Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes

Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered.

Susan had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity.

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe — the open sesame to every soul.

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.

When the awful time of reckoning comes, and the Jehovah God appears to demand why his command has been disobeyed, Adam endeavors to shield himself behind the gentle being he has declared to be so dear. ‘The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me and I did eat,’ he whines — trying to shield himself at his wife's expense! Again we are amazed that upon such a story men have built up a theory of their superiority!

"You're dangerous."he says.
Why?"
Because you make me believe in the impossible." — Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction)

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

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?

No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life.

The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation.

"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"?"

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

In defense of the right to...marry whom we please -- we might quote some of the basic principles of our government [and] suggest that in some things individual rights to tastes should control....If a good man from Maryland sees fit to marry a disenfranchised woman from New York, there should be no legal impediments to the union.

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.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her... He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective to the franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice...
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise , thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, her has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.