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Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women’s self development is self-sacrifice.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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I often saw weary little women coming to the table after most exhausting labors, and large, bumptious husbands spreading out their hands and thanking the Lord for the meals that the dear women had prepared, as if the whole came down like manna from heaven. So I preached a sermon in the blessing I gave. You will notice that it has three heresies in it: Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food. For humanity's sake, Amen.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Let us remember that all reforms are interdependent, and that whatever is done to establish one principle on a solid base, strengthens all.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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As women are taking an active part in pressing on the consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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The best protection any woman can have... is courage.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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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.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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... the hey-day of a woman's life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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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 Stanton
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Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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If all those magnificent cathedrals with their valuable lands in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were taxed as they should be, the taxes of women who hold property would be proportionately lightened....I cannot see any good reason why wealthy churches and a certain amount of property of the clergy should be exempt from taxation, while every poor widow in the land, struggling to feed, clothe, and educate a family of children, must be taxed on the narrow lot and humble home.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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On women's role in the home. Every wife, mother and housekeeper feels at present that there is some screw loose in the household situation.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe -the open sesame to every soul.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Dr. Oaks made the remark that, according to the best estimate he could make, there were four hundred murders annually produced by abortion in that county alone....There must be a remedy for such a crying evil as this.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a majority; and according to our republican theory, are the rightful rulers of the nation.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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It is the inalienable right of all to be happy.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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I think all these reverend gentlemen who insist on the word 'obey' in the marriage service should be removed for a clear violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the United States.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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So closely interwoven have been our lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling of incompleteness--united, such strength of self-association that no ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us insurmountable.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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A man in love will jump to pick up a glove or a bouquet for a silly girl of sixteen, whilst at home he will permit his aged mother to carry pails of water and armfuls of wood, or his wife to lug a twenty-pound baby, hour after hour, without ever offer.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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It is through the perversion of the religious element in woman, playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come, that she and the children she has trained have been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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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.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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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.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
