Cady Quotes

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The queens in history compare favorably with the kings. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom, as all alike have taught her inferiority and subjection. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Cady, I'm serious. We should NOT always do what we're afraid to do,' says Mirren heatedly. 'We never should.'

'Why not?'

'You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified, there's probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.'

'So what's your philosophy, then?' Johnny asks her. 'Be a giant chickenhead?'

'Yes,' says Mirren. 'That and the kindness thing I said before. ~ E. Lockhart

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

With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Japanese do not fear God. They only fear bombs. ~ Jerome Cady

Dress loose,take a great deal of exercise ,and be particular about your diet and sleep sound enough,the body has a great effect on the mind. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

At 24, my head was as shiny as a cue ball on a billiard table. I naturally thought this meant curtains. Actually, I found it helped. When I was too young to play real character parts, they mistook me for older because of the bald noggin. I got juicy roles right from the start. ~ Frank Cady

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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread ... ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

All men & women are created equal ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I had been invited to speak after the lunch. But I did not go to the table until the feast ended, as I never like to eat or talk before speaking. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Many social justice or social activist movements have been rooted in a position. A position is usually against something. Any position will call up its opposition. If I say up, it generates down. If I say right, it really creates left. If I say good, it creates bad. So a position creates its opposition. A stand is something quite distinct from that.

There are synonyms for "stand" such as "declaration" or "commitment," but let me talk for just a few moments about the power of a stand. A stand comes from the heart, from the soul. A stand is always life affirming. A stand is always trustworthy. A stand is natural to who you are. When we use the phrase "take a stand" I'm really inviting you to un-cover, or "unconceal," or recognize, or affirm, or claim the stand that you already are.

Stand-takers are the people who actually change the course of history and are the source of causing an idea's time to come. Mahatma Gandhi was a stand-taker. He took a stand so powerful that it mobilized millions of people in a way that the completely unpredictable outcome of the British walking out of India did happen. And India became an independent nation. The stand that he took… or the stand that Martin Luther King, Jr. took or the stand that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took for women's rights - those stands changed our lives today. The changes that have taken place in history as a result of the stand-takers are permanent changes, not temporary changes. The ~ Lynne Twist

Imagine, if you will, a great reservoir, out of which lead innumerable small rivulets or channels. At its farther end each channel opens out into a small fountain. This fountain is not only being continually filled and replenished from the reservoir but is itself a radiating center whence it gives out in all directions that which it receives, so that all who come within its radius are refreshed and blessed. 41. This is our relation with God. Each one of us is a radiating center. Each one, no matter how small or ignorant, is the little fountain at the far end of a channel, the other end of which leads out from all there is in God. This fountain represents the individuality, as separate from the great reservoir--God--and yet as one with Him, and without Him we are nothing. ~ H. Emilie Cady

It's sick that I experienced a once in a lifetime love - still as strong as the day it happened - & have been punished every single day since. ~ Cady Groves

I never saw so intelligent a man have so much trouble in getting out a connected sentence. Ever since I have known him, he has desired to have a long talk with me, but he never gets started; and yet each time he meets me with renewed zest for the outpouring. It is like getting congealed liquid from a demijohn; you know the jug is large and full, but getting the contents out is the problem. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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"? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.* ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the authority of man, as divinely ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of kings and Popes, as divinely ordained. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Two pure souls fused into one by an impassioned love-friends, counselors-a mutual support and inspiration to each other amid life's struggles, must know the highest human happiness;-this is marriage; and this is the only cornerstone of an enduring home. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

[Asked, upon the death of her fast friend and sister suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816-1902), which period of their association she had enjoyed the most:] The days when the struggle was the hardest and the fight the thickest; when the whole world was against us and we had to stand the closer to each other; when I would go to her home and help with the children and the housekeeping through the day and then we would sit up far into the night preparing our ammunition and getting ready to move on the enemy. The years since the rewards began to come have brought no enjoyment like that. ~ Susan B. Anthony

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

The masculine and feminine elements, exactly equal and balancing each other, are as essential to the maintenance of the equilibrium of the universe as positive and negative electricity, the centripetal and centrifugal forces, the laws of attraction which bind together all we know of this planet whereon we dwell and of the system in which we revolve. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his sexand take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. ~ Susan B. Anthony

The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I was on the verge of quitting ... The Acting Center actually saved me as an actor. ~ Cady McClain

No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We have come to a place now where our search for Truth must no longer be for the rewards; it must no longer be our seeking a creed to follow, but it must be our living a life. ~ H. Emilie Cady

