Quotes from Frances Wright

If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.

Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us.

No man can see his own prejudices.

Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.

You have heard of, and studied various systems of philosophy; but real philosophy is opposed to all systems.

... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.

Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.

We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies.

We hear of the wealth of nations, of the powers of production, of the demand and supply of markets, and we forget that these words mean no more, if they mean any thing, then the happiness, and the labor, and the necessities of men.

Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

The world is full of religion, and full of misery and crime.

Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.

These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.

The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.

Awaken its powers, and it will respect itself.

How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers.

The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.

Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

We have seen that no religion stands on the basis of things known; none bounds its horizon within the field of human observation; and, therefore, as it can never present us with indisputable facts, so must it ever be at once a source of error and contention.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.