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 StantonRead
There would be more sense in insisting on man's limitations because he cannot be a mother than on a woman's because she can be.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of not restricting gender roles based on limitations, advocating for a broader perspective on capabilities beyond traditional roles.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's quote challenges the traditional gender norms that dictate what men and women can or cannot do based on their biological roles. By suggesting that it would be more sensible to focus on what men cannot do rather than what women can do, she highlights the dangers of confining individuals to societal expectations and calls for a recognition of the vast potential within both genders.
In practice
In a discussion about gender equality at a community meeting.
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.
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.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body... is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.
Only those who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague, undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought.
We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
The judge weighs the arguments and puts a brave face on the matter, and since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done justice and given satisfaction to the community
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children...
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
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