Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Quotes

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Progress

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Soul

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Manners, Opinion

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Knowledge, Nature

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Women

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Joy

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Life

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reason

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opinion, Character

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Women

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Reason, Man, Freedom

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Love, Society

• How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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 Godwin

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Weakness

• Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great degree, love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom; even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other, and for the same object can only be felt in succession. The vain fears and fond jealousies, the winds which fan the flame of love, when judiciously or artfully tempered, are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Friends

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Inspirational

  Tags in Evil

• The beginning is always today.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Now, Beginning

• Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Good, Evil

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (62)

Birth:	27th April, 1759
Death:	10th September, 1797
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer, Philosopher

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