Mary Wollstonecraft
An English writer and philosopher, considered one of the first feminist thinkers, whose 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' argued for equal education and rights for women.
Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft
How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?
The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex.
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.
I love my own sex in the pursuit, more than in the fruition of happiness.
The most holy band of society is friendship.
To be loved, women must dream, and to dream they must be idle.
A woman, to be truly feminine, must be a slave.
The divine right of husbands, like their lordship, is nonsense.
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, they must everlang be only an inferior sort of species.
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives and mothers.
I do not wish to see women advocating rights to property, but I wish to see them virtuous and free.
The passions of men have thus placed women on thrones, and, until mankind become more reasonable, it is to be feared that women will be continued to be regarded as angelic beings.
It is time to effect a revolution in female manners.
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.
The rich, in general, are insolent and proud.
To give a man a right to do violence to his fellow-man is a perversion of all principles.
The few who are not obliged to slave in order to earn their daily bread, are, in general, enervated by the indulgence, and therefore become even more useless than the poor.
My own sex I love, and if possible would always relieve and countenance them.
It is not the philosopher who knows the most, but the one who is most willing to learn.
Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.