Skip to main content

Love & Passion Quote by Cynthia Payne

"Galvanised into action by the second trial, I was determined to change Britain's archaic sex laws"

About this Quote

“Galvanised into action” is a slyly heroic phrase for a woman the tabloids loved to package as a punchline. Cynthia Payne, a famously unflappable madam, recasts legal persecution as political ignition: not shame, not retreat, but momentum. The key word is “second.” One trial can be misfortune; a second is the state making a habit of you. Payne signals escalation and implies a kind of bureaucratic obsession, as if the system couldn’t tolerate her particular blend of consensual vice and public visibility.

The line also performs a neat reversal of who’s archaic. By calling Britain’s sex laws “archaic,” she frames the establishment as the true anachronism, clinging to moral codes that no longer match lived reality. It’s a cultural critique disguised as autobiography: her private world colliding with a public order that polices sex less to protect people than to enforce respectability. “Determined” carries the grit of someone who’s been sentenced not just by courts but by a national appetite for scandal.

Context matters: late-20th-century Britain was loosening in practice while remaining punitive on paper, especially when sex crossed into commerce and class embarrassment. Payne’s notoriety let her translate personal consequences into a broader argument about hypocrisy. The subtext is pragmatic, even modern: if consenting adults are going to do this anyway, why should the law pretend it can stop them - except to punish the visible, the female, and the inconvenient?

Quote Details

TopicHuman Rights
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Payne, Cynthia. (2026, January 15). Galvanised into action by the second trial, I was determined to change Britain's archaic sex laws. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/galvanised-into-action-by-the-second-trial-i-was-143459/

Chicago Style
Payne, Cynthia. "Galvanised into action by the second trial, I was determined to change Britain's archaic sex laws." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/galvanised-into-action-by-the-second-trial-i-was-143459/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Galvanised into action by the second trial, I was determined to change Britain's archaic sex laws." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/galvanised-into-action-by-the-second-trial-i-was-143459/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Cynthia Add to List
Cynthia Payne on archaic British sex laws
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

United Kingdom Flag

Cynthia Payne (December 24, 1932 - September 15, 2015) was a Celebrity from United Kingdom.

13 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes