Quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education... is the solitude of self.”

Each person ultimately faces life alone — their own fears, their own death, their own inner world. Stanton argued that because women are as fundamentally alone in their experience as any man, they need the same intellectual preparation and the same freedoms to navigate that solitude.

Stanton delivered The Solitude of Self as her farewell address to the House Judiciary Committee in January 1892. She was seventy-six years old and stepping down from the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and the speech is widely considered the most eloquent statement of her life's philosophy.

American suffragist, social activist, and leading figure in the early women's rights movement who helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Her 1892 speech The Solitude of Self is considered one of the finest arguments for women's autonomy in American history.