This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism. Gloria Steinem
The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation of others. ibid.
Can man be free if woman be a slave?
Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air
To the corruption of a closed grave?
Can they whose mates are beasts condemned to bear
Scorn heavier far than toil or anguish dare
To trample their oppressors? In their home,
Among their babes, thou knowst a curse would wear
The shape of woman – hoary crime would come
Behind and Fraud rebuild Religion’s tottering dome. Percy Bysshe Shelley
Woman’s degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Womanstock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I’ll come and rap at the ballot box. Lydia Maria Child, 1802-80, American abolitionist & suffragist
We were basing our request for the vote on inequalities and injustices and lack of opportunity. Dame Margery Corbett Ashby, interview BBC 1972
Why is a woman to be treated differently? Woman suffrage will succeed, despite this miserable guerrilla opposition. Victoria Claflin Woodhull
We are here to claim our right as women, not only to be free, but to fight for freedom. That it is our right as well as our duty. Christabel Pankhurst
And women still weren’t allowed to vote. On the morning of 13th October 1905 Christabel Pankhurst was still respectable. She was a well-dressed middle-class law student. But she was on her way to break just about every taboo she could think of. She was walking along here with her new friend Annie Kenney – a working-class mill-girl known as the Blue-Eyed Beggar. But what they were planning was truly shocking. Because they were on their way to a huge political meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. And they were determined at all costs to be arrested. The meeting was a Liberal rally attended by the MPs Sir Edward Gray and Winston Churchill. Christabel and Annie jumped up on to their seats and shouted, ‘Will the Liberals give women the vote?’ They refused to answer. So the women unfurled a banner emblazoned with the words, Votes for Women! Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, BBC 2009
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. ibid.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. ibid.
The pure animal spirits which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes, or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and sharpening the understanding before it gains proportional strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterises the female mind and I fear will characterise it whilst women remain the slaves of power. ibid.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind. ibid.
From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies proceed. ibid.
The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. Susan B Anthony
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me. Zora Neale Hurston
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
In reaction against the age-old slogan ‘woman is the weaker vessel’, or the still more offensive ‘woman is a divine creature’ we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that ‘a woman is as good as a man’, without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz ... that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person. Dorothy L Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless reforms that changed little. Dostoyevsky once said: ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination. Nelson Mandela
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. Martin Luther King
Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance. Richard Dawkins
If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society. Michael Moore
We are witnessing an alarming resurgence of this phenomena in news forms and manifestations. Anti-Semitism has flourished even in communities where Jews have never lived. And it has been a harbinger of discrimination against others. Kofi Annan, address United Nations anti-Semitism conference
I am now positively against discrimination against women and positively in favour of positive discrimination in their favour. Discriminating discrimination of course. Yes, Minister s3e1: Equal Opportunities, BBC 1982
They remained second class citizens ... The injustice of sexual discrimination. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power II, BBC 2015
The first type is called taste-based discrimination … In the second type, known as information-based discrimination, one person believes that another type of person has poor skills, and acts accordingly. Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
It didn’t worry a bit. Didn’t worry me because I was suffering from the discrimination and the humiliation of discrimination. Sylvia Woods, auto worker, interview Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists, 1983
In June 1979 acclaimed author James Baldwin commits to a complex endeavour: tell his story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends: Medgar Evars, Martin Luther King junior, Malcolm X. Baldwin never got past this thirty pages of notes entitled: Remember this House. I Am Not Your Negro, 2016
1968 when he [MLK] was murdered; Medgar was murdered in the summer of 1963, Malcolm was murdered in 1965. ibid.
Photographs of 15-year-old Dorothy Counts being reviled and spat upon by the mob as she was making her way to school in Charlotte, North Carolina … It filled me with both hatred and pity. ibid.
Heroes were white … I despised and feared those heroes … What this does to the subjugated is destroy his sense of reality. ibid.
White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren’t. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. ibid.