Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.

When man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him.

The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.

You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.

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

Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.

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

The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.

Age demands respect; youth, love.

... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.

The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.

The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

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.

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?

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.