Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.”

“Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.”

“The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.”