Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes

It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her.

I've said repeatedly that where we see terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda or ISIL, they have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse, for basically barbarism and death. These are people who kill children, kill Muslims, take sex slaves - there's no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do.

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Witchcraft and priestcraft, were introduced into this world together, … and has gone on, hand in hand together

Although it seems that religion and politics should be completely opposed and contradict each other in their principles and their maxims, they nevertheless get on very well, …they defend and support each other. Religion backs up the government, terrible though it may be; conversely, the government backs up religion, dumb and vain though it may be…. the priests … strongly recommend to everyone to obey magistrates, princes and sovereigns, as established by God to rule the others, under pain of curse and eternal damnation; …princes have their people pay respect to priests, and give those priests good salaries and revenues, and maintain them in the vain and abusive office of their fake ministry. They compel the people to regard as sacred and holy everything those ministers do … There again, this is the way abuses, errors, superstition, delusion and deceit have established themselves in the world, and how they remain in spite of all the misfortunes that they cause to the poor peoples…

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt and oppression.

Do you doubt that the least effects of nature were not used as marks of the wrath of heaven? It was to the interest of pontiffs, priests, and augurs, as much as it is to the interest of lawyers and doctors that there should be lawsuits and sickness. No wonder they took care that the people should not grow slack in their religion.

One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends."

The dirty alliance between religious preachers and possessors of power brought the boon of prisons, gallows, knouts and above all such theories for the mankind.

Human beings are more alike than unalike. Whether in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. We want healthy children, safe streets, to be loved and have the unmitigated gall to accept love. If we are religious, we want a place to perpetuate God. If not, we want a good lecture every once in a while. And everyone wants someplace to party on Saturday nights.

Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me, neither option is worth pursuing.

It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity.

I am what you call a non-believer. I don't even want to say I'm an atheist because frankly I don't want to join their club either. But the point is, I am a fallen catholic, I'm not religious, and that's all well and good.

What we often take to be family values--the work ethic, honesty, clean living, marital fidelity, and individual responsibility--are in fact social, religious, or cultural values. To be sure, these values are transmitted by parents to their children and are familial in that sense. They do not, however, originate within the family. It is the value of close relationships with other family members, and the importance of these bonds relative to other needs.

Man has never been the same since God died.

If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else.

I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."