Mary Wollstonecraft — "A great many women and men, too, make a point of never thinking about a subject …"

"The civil rights of woman, have been very little attended to, nay, almost universally disregarded."

"I have always been of opinion, that the only way to make women rational creatures, and free citizens, is to allow them to pursue their own interest, and to follow the bent of their own inclinations."

"The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank, thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."

"The being who will not reason is a bigot; the being who cannot reason is a fool; and the being who dares not reason is a slave."

"Consider, I entreat you, what much more forcible reasons sound philosophy can produce to expand the capacities of woman, than those which are currently urged to repress them."