10 empowering Millicent Fawcett quotes
Today, Millicent Fawcett once again stands her ground among men like she did decades before.
Thanks to a relentless, determined campaign led by activist Caroline Criado Perez and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, a statue dedicated to Fawcett now stands in Parliament Square, next to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandi. It is the first female statue to join the hallowed spot.
While everyone's heard of the Pankhursts, less will be familiar with Fawcett which is strange given how tirelessly she peacefully fought for the women's vote. She was just 19 when she first launched petitions for the women's suffrage - too young even to sign it herself. Now 100 years after (some) women were first granted the right to vote, she has finally been memoralised. Here, we remember her legacy through 10 of her greatest quotes.
1. "Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied."
2. "No circumstance would prevent over-population so effectually as a general raising of the customary standard of comfort among the poorer classes. If they had accustomed themselves to a more comfortable style of living, they would use every effort not again to sink below it."
3. “However benevolent men may be in their intentions, they cannot know what women want and what suits the necessities of women's lives as well as women know these things themselves.”
4. "I can never feel that setting fire to houses and churches and litter boxes and destroying valuable pictures really helps to convince people that women ought to be enfranchised."
5. "What draws men and women together is stronger than the brutality and tyranny which drive them apart."
6. "I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government."
7. "I am a liberal because liberalism seems to mean faith in the people, confidence that they will manage their own affairs far better than those affairs are likely to be managed by others."
8. “There are many excuses for the person who made the mistake of confounding money and wealth. Like many others, they took the sign for the thing signified.”
9. "A large part of the present anxiety to improve the education of girls and women is also due to the conviction that the political disabilities of women will not be maintained."
10. "I can honestly say that if I was told at this moment that I was dying, not my first, not my second, but certainly my third thought would be that I should never see Italy again."
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