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In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

Mary Wollstonecraft

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Mary Wollstonecraft
Age: 38 †
Born: 1759
Born: April 27
Died: 1797
Died: September 10
Businessperson
Essayist
Governess
Historian
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Travel Writer
Writer
Mary Godwin
Mr. Cresswick
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Character
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Popular
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Age
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More quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

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Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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...I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, orshut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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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.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
Mary Wollstonecraft