Top 219 Quotes & Sayings by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women's rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments. Her demand for women's right to vote generated a controversy at the convention but quickly became a central tenet of the women's movement. She was also active in other social reform activities, especially abolitionism.

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.
Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.
The right is ours. Have it we must. Use it we will. — © Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The right is ours. Have it we must. Use it we will.
To have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rumselling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to... be longer quietly submitted to.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
I shall not grow conservative with age.
The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.
The God of justice is with us, and our word, our work - our prayer for freedom will not, cannot be in vain.
We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.
Woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development. — © Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.
I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.
The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.
We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
Words cannot describe the indignation a proud woman feels for her sex in disfranchisement.
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.
The more I think on the present condition of woman, the more am I oppressed with the reality of their degradation.
It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.
The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty.
To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.
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.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body... is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.
There would be more sense in insisting on man's limitations because he cannot be a mother than on a woman's because she can be.
The best protection any woman can have... is courage.
The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood.
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.
To live for a principle, for the triumph of some reform by which all mankind are to be lifted up to be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
Women of all classes are awakening to the necessity of self-support, but few are willing to do the ordinary useful work for which they are fitted.
Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her.
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. — © Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.
To develop our real selves, we need time alone for thought and meditation. To be always giving out and never pumping in, the well runs dry.
A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.
I think all these reverend gentlemen who insist on the word 'obey' in the marriage service should be removed for a clear violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the United States.
Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self- sovereignty.
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.
Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.
So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.
Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government. — © Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.
Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions.
Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.
The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities.
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.*
The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.
Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.
The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.
The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world. I don't believe that any man ever talked with god. The bible was written by man out of his love of domination.
To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.
A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.
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.
All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!
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