Quotes from Frances Wright

However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?

Man has been adjudged a social animal.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family.

Fathers and husbands! do ye not also understand this fact? Do ye not see how, in the mental bondage of your wives and fair companions, ye yourselves are bound?

To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing.