Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft (English Writer, Feminist)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was an Anglo-Irish writer of fiction and educational and historical works. She was also a passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women.

Born in London, the daughter of a farmer, Wollstonecraft taught school and served as a governess before working for the London publisher James Johnson. These experiences inspired her views in Thoughts on the education of Daughters (1787) and Original Stories from Real Life (1788.)

Wollstonecraft’s most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792,) was a trailblazing work of feminism. It defied assumptions about male supremacy and advocated an educational system that allowed girls the same advantages as boys. This, Wollstonecraft believed, would result in women who would be not only exceptional wives and mothers but also capable workers in many professions, thus benefiting all society. Vindication was hugely influential on American women’s rights pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller.

Wollstonecraft left to Paris in 1792 to study the French Revolution. After four years, she returned to London and joined an influential radical group that included William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Holcroft, William Blake, and William Wordsworth.

In 1797, Wollstonecraft married Godwin, and died 11 days after the birth of their daughter, the future Mary Shelley, wife of Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and author of the Gothic horror novel Frankenstein (1818.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Mary Wollstonecraft

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

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
Topics: Innocence

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Prejudice

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

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: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Explanation, Women, Feminism

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
Topics: Independence

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

Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Charity

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: The Military, Army, Navy

I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Women

I begin to love this creature,
and to anticipate her birth
as a fresh twist to a knot,
which I do not wish to untie
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Pregnancy

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Topics: Beauty

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