Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraftwas an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 April 1759
When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.
When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.
... to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship ...
... wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind!
... the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason ...
Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.
The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.
I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.
Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind