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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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Mary Wollstonecraft
Age: 38 †
Born: 1759
Born: April 27
Died: 1797
Died: September 10
Businessperson
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Mary Godwin
Mr. Cresswick
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Opinion
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Obstinately
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Must
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More quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft

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The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
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.
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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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...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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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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A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant and the remainder vain and mean.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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I think I love most people best when they are in adversity for pity is one of my prevailing passions.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.
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
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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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I think schools, as they are now regulated, the hot-beds of vice and folly, and the knowledge of human nature supposedly attained there, merely cunning selfishness.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.
Mary Wollstonecraft
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Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
Mary Wollstonecraft