Mary Wollstonecraft

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! All my feelings are on the tortured rack; but I will not be a fool, if I can help it.

I glow with indignation when I contemplate the slavery of half the human race.

I have been so accustomed to hear beauty of the mind extolled, that I have been led to expect something more than ordinary, when I have met with a woman with a cultivated understanding.

The being who can govern her own house, and make her husband and children happy, is more respectable than a queen.

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.

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

A woman who is not a mother, is not a woman.

The woman who has not been taught to respect herself, will not respect others.

I am a child of nature, who has been taught to think; and I will not resign my birthright for a mess of pottage.

I am not born to tread in the beaten track.

The desire of being always in a crowd, of being always seen, always admired, is a sure mark of a little mind.

Men are not more naturally brave than women, nor more naturally rational. They are only rendered so by education.

I have a heart that is ready to burst with the tenderest affection, and a head that is full of the most exalted notions.

I am not afraid of being singular or of being thought whimsical.

It is difficult for me to be patient with the folly of mankind.

I have been in love with a man of my own sex, and have found him as capricious as any of the other.

I have a heart that is not to be trifled with.

I am not a slave to any system, nor a devotee to any sect.

The mind, in order to be strong, must be free.