Mary Wollstonecraft

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

“The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty at home.”

“Virtue can only flourish among equals.”

“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.”

“I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart.—I shall be employed about things, not words!”

“The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.”

“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.”

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

“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?”

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

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

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

“I love 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.”

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

“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.”