48 Quotes & Sayings By Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

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

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

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right. . Elizabeth Cady Stanton

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or 
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
 seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the 
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right. . 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

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

One would think that potential motherhood should make women as a class as sacred as the priesthood. In common parlance we have much fine-spun theorizing on the exalted office of the mother, her immense influence in moulding the character of her sons; "the hand that rocks the cradle moves the world, " etc., but in creeds and codes, in constitutions and Scriptures, in prose and verse, we do not see these lofty paeans recorded or verified in living facts. As a class, women were treated among the Jews as an inferior order of beings, just as they are to-day in all civilized nations. And now, as then, men claim to be guided by the will of God. . Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We cannot accept any code or creed that uniformly defrauds woman of all her natural rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Our civil and criminal codes reflect at many points the spirit of the Mosaic. In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He, " "His, " "Him, " we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She, " "Hers" and "Her, " are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He, " why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"? . Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We should give to our rulers, our sires and sons no rest until all our rights– social, civil and political– are fully accorded. How are men to know what we want unless we tell them? They have no idea that our wants, material and spiritual, are the same as theirs; that we love justice, liberty and equality as well as they do; that we believe in the principles of self-government, in individual rights, individual conscience and judgment, the fundamental ideas of the Protestant religion and republican government. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life. 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

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

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

So it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, in the long, weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity, to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience, each mortal stands alone. 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

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

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

Think of the inconvenience of vanishing as it were from your friends and, correspondents three times in one's natural life. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I shall not grow conservative with age. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

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. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

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? Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother. Elizabeth Cady Stanton