Marie Colvin, Eulogy for Fallen War Correspondents, 2010
Arthur Edwards – WPA Pool/Getty ImagesMarie Colvin
Marie Colvin was a legendary war correspondent who dedicated her life to showing people the bloodiness and hopelessness that come with state-sponsored violence. She herself had lost sight in her eye following a grenade attack in Sri Lanka in 2001. Colvin also lost many dear friends and colleagues.
In 2010, she gave a speech at a memorial service honoring journalists who had sacrificed their lives. Two years later, she was murdered while reporting on the civil war in Syria.
Best quote:
“Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.”
Nellie McClung, “Should Men Vote?,” 1914
National Archives of Canada/C.Jessop/Wikimedia CommonsNellie McClung
Nellie McClung, a vocal suffragette in Canada, turned men’s arguments against suffrage on their head when she noted that, with that sort of logic, men probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote, either.
Best quote:
“Oh, no, man is made for something higher and better than voting…The trouble is that if men start to vote, they will vote too much. Politics unsettle men and unsettled men means unsettled bills, broken furniture, broken vows, and divorce. Men’s place is on the farm….if men were to get the vote, who knows what would happen? It’s hard enough to keep them home now!”
