Jeannette Rankin Quotes

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

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

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

If they are going to have war, they ought to take the old men and leave the young to propagate the race.

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

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

We have to get it into our heads once and for all that we cannot settle disputes by eliminating human beings.

- Jeannette Rankin

We reasoned that the men would find it difficult to vote against the women in their home states when a woman was sitting with them making laws.

- Jeannette Rankin

Bribes are not offered in such a way that you can prove them, and in order to prove that I didn't accept a bribe, I had to run.

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

The most important accomplishment, I believe, was my voting against the First World War.

- Jeannette Rankin

It will be hard to convince people that their welfare is safe in the hands of a federal government when they feel themselves the victims of unjust sectional discrimination.

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute.

- Jeannette Rankin

It is important for people to be able to read all sides of every question; for a feeling of national unity does not come from one-sided or inadequate information, but from a sense of freedom impartially secured and of opportunity equalized by a just government.

- Jeannette Rankin

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

How can people in other countries who are trying to grasp our plan of democracy avoid stumbling over our logic when we deny the first steps in democracy to our women?

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

Might it not be that a great force that has always been thinking in terms of human needs, and that always will think in terms of human needs, has not been mobilized? Is it not possible that the women of the country have something of value to give the nation at this time?

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin

I have nothing left but my integrity.

- Jeannette Rankin

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

- Jeannette Rankin