Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.

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 strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body... is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.

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.

We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

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?

I view it as one of the greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy superstitions, and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to poison all their joy in life.

Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.

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.

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.

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.

Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.

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.

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

When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.

American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!

I can truly say, after an experience of seventy years, that all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed. . . . The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.

To develop our real selves, we need time alone for thought and meditation. To be always giving out and never pumping in, the well runs dry.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

I am weary seeing our laboring classes so wretchedly housed, fed, and clothed, while thousands of dollars are wasted every year over unsightly statues. If these great man must have outdoor memorials, let them be in the form of handsome blocks of buildings for the poor