Mary Wollstonecraft - Women Quotes

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If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

Mary Wollstonecraft
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
Women deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway, for, like Turkish bashaws, they have more real power than their masters: but virtue is sacrificed to temporary gratifications, and the respectability of life to the triumph of an hour.

Mary Wollstonecraft
In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.

Mary Wollstonecraft
As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.

Mary Wollstonecraft
In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment...

Mary Wollstonecraft
An immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and for sway, are the passions of savages; the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not yet extended the dominion of the mind, or even learned to think with the energy necessary to concatenate that abstract train of thought which produces principles.... that women from their education and the present state of civilized life, are in the same condition, cannotbe controverted.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Ah! why do women condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorize between man and man? And why do they not discover, when, "in the noon of beauty's power", that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect. Confined, then, in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible.

Mary Wollstonecraft
I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be... have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection... either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strenght state; usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

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
If we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

Mary Wollstonecraft
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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
How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.

Mary Wollstonecraft