“Whenever the skilled hands and cultured brains of women have made the battle of life easier for man, he has readily pardoned her sound judgment and proper self-assertion.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Today, November 12, is the human rights dynamo Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birthday. She was born in 1815, but her pithy, witty words still ring true today. A few of her gems:
“As long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.”
“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
“No privileged order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims.”
“It is the inalienable right of all to be happy.”
“A woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own.”
“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles and see that the world is moving.”
“nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.”
“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.”
“Our ‘pathway’ is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.”
“Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.”
“The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.”
“Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.”
“The great fault of mankind is that it will not think.”
“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.”
“With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?”
“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.”
“Men as a general rule have very little reverence for trees.”
And now, energized and emboldened by Elizabeth, let’s all write on!