Mary Wollstonecraft

I do not wish them [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 divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners—time to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world.

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

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.

The most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.

Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice.

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

A man should be the friend of a woman, as a woman should be the friend of a man. The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives;—for in every station in life, a truly conscientious mind aims at perfection.

The being who can govern itself, has an empire which the most despotic monarch cannot boast.

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

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.

Independence I will ever secure, and not by marrying, but by living, by earning my own bread.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

The mind has no sex.

I am a child of nature, I have a heart that feels, and a soul that thinks.

Reason and virtue are the only foundations of happiness.