Jeannette Rankin Quotes

#1. It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.

Jeannette Rankin

#2. The most disappointing feature of working for a cause is that so few people have a philosophy of life. We used to say, in the suffrage movement, that we could trust the woman who believed in suffrage, but we could never trust the woman who just wanted to vote.

Jeannette Rankin

#3. Go! Go! Go! It makes no difference where, just so you go! go! go! Remember, at the first opportunity, go!

Jeannette Rankin

#4. War is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.

Jeannette Rankin

#5. Men are not killed because they get mad at each other. They're killed because one of them has a gun in any dispute.

Jeannette Rankin

#6. There can be no compromise with war.

Jeannette Rankin

#7. You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.

Jeannette Rankin

#8. I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won't be the last.

Jeannette Rankin

#9. Killing more people won't help matters.

Jeannette Rankin

#10. We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.

Jeannette Rankin

#11. As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.

Jeannette Rankin

#12. I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war

Jeannette Rankin

#13. What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.

Jeannette Rankin

#14. The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.

Jeannette Rankin

#15. Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.

Jeannette Rankin

#16. I worked for suffrage for years, and got it. I've worked for peace for 55 years and haven't come close.

Jeannette Rankin

#17. We'd be the safest country in the world if the world knew we didn't have a gun. Men are not killed because they get mad at each other. They're killed because one has a gun.

Jeannette Rankin

#18. Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense not to use both.

Jeannette Rankin

#19. There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.

Jeannette Rankin

#20. Establish democracy at home, based on human rights as superior to property rights ...

Jeannette Rankin

#21. If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.

Jeannette Rankin

#22. You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake

Jeannette Rankin