Quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft

I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

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.

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

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

I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie.

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

Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.

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.

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

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavor to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason.

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

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.

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 the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.

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.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

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.