Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

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.*

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 woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.

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?

The best protection any woman can have... is courage.

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.

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.

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.

The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.

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

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.

I shall not grow conservative with age.

The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.

Social science affirms that a woman's place in society marks the level of civilization.

There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self.

Nature never repeats herself and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.