Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.

The best protection any woman can have... is courage.

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.

The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty.

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.

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.

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.

I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.

So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.

Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.

self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.

Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.

Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.

The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.

The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.

Men as a general rule have very little reverence for trees.

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.

You who have read the history of nations, from Moses down to our last election, where have you ever seen one class looking after the interests of another?

[On women's role in the home:] Every wife, mother and housekeeper feels at present that there is some screw loose in the household situation.

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

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

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.

Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.

The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities.

Woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.

Social science affirms that a woman's place in society marks the level of civilization.

A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.

Religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do.

To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens.

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self- dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.

One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to a hundred witches was ever burned or tortured.

Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.

I view it as one of the greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy superstitions, and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to poison all their joy in life.

Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.

Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.

It is the inalienable right of all to be happy.

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all laws into contempt.

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.

I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.

Every truth we see is one to give to the world, not to keep to ourselves alone.

What will we and our daughters suffer if these degraded black men are allowed to have the rights that would make them even worse than our Saxon fathers?

All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!

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.

How long will the heathens rage?