Frances Wright
Frances Wright
Frances Wrightalso widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a US citizen in 1825. The same year l, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation. She inteded to create an egalitarian place, but it lasted only three years. Her Views of Society and Manners in Americabrought her the most attention as a critique of the new nation...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
cities philadelphia house
I never walked through the streets of any city with as much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia. The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements, and citizens, is not to be surpassed.
liberty steps injury
Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
selfish stupid heart
The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies.
pedestal virtue homage
Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.
errors may opinion
An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.
mind church analysis
Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!
pride power two
Love of power more frequently originates in vanity than pride (two qualities, by the way, which are often confounded) and is, consequently, yet more peculiarly the sin of little than of great minds.
moral action process
Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.
leadership men bird
Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.
sex fall destiny
It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.
understanding admitting like-you
Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding.
courage disappointment ignorance
If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.
associated basis beneficial departure false lose moral principle sight substitute true wrong
Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.
advance exert knowledge perpetuate scottish-writer
If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.