Mary Wollstonecraft
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.Collection: Good
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.Collection: Men
I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.Collection: Society
In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.Collection: Age
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.Collection: Government
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.Collection: Women
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.Collection: Nature
Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.Collection: Women
If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?Collection: Power
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.Collection: Freedom
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.Collection: Beauty
Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.Collection: Strength
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.Collection: Independence
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.Collection: Age
Virtue can only flourish among equals.Collection: Equality
Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.Collection: Men
The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.Collection: Society
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.Collection: Women
The beginning is always today.
Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.
Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
I love my man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?
It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?
What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.
The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.Collection: Equality
Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated.Collection: Men
Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.Collection: Education
When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.Collection: Reason
Women do not want power over men, they want power over themselves.Collection: Men
No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.Collection: Happiness
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.Collection: Men
Age demands respect; youth, love.Collection: Age
[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.Collection: Beautiful
The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.Collection: Mind
To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship.Collection: Marriage
Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.Collection: Spectators
Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts.Collection: Heart
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.Collection: Strength
Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.Collection: Hands
I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.Collection: Home
... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.Collection: Romantic
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!Collection: Leadership