Inspiring Suffrage Quotes

"The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future”

Abigail Scott Duniway, suffragist  1834-1915

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

Harriet Tubman

”Life is a hard battle anyway. If we caught and sing a little as we fight the  good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light be determined by the darkness around me.”

Soujourner Truth

"The best protection a woman can have…is courage."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less."

Susan B. Anthony

“While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.”

Mary Church Terrell

“I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.”

Sarah Moore Grimke

“There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.”

Alice Paul

"People say, what is the sense of our small effort?  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do."

Dorothy Day

“Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege.”

Lucretia Mott

“If Congress refuses to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left to pursue.  What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?”

Victoria Claflin Woodhull

“I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction.  Most reforms, most problems are complicated.  But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.”

Alice Paul

“Woman is learning for herself that not self-sacrifice, but self-development, is her first duty in life; and this, not primarily for the sake of others but that she may become fully herself.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage

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

Susan B. Anthony

“Women suffrage is going to prevail…it is not merely because women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but if we be true Americans, we do not resist.  I come here to fight with you…and to congratulate you that there is a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant.”

President Woodrow Wilson

"We have made partners of the women in this war (World War I)…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not a partnership of privilege and right?”

President Woodrow Wilson

“I deem it one of the greatest honors of my life that this great event, so stoutly fought for, for so many years, should have occurred during this period of my administration.”

President Woodrow Wilson