110+ Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes On Education, Feminism And Politics

Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher and advocate of women's rights. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, which is considered to be the foundational text of modern feminism. She is also known for her political writings on education, marriage, and the rights of women. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft on education, feminism, politics.

Top 10 Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

1. I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
2. Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
3. The beginning is always today.
4. Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
5. Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
6. The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.
7. 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.
8. Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.
9. 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.
10. The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft Image Quotes

The beginning is always today. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Short Quotes

• A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.
• Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
• Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.
• Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
• When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick?
• I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.
• As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.
• When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.
• Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Education

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

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

... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean. — Mary Wollstonecraft

To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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

The most perfect education ... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Government

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

People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent; and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

...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

When man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Equality

Virtue can only flourish among equals. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous. — Mary Wollstonecraft

... wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind! — Mary Wollstonecraft

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust. — Mary Wollstonecraft

There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equakity will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Nature

You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Love, from its very nature, must be transitory. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Reason

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

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

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

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 weaknesses. — 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 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

When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Mind

Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The appetites will rule if the mind is vacant. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because, the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished. — Mary Wollstonecraft

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind — Mary Wollstonecraft

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. — Mary Wollstonecraft

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. — Mary Wollstonecraft

When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Rational

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 can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions? — Mary Wollstonecraft

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. — Mary Wollstonecraft

A king is always a king - and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes About Virtue

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

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men. — Mary Wollstonecraft

And this homage to women's attractions has distorted their understanding tosuch an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft Famous Quotes And Sayings

The beginning is always today. — Mary Wollstonecraft

How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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

For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream. — 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

At boarding schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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

Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet — Mary Wollstonecraft

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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

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

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. — Mary Wollstonecraft

[I]f 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

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis! — Mary Wollstonecraft

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it. — 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

But women are very differently situated with respect to eachother - for they are all rivals (...) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye. — Mary Wollstonecraft

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. 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. It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

...trifling employments have rendered woman a trifler. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Women do not want power over men, they want power over themselves. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy. — Mary Wollstonecraft

I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie. Men are spoilt by frankness, I believe, yet I must tell you that I love you better than I supposed I did, when I promised to love you forever....I feel it thrilling through my frame, giving and promising pleasure. — Mary Wollstonecraft

An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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

Women becoming, consequently, weakerthan they ought to behave not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affectioneither 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

True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Life Lessons by Mary Wollstonecraft

1. Mary Wollstonecraft's life and work demonstrate the importance of standing up for what you believe in and fighting for social justice.
2. She also showed that it is possible to overcome obstacles and pursue your goals despite the difficulties you may face.
3. Finally, her writings emphasize the importance of education and the need for individuals to think for themselves and form their own opinions.