Speeches

Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Address at Denver - circa May 1917
May 1, 1917
A few weeks ago, the Premier of England made a speech before the American luncheon club. It will always be considered a remarkable speech, but it contained a paragraph which I predict will pass into the world’s literature as one of the great sayings of great men. We have all observed that the sayings the world loves most to quote, are those which represent sentiments which all the world feels but no one else has been able to express. So Lloyd George happily phrased in definite fashion the feeling in […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
The Inheritance of the Woman's Movement - April 14, 1938
April 14, 1938
Many centuries ago Cicero said: "The men who does not know what happened before he was born, has the mind of a child." Since Cicero's day there has been no more important event than the Women's Movement, why it came and what it did. It was a movement alive in the days of the old Testament when, in Asia, it was a great a sin to kill a woman as to till a cow, but no greater, and, in Calcutta, to sell an unlicensed herb was a crime of precisely […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
A Call for Action - March 25, 1943
March 25, 1943
It is already known that this war has produced more problems than could possibly be settled around the peace table and, with the differences of opinion which are certain to arise, the seeds of another war are likely to be sown in the final peace as has always been the case heretofore. Action, which will provide for the elimination from the peace discussions of many of these problems, is the only certain way to reach a permanent peace. There is a difference in the attitude of men and women toward […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
A Call to Action - April 13, 1921
April 13, 1921
This impromptu speech was delivered as a substitute for one that Catt was scheduled to deliver titled "Psychologies of Political Progress." There is not an audience in this country nor in any other one in all the world where an appeal for peace does not stir the hearts of the people. There is not an audience before which a speaker may allude to international peace that does not respond. There is not anyone in all the world who is willing to say that he wants another war. There is not […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
The Outlook Today – Oct. 19, 1938
October 19, 1938
Address at the 14th anniversary dinner of the National Committee on the Cause & Cure of War. Within the last few months, a new idea has crept into the world talk about war. In the beginning, it approached so softly and silently that few of us noticed it at all. Then it suddenly pounced upon us with a rush and a roar like a whirlwind and left us startled and breathless. The new idea is the prediction that a terrific clash is coming between the dictatorships and the democracies. It […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Address at the Dinner of World Tomorrow – April 14, 1931
April 14, 1931
When the war was over and the workers in Europe were slowly finding their way homeward, I came, by accident, into a meeting where there were several young men. All had something very earnest to say and I went home, thanking God for those young men. I had seen a great vision and gained a great conviction that if there was no one else to abolish war, these young men could and would do it. There are many young men here to-night. There are quite enough of you to abolish […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
The Price of Peace – Feb. 14, 1935
February 14, 1935
Catt delivered this address at the at the Cause & Cure of War Regional Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I doubt if peace has a price, or if it has, whether it is worth the time spent in discussion of it. Any title and any speech going with it that drives a controversy into a bypath where there is no clear connection with the main road to peace is neutral and produces neutral results. Neutrality is not good for this cause. The road is not yet clear from today, where every […]
Carrie Chapman Catt
Speeches
Address at the Convention of the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches - Nov. 14, 1934
November 14, 1934
War must be abolished. Men have tried to modify war, to curtail its worst brutalities, to civilize it, but nothing of this nature has succeeded. Wars have steadily grown worse, not less so. A convention to the effect that poison gas and airplanes should not be used in war was agreed to in the Second Hague Tribunal. Both were introduced into the World War and soon every nation was striving in a hectic competition to secure a larger supply of these new war equipments than any other nation. Now it […]
Alice Stone Blackwell
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – Feb. 21, 1894
February 21, 1894
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: As we were coming along the corridors of the Capitol on our way to this hearing I overheard a gentleman who, I think, is a member of Congress, say: “We shall have to let the women vote. This is what we are coming to.” I suppose he meant that this perpetual procession of women through the halls of the Capitol will go on until their efforts are crowned with success. That gentleman was a true prophet. We will continue to come here until […]
Anna Howard Shaw
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage - Feb. 21, 1894
February 21, 1894
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: I have not been present during the whole sitting and therefore do not know what points have been brought up before this body. I wish to impress one thought which oftentimes seems to me to be overlooked; that is, the fact that woman suffrage is no longer a theory, but is a fact in many places and in many parts of the world. Woman suffrage is a fact in England and in New Zealand. The reports from New Zealand have been exceedingly fine […]