No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Carrie Chapman CattRead
Parliaments have stopped laughing at woman suffrage, and politicians have begun to dodge! It is the inevitable premonition of coming victory.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the growing acceptance of women's suffrage and the recognition of its impending success.
Carrie Chapman Catt's statement highlights a significant shift in the political landscape regarding women's suffrage. While initially met with ridicule, the seriousness with which politicians now approach the issue indicates that they recognize its importance and the inevitable success of the movement, suggesting that change is on the horizon for women's rights.
In practice
During a rally for women's rights, we can use this quote to inspire the crowd about the progress being made.
No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government.
Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex.
The answer to one is the answer to all. Government by 'the people' is expedient or it is not. If it is expedient, then obviously all the people must be included.
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.
But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I'm not frightened by anyone's perception of me.
There are men in the world who derive an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as other from success.
And I fell violently on my face.
Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities - a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.
The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.
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