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
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.
Interpretation
The quote advocates for gender equality through political empowerment of women.
Emmeline Pankhurst emphasizes that true equality between men and women cannot be achieved without giving women political power. She argues that to have the same moral standards applied to both genders, women need to be actively involved in politics so that these standards can be legally recognized and enforced, thereby advocating for systemic change in society's views on morality and gender roles.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about women's rights at a rally.
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.
The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent.
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.
Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
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.
You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under.
Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.
There’s no need for us to be held back by the past or how things have been so far. The important thing is what seeds we are sowing now for the future.
How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.
In order to make a change, I have to exist in a traditionally homophobic space such as hip-hop. If I were to just be this queer rapper who only spoke to queer kids... I don't think I could as effectively make a change for another young, black, queer kid growing up in Texas.
The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.
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