Mary Wollstonecraft

"The mind will ever be unstable that has only talents to rest on, without character."

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

"A tyrant father is not a phenomenon, especially in the middle class of life."

"The divine right of husbands will be questioned like the divine right of kings."

"I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists."

"Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters."

"It is of the utmost consequence to the improvement of mankind that the greatest attention should be paid to the education of females."

"The sexual weakness of one party creates the tyranny of the other."

"No one has a right to force another into virtue."

"Self-love is a principle almost every human being possesses, which take the name of prudence in the male, and delicacy in the female."

"To be a good mother, a woman must have sense and that independence of mind which few women possess."

"The laws respecting women do not bind them, when they think they injure themselves."

"Virtue, truth, and knowledge are essential to happiness."

"A woman is always to blame."

"It is the duty of man to render women independent of the care of others."

"How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread than the most accomplished beauty."

"Women are not permitted to enjoy equal rights because they are not permitted to develop their minds."

"It is not empire, but the expansion of consciousness, for which I contend."

"The condition of women is generally so depressed that they are represented as half-beings."

"If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of woman, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test."

"Perhaps the seeds of false modesty are planted in the very barrenness