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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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Frances Wright
Age: 57 †
Born: 1795
Born: September 6
Died: 1852
Died: December 13
Philosopher
Writer
City of Dundee
Frances D'Arusmont
Objects
Choose
Happiness
Free
Government
People
Rational
Object

More quotes by 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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Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!
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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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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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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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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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 condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.
Frances Wright
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... a nation to be strong, must be united to be united, must be equal in condition to be equal in condition, must be similar inhabits and feeling to be similar in habits and feeling, must be raised in national institutions as the children of a common family, and citizens of a common country.
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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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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Truth is but approved facts.
Frances Wright
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No man can see his own prejudices.
Frances Wright
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The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.
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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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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What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?
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
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Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.
Frances Wright