Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

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

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.

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

Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated.

The beginning is always today.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

Women do not want power over men, they want power over themselves.

When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.

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

No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

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

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.

Age demands respect; youth, love.

To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship.

The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

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.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.

Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.