One of the best-known of the mothers of woman suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped organize the 1848 woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, where she insisted on leaving in a demand for the vote for women — despite strong opposition, including from her own husband. Stanton worked closely with Susan B. Anthony, writing many of the speeches which Anthony traveled to deliver.

Selected Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotations

(The following is taken from several sources; one of them is the website at  https://www.thoughtco.com/elizabeth-cady-stanton-quotes-3525370)

  • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
  • Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.
  • Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens.
  • Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
  • 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.
  • Woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.
  • 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.
  • It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races.
  • Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.
  • 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.
  • Men say we are ever cruel to each other. Let us end this ignoble record and henceforth stand by womanhood. If Victoria Woodhull must be crucified, let men drive the spikes and plait the crown of thorns.
  • So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.
  • It would be ridiculous to talk of male and female atmospheres, male and female springs or rains, male and female sunshine . . . . how much more ridiculous is it in relation to mind, to soul, to thought, where there is as undeniably no such thing as sex, to talk of male and female education and of male and female schools. [written with Susan B. Anthony]
  • To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.
  • The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way.