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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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the language of truth is too simple for inexperienced ears.
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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The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.
Frances Wright
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Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
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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What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?
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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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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Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.
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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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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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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... 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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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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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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The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.
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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Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
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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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