Elizabeth C Stanton Quotes & Sayings

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

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

The most fitting monuments this nation can build are schoolhouses and homes for those who do the work of the world. It is no answer to say that they are accustomed to rags and hunger. In this world of plenty every human being has a right to food, clothes, decent shelter, and the rudiments of education. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Men as a general rule have very little reverence for trees. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals? — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

There is a great deal in a name. It often signifies much, and may involve a great principle. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of thecompass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

All the men of the Old Testament were polygamists, and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates, and condemned marriage by both precept and example. — 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

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Note the significant fact that we always hear of the "fall of man," not the fall of woman, showing that the consensus of human thought has been more unerring than masculine interpretation. Reading this narrative carefully, it is amazing that any set of men ever claimed that the dogma of the inferiority of woman is here set forth. The conduct of Eve from the beginning to the end is so superior to that of Adam. The command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge was given to the man alone before woman was formed. Genesis ii, 17. Therefore the injunction was not brought to Eve with the impressive solemnity of a Divine Voice, but whispered to her by her husband and equal. It was a serpent supernaturally endowed, a seraphim as Scott and other commentators have claimed, who talked with Eve, and whose words might reasonably seem superior to the second-hand story of her — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother. — 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

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

As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Our scholarships should be bestowed on those whose ability and earnestness in the primary department have been proved, and whose capacity for a higher education is fully shown. This is the best work women of wealth can do, and I hope in the future they will endow scholarships for their own sex instead of giving millions of dollars to institutions for boys, as they have done in the past. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the authority of man, as divinely ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of kings and Popes, as divinely ordained. — 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

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[Asked, upon the death of her fast friend and sister suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816-1902), which period of their association she had enjoyed the most:] The days when the struggle was the hardest and the fight the thickest; when the whole world was against us and we had to stand the closer to each other; when I would go to her home and help with the children and the housekeeping through the day and then we would sit up far into the night preparing our ammunition and getting ready to move on the enemy. The years since the rewards began to come have brought no enjoyment like that. — Susan B. Anthony

What an infernal set of fools those schoolmarms must be! Well, if in order to please men they wish to live on air, let them. The sooner the present generation of women dies out, the better. We have idiots enough in the world now without such women propagating any more. — 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

How anyone, in view of the protracted sufferings of the race, can invest the laws of the universe with a tender loving fatherly intelligence, watching, guiding and protecting humanity, is to me amazing. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul
our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment
our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Safety. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, When the slave leaves bondage, his first act is to name himself. — Gloria Steinem

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