Carrie Chapman Catt Quotes

#1. 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.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#2. The belief that we are defending the highest good of the mothers of our race and the ultimate welfare of society makes every sacrifice seem trivial, every duty a pleasure.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#3. The struggle for the vote was an effort to bring men to feel less superior and women to feel less inferior.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#4. The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#5. What is prejudice? An opinion, which is not based upon reason; a judgment, without having heard the argument; a feeling, without being able to trace from whence it came.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#6. 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.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#7. In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#8. More powerful than kings and armies is an idea whose time has come to move.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#9. Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#10. The woman suffrage movement in the United States was a movement of the spirit of the Revolution which was striving to hold the nation to the ideals which won independence.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#11. The vote has been costly. Prize it ... understand what it means and what it can do for your country.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#12. If we learn from the experience, there is no failure, only delayed victory.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#13. There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#14. White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#15. To the wrongs that need resistance,
To the right that needs assistance,
To the future in the distance,
Give yourselves.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#16. The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#17. When a just cause reaches its flood-tide ... whatever stands in its way must fall before its overwhelming force.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#18. 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.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#19. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#20. The system which admits the unworthy to the vote provided they are men, and shuts out the worthy provided they are women, is so unjust and illogical that its perpetuation is a sad reflection upon American thinking.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#21. Living for a high purpose is as honorable as dying for it.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#22. Do not stand in the way of the next step in human progress. No one living who reads the signs of the times but realizes that woman suffrage must come. We are working for the ballot as a matter of justice and as a step for human betterment.

Carrie Chapman Catt

#23. 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.

Carrie Chapman Catt