Quotes by Elizabeth Stanton

• The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
• Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
• To live for a principle, for the triumph of some reform by which all mankind are to be lifted up to be wedded to an idea may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.
• The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.
• The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.
• The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
• The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.
• The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty.
• The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood.
• The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
• To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
• Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
• The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.
• 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.
• Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
• Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.
• It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.
• I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.
• I shall not grow conservative with age.
• I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.
• Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.
• The best protection any woman can have... is courage.
• Words cannot describe the indignation a proud woman feels for her sex in disfranchisement.
• We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?
• We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.
• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
• Woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development.
• Women of all classes are awakening to the necessity of self-support, but few are willing to do the ordinary useful work for which they are fitted.
• The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.
• To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.