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Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Feminism

1815–1902 United States

← All quotes by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

11 quotes

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

Resolved, That is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

While the man is born to do whatever he can, for the woman and the negro there is no such privilege.

Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012)

The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman.

The Woman's Bible (1898)

We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess.

Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered.

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... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes.

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. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.

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. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning...We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.

The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible.

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.