Mary Wollstonecraft

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

The world cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.

I am more than ever convinced that it is not by reason that we can expect to influence mankind.

I do not want to be loved like a goddess; I wish to be necessary to you.

It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.

The most holy band of society is friendship.

The being who can govern itself, has an empire which the most despotic monarch cannot boast.

A man should not be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice.

The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by hardening one part of the human species, and softening the other, should be abolished.

Taught from their 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.

Consider, I entreat you, what much more forcible reasons sound philosophy can produce to expand the capacities of woman, than those which are currently urged to repress them.

How can a being be called rational who is only allowed to reason when she is to obey?

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

The education of women has been so managed that the sex has been rendered an artificial, weak character, and, consequently, more or less useless members of society.

Let us then, by way of experiment, suppose that women are allowed to acquire knowledge like men, and that their minds are not habituated to the slavish dependence that makes them become the abject tools of their masters.

I have ever been of opinion, that the very word obedience, is not applicable to rational beings.

The civil rights of woman, have been very little attended to, nay, almost universally disregarded.