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All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

Frances Wright

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Frances Wright
Age: 57 †
Born: 1795
Born: September 6
Died: 1852
Died: December 13
Philosopher
Writer
City of Dundee
Frances D'Arusmont
Looks
Opinions
Believe
Search
Things
Opinion
Faith
Understand
Inquire
Nature
Grounds
Reason
Examine
Look
Possess

More quotes by Frances Wright

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Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool and of many a good man, a knave.
Frances Wright
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Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
Frances Wright
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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.
Frances Wright
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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.
Frances Wright
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... so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.
Frances Wright
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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.
Frances Wright
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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.
Frances Wright
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Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.
Frances Wright
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He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
Frances Wright
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Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored.
Frances Wright
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No man can see his own prejudices.
Frances Wright
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Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.
Frances Wright
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Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.
Frances Wright
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the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself.
Frances Wright
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... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.
Frances Wright
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The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.
Frances Wright
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The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.
Frances Wright
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We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.
Frances Wright
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... 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.
Frances Wright
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It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.
Frances Wright