Elizabeth Cady Stanton > Quotes

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Woman's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The best protection any woman can have... is courage.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage, Volumes I-III

“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“There is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

“That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“I poured out the torrent of my long-standing discontent and I challenged them to do and dare anything.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897

“You're dangerous."he says.
Why?"
Because you make me believe in the impossible."
— Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction)”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

“Did I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women's wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation.

- Seneca Falls Convention, 1848”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Dress loose,take a great deal of exercise ,and be particular about your diet and sleep sound enough,the body has a great effect on the mind.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“To-day the woman is Mrs. Richard Roe, to-morrow Mrs. John Doe, and again Mrs. James Smith according as she changes masters, and she has so little self-respect that she does not see the insult of the custom.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

“How long will the heathens rage?”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women’s self development is self-sacrifice.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe--the open sesame to every soul.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Solitude of Self

“Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

“To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes

AND

The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.

AND

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, History of Women Suffrage