I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote.
Emmeline PankhurstRead
The English prison system is altogether mediaeval and outworn. In some of its details, the system has improved since they began to send the Suffragettes to Holloway. I may say that we, by our public denunciation of the system, have forced these slight improvements.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The prison system is outdated and has only slightly improved due to public criticism.
Emmeline Pankhurst critiques the English prison system as being outdated and medieval in nature. She asserts that even though there have been minor improvements since the incarceration of the Suffragettes, these changes have largely come about due to public pressure and condemnation of the existing practices, highlighting the need for systemic reform based on advocacy and activism.
Themes
PrisonSystemChangeAdvocacyReformSuffragettes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on prison reform, I quoted Emmeline Pankhurst to emphasize the need for change in our justice system.
More from Emmeline Pankhurst
All quotes →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 PankhurstRead
Solitary confinement is too terrible a punishment to inflict on any human being, no matter what his crime. Hardened criminals in the men's prisons, it is said, often beg for the lash instead.
Emmeline PankhurstRead
Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
Emmeline PankhurstRead
Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.
Emmeline PankhurstRead
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 PankhurstRead
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