Top 140 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “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

2. “Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

3. “A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

5. “The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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6. “Social science affirms that a woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

9. “Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

10. “Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

11. “Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self- sovereignty.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

12. “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

13. “The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

14. “Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

15. “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

16. “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

17. “A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

18. “Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

19. “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

20. “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

21. “I am weary seeing our laboring classes so wretchedly housed, fed, and clothed, while thousands of dollars are wasted every year over unsightly statues. If these great man must have outdoor memorials, let them be in the form of handsome blocks of buildings for the poor.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

22. “I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

23. “When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

24. “The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

25. “Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

26. “Eve tasted the apple in the Garden of Eden in order to slake that intense thirst for knowledge that the simple pleasure of picking flowers and talking to Adam could not satisfy.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

28. “Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

29. “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

30. “Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

32. “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

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

34. “So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

35. “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

36. “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

37. “So closely interwoven have been our lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling of incompleteness – united, such strength of self-association that no ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us insurmountable.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

38. “With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

39. “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

40. “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

41. “I want to say one word to the men who are present. I fear you think the ‘new woman’ is going to wipe you off the planet, but be not afraid. All who have mothers, sisters, wives or sweethearts will be very well looked after.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

42. “Woman’s discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

43. “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

44. “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

45. “The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

46. “There is a great deal in a name. It often signifies much, and may involve a great principle.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

47. “The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race: that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

48. “A man in love will jump to pick up a glove or a bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after hour, without ever offe.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

49. “To think that all in me of which my father would have felt proper pride had I been a man, is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

50. “Men who can, when they wish to write a document, shut themselves up for days with their thoughts and their books, know little of what difficulties a woman must surmount to get off a tolerable production.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton