as the ruled? — Max Lerner
Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail. — Albert J. Nock
The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. — Barbara Kingsolver
The socialist parties of all countries are duty bound to fight energetically for the implementation of universal women's suffrage which is to be vigorously advocated both by agitation and by parliamentary means. 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. — Clara Zetkin
Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters' roll in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony. — Nelson Mandela
In Conclusion
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