Top 140 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Men can never understand the fear of everlasting punishment that fills the souls of women and children. The orthodox religion, as drawn from the Bible and expounded by the church, is enough to drive the most imaginative and sensitive natures to despair and death.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

52. “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

53. “No privileged order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims...”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

54. “What will we and our daughters suffer if these degraded black men are allowed to have the rights that would make them even worse than our Saxon fathers?”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

55. “The voice of woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

56. “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

57. “Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

58. “Did I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women’s wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation. – Seneca Falls Convention, 1848.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

59. “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

60. “The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

61. “When women can support themselves, have entry to all the trades and professions, with a house of their own over their heads and a bank account, they will own their bodies and be dictators in the social realm.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

62. “The queens in history compare favorably with the kings.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

63. “To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom, as all alike have taught her inferiority and subjection.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

64. “I know of no other book that so fully teaches the subjection and degradation of women.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

65. “Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

66. “A mind always in contact with children and servants, whose aspirations and ambitions rise no higher than the roof that shelters it, is necessarily dwarfed in its proportions.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

67. “Only those who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague, undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

68. “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

69. “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

70. “Every truth we see is one to give to the world, not to keep to ourselves alone.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

71. “I have met few men in my life, worth repeating eight times.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

72. “The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

73. “The great fault of mankind is that it will not think.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

74. “To-day the woman is Mrs. Richard Roe, to-morrow Mrs. John Doe, and again Mrs. James Smith according as she changes masters, and she has so little self-respect that she does not see the insult of the custom.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

75. “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

76. “I shall not grow conservative with age.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

77. “Two pure souls fused into one by an impassioned love-friends, counselors-a mutual support and inspiration to each other amid life’s struggles, must know the highest human happiness;-this is marriage; and this is the only cornerstone of an enduring home.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

78. “To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

80. “You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

81. “All who live to a good old age have a genius for sleep.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

82. “We cannot accept any code or creed that uniformly defrauds woman of all her natural rights.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

83. “Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions – requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs – there was no attention given to preparation for this office.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

84. “Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

85. “I see by the papers that you have once more stirred that pool of intellectual stagnation, the educational convention.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

86. “Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

87. “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

88. “The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. In the hours of our keenest sufferings all are thrown wholly on themselves for consolation.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

89. “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

90. “Let us remember that all reforms are interdependent, and that whatever is done to establish one principle on a solid base, strengthens all.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

91. “How long will the heathens rage?”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

92. “The desire to please those we admire and respect often cripples conscience.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

93. “It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

94. “We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

96. “The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

97. “I poured out the torrent of my long-standing discontent and I challenged them to do and dare anything.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

98. “It is in vain to look for the elevation of woman so long as she is degraded in marriage.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

99. “To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.”

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

100. “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