Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine wher...

I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom ...

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge ...

How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and in...

Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share ...

The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or u...

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of r...

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being...

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowleg...

Friendship is a serious affection the most sublime of all affections because it is founded on prin...

Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain ...

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast pr...

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened ...

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they l...

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a ...

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming ...

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pa...

...a being, with a capacity of reasoning, would not have failed to discover, as his faculties unfold...

England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine...

But the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a W...

The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many o...

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of ...

Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their bro...

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morali...

What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in ...

Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impuni...

Gracious Creator of the whole human race! hast thou created such a being as woman, who can trace thy...

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neith...

I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by t...

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and ro...

Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?In this style, argue ...

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!

Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant wou...

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - a...

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade ...

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young p...

The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in ...

Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is...

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates ...

Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a...