Elizabeth Cady Stanton quotes

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American suffragist, social activist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. One of the chief organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention, she played a crucial role in advocating for women's suffrage and equality. She remains a pioneering voice in the history of women’s rights. Here are 66 of her quotes:

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Resolved, That is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles's time, a Puritan; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a Reformer.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Elizabeth Cady Stanton