Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.

self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Put it down in capital letters: SELF-DEVELOPMENT IS A HIGHER DUTY THAN SELF-SACRIFICE. The thing that most retards and militates against women__ self development is self-sacrifice.

We should give to our rulers, our sires and sons no rest until all our rights_ social, civil and political_ are fully accorded. How are men to know what we want unless we tell them? They have no idea that our wants, material and spiritual, are the same as theirs; that we love justice, liberty and equality as well as they do; that we believe in the principles of self-government, in individual rights, individual conscience and judgment, the fundamental ideas of the Protestant religion and republican government.

We cannot accept any code or creed that uniformly defrauds woman of all her natural rights.

One would think that potential motherhood should make women as a class as sacred as the priesthood. In common parlance we have much fine-spun theorizing on the exalted office of the mother, her immense influence in moulding the character of her sons; "the hand that rocks the cradle moves the world," etc., but in creeds and codes, in constitutions and Scriptures, in prose and verse, we do not see these lofty paeans recorded or verified in living facts. As a class, women were treated among the Jews as an inferior order of beings, just as they are to-day in all civilized nations. And now, as then, men claim to be guided by the will of God.

Our civil and criminal codes reflect at many points the spirit of the Mosaic. In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?

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.

I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.

The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation.

Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a __roken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest_ ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest __riumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine __eights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or __aint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or __riminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs__f our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts__nd alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment_ seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the __wful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a __roken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest_ ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest __riumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine __eights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or __aint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or__riminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs__f our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts__nd alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment__eat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the__wful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible.

Whatever the theories may be of woman__ dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.

Did I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women's wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation. - Seneca Falls Convention, 1848