Mary Wollstonecraft - Reason Quotes

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She [woman] was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavor to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft
It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.

Mary Wollstonecraft
What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft
The conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason...

Mary Wollstonecraft
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