246 Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

... judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart ...

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.

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind

Women becoming, consequently, weakerthan they ought to behave not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affectioneither destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.

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

The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other.

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.

... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.