Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stantonwas an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's suffrage movements in the United States. Stanton was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1892 until 1900...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth12 November 1815
CountryUnited States of America
The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities.
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
Women are afraid. It is unpopular to question the bible. They are creatures of tradition. They fear to question their position in the testament, as they feared to advocate suffrage fifty years ago. Now they are quarreling as to which were among the first to advocate it. You see they are not used to abuse as I am. In Albany, fifty years ago, when I went before the legislature to plead for a married woman's right to her own property, the women whom I met in society crossed the street rather than speak to me.
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.
While women were tortured, drowned and burned by the thousands, scarce one wizard to a hundred was ever condemned ... The same distinction of sex appears in our own day. One code of morals for men, another for women.
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.
The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world. I don't believe that any man ever talked with god. The bible was written by man out of his love of domination.
Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions.
The best protection any woman can have... is courage.
In her present ignorance, woman's religion, instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great principles ofright and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting, her degradation more hopeless and complete.
A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages.
religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do ...
One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to a hundred witches was ever burned or tortured.
I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.