Mary Wollstonecraft – 16 Quotes

16 Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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, where are we to stop?

– Mary Wollstonecraft

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

Children, I grant, should be innocent but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.

– Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

– Mary Wollstonecraft