Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leader of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. during the mid-to-late-1800s. 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. These Elizabeth Cady Stanton quotes will motivate you.
Best 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
- “The best protection any woman can have… is courage.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.” ~ 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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “I decline to accept Hebrew mythology as a guide to twentieth-century science.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“It is the inalienable right of all to be happy.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “They tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: ‘You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.'” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Our ‘pathway’ is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Every truth we see is one to give to the world, not to keep to ourselves alone.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.” ~ 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
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.” ~ 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
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “While women were tortured, drowned and burned by the thousands, scarce one wizard to a hundred was ever condemned … The same distinction of sex appears in our own day. One code of morals for men, another for women.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “The bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man’s bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire…Here is the bible position of woman briefly summed up.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Words cannot describe the indignation a proud woman feels for her sex in disfranchisement.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “God, in His wisdom, has so linked the whole human family together that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt throughout its length.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Oh, the shortcomings and inconsistency of the average human being, especially when this human being is a man trying to manage women’s affairs!” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self- sovereignty.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “In her present ignorance, woman’s religion, instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great principles ofright and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting, her degradation more hopeless and complete.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“Men as a general rule have very little reverence for trees.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Women are afraid. It is unpopular to question the bible. They are creatures of tradition. They fear to question their position in the testament, as they feared to advocate suffrage fifty years ago. Now they are quarreling as to which were among the first to advocate it. You see they are not used to abuse as I am. In Albany, fifty years ago, when I went before the legislature to plead for a married woman’s right to her own property, the women whom I met in society crossed the street rather than speak to me.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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?” ~ 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
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“The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “[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.” ~ 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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “How can any woman believe that a loving and merciful God would, in one breath, command Eve to multiply and replenish the earth, and in the next, pronounce a curse upon her maternity? I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or gave out the laws about women which he is accused of doing.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “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.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “My religious superstition gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more happy day by day.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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“I shall not grow conservative with age.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “I often saw weary little women coming to the table after most exhausting labors, and large, bumptious husbands spreading out their hands and thanking the Lord for the meals that the dear women had prepared, as if the whole came down like manna from heaven. So I preached a sermon in the blessing I gave. You will notice that it has three heresies in it: Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food. For humanity’s sake, Amen.” ~ 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
