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.
Elizabeth Cady StantonRead
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.
Interpretation
Women should view themselves as whole individuals rather than being defined by their relationships or roles.
This quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton emphasizes the importance of women recognizing their intrinsic value and identity. By urging girls to see themselves as nouns, she advocates for a perspective where they are seen as complete persons with their own strengths and potential, rather than simply modifiers in relation to others, which often diminishes their self-worth and agency.
In practice
In a speech at a women's rights rally.
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 need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
It's more important to represent women as complete, whole, complicated humans as opposed to saintly, perfect women. The point isn't that they have to be good people. It's that they have to be people.
Investing in women and girls may once have been considered a radical notion or even a waste of resources, but in most places in the world today, women and girls are increasingly recognized as a critical link to greater prosperity, political stability, better health and public policy.
In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.
When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.
There is nothing of greater importance to the well-being of society at large - of man as well as woman - than the true proper position of woman.
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