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
expecting huge scottish-writer swamped tremendous
I have been swamped with tremendous response. I am expecting a huge crowd.
fill mere
And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.
civilized engaged enlisted generous human rightly
But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?
rights justice instruction
Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.
rights limits honest
There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being.
virtue guides
The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.
feelings may venture
However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.
practice errors mind
The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.
darkness sun glory
What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?
spiritual teacher book
... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.
knowledge science air
Knowledge signifies things known. Where there are no things known, there is no knowledge. Where there are no things to be known, there can be no knowledge. We have observed that every science, that is, every branch of knowledge, is compounded of certain facts, of which our sensations furnish the evidence. Where no such evidence is supplied, we are without data; we are without first premises; and when, without these, we attempt to build up a science, we do as those who raise edifices without foundations. And what do such builders construct? Castles in the air.
science superstitions way
The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.
mind may humans
These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.
challenges atheism enquiry
Let us enquire. Who, then, shall challenge the words? Why are they challenged. And by whom? By those who call themselves the guardians of morality, and who are the constituted guardians of religion. Enquiry, it seems, suits not them. They have drawn the line, beyond which human reason shall not pass -- above which human virtue shall not aspire! All that is without their faith or above their rule, is immorality, is atheism, is -- I know not what.