Mary Wollstonecraft

I perceive that the most respectable women are the most unhappy.

I shall be at a loss to discover why marriage has been called the tomb of love.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

I am not arguing for the rights of women but for the rights of humanity.

The being who will not reason is a bigot; the being who cannot reason is a fool; and the being who dares not reason is a slave.

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

How can a being be noble who is only good because she is afraid of being wicked?

Ignorance is a frail base for virtue.

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.

Pleasure is the business of women, according to the present modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings.

A great many women and men, too, make a point of never thinking about a subject without having taken a side first.

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress of human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive a continual check.

The desire of appearing beautiful is a very natural one, and should be encouraged, though it cannot be satisfied by art.

To be more loved than esteemed is a precarious tenure.

If children are to be educated to understand the true principles of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of society as of the first importance to the happiness of the individual.

The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her power is of short duration.

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners – time to restore to them their lost dignity – and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world.

I am a woman, and I have a right to think.

Marriage has been termed a splendid slavery.

False notions of beauty and delicacy stop the growth of the mind, and instead of just principles, fill the imagination with romantic stories.