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

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

I see by the papers that you have once more stirred that pool of intellectual stagnation, the educational convention. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We seem to be pariahs alike in the visible and the invisible world, with no foothold anywhere, though by every principle of government and religion we should have an equal place on this planet. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Though woman needs the protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of the metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind! ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Well, another female child is born into the world! Last Sunday afternoon, Harriot Eaton Stanton - oh! the little heretic thus to desecrate that holy holiday - opened her soft blue eyes on this mundane sphere. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women learned one important lesson
namely, that it is impossible for the best of men to understand women's feelings or the humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our question during the War, and labor for the emancipation of the slave, we did so, and gave five years to his emancipation and enfranchisement ... I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Yet there is dynamism in our house. Day to day, week to week, Cady blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks indicating her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room. Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence - and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to "live life to its fullest," to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time; it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist. If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: the days have shortened considerably. With little to distinguish one day from the next, time has begun to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways: "The time is two forty-five" versus "I'm going through a tough time." These days, time feels less like the ticking clock and more ~ Paul Kalanithi

Fear has nothing to do with cowardice. A fellow is only yellow when he lets his fear make him quit. ~ Jerome Cady

Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A mind always in contact with children and servants, whose aspirations and ambitions rise no higher than the roof that shelters it, is necessarily dwarfed in its proportions. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Too much profit is being made at the expense of unsuspecting patients. ~ Melissa Cady

33 Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself: and the wife see that she reverence her husband. If every man were as pure and as self-sacrificing as Jesus is said to have been in his relations to the Church, respect, honor and obedience from the wife might be more easily rendered. Let every man love his wife (not wives) points to monogamic marriage. It is quite natural for women to love and to honor good men, and to return a full measure of love on husbands who bestow much kindness and attention on them; but it is not easy to love those who treat us spitefully in any relation, except as mothers; their love triumphs over all shortcomings and disappointments. Occasionally conjugal love combines that of the mother. Then the kindness and the forbearance of a wife may surpass all understanding. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The women of this country ought be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Eve tasted the apple in the Garden of Eden in order to slake that intense thirst for knowledge that the simple pleasure of picking flowers and talking to Adam could not satisfy. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing ... ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire on the vital questions of the hour, she was commanded to ask her husband at home. Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Who can sum up all the ills the women of a nation suffer from war? They have all of the misery and none of the glory; nothing to mitigate their weary waiting and watching for the loved ones who return no more. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

All who live to a good old age have a genius for sleep. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and absurdities. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I am weary seeing our laboring classes so wretchedly housed, fed, and clothed, while thousands of dollars are wasted every year over unsightly statues. If these great man must have outdoor memorials, let them be in the form of handsome blocks of buildings for the poor ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A government is just only when the whole people share equally in its protection and advantages. ~ 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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

You need not regret lost years if you have learned great things. ~ Jack Cady

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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I can say that the happiest period of my life has been since I emerged from the shadows and superstitions of the old theologies, relieved from all gloomy apprehensions of the future, satisfied that as my labors and capacities were limited to this sphere of action, I was responsible for nothing beyond my horizon, as I could neither understand nor change the condition of the unknown world. Giving ourselves, then, no trouble about the future, let us make the most of the present, and fill up our lives with earnest work here. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To think that all in me of which my father would have felt proper pride had I been a man, is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Be a little kinder than you have to, Cady, and things will be all right. ~ E. Lockhart

Truth is the only safe ground to stand on. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

But the love of offspring ... tender and beautiful as it is, can not as sentiment rank with conjugal love. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Some general principles in the holy books of all religions that teach love, charity, liberty, justice and equality for all the human family, there are many grand and beautiful passages, the golden rule has been echoed and re-echoed around the world. There are lofty examples of good and true men and women, all worthy our acceptance and imitation whose lustre cannot be dimmed by the false sentiments and vicious characters bound up in the same volume. The Bible cannot be accepted or rejected as a whole, its teachings are varied and its lessons differ widely from each other. In criticising the peccadilloes of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, we would not shadow the virtues of Deborah, Huldah and Vashti. In criticising the Mosaic code, we would not question ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self- sovereignty. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I do believe that half a dozen commonplace attorneys could so mystify and misconstrue the Ten Commandments, and so confuse Moses' surroundings on Mount Sinai, that the great law-giver, if he returned to this planet, would doubt his own identity, abjure every one of his deliverances, yea, even commend the very sins he so clearly forbade his people. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I think if women would indulge more freely in vituperation, they would enjoy ten times the health they do. It seems to me they are suffering from repression. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I have met few men in my life, worth repeating eight times. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

They tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: 'You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.' ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Throughout this protracted and disgraceful assault on American womanhood, the clergy baptized each new insult and act of injustice in the name of the Christian religion, and uniformly asked God's blessing on proceedings that would have put to shame an assembly of Hottentots. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton