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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
Things
Opinion
Faith
Understand
Inquire
Nature
Grounds
Reason
Examine
Look
Possess
Looks
Opinions
Believe
Search

More quotes by Frances Wright

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Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.
Frances Wright
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Truth is but approved facts.
Frances Wright
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No man can see his own prejudices.
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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The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.
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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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
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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.
Frances Wright
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Equality is the soul of liberty there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
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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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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... 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 singular to look round upon a country where the dreams of sages, smiled at as utopian, seem distinctly realized, a people voluntarily submitting to laws of their own imposing, with arms in their hands respecting the voice of a government which their breath created and which their breath could in a moment destroy!
Frances Wright
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The man possessed of a dollar, feels himself to be not merely one hundred cents richer, but also one hundred cents better, than the man who is penniless so on through all the gradations of earthly possessions - the estimate of our own moral and political importance swelling always in a ratio exactly proportionate to the growth of our purse.
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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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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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.
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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... 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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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.
Frances Wright