270 Quotes by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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.

The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.

I have been into many of the ancient cathedrals – grand, wonderful, mysterious. But I always leave them with a feeling of indignation because of the generations of human beings who have struggled in poverty to build these altars to the unknown god.

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”?

Modesty and taste are questions of latitude and education; the more people know, – the more their ideas are expanded by travel, experience, and observation, – the less easily they are shocked. The narrowness and bigotry of women are the result of their circumscribed sphere of thought and action.

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

Our ‘pathway’ is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.

The canon and civil law; church and state; priests and legislators; all political parties and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man, an inferior being, subject to man. Creeds, codes, Scriptures and statutes, are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies and customs of society, church ordinances and discipline all grow out of this idea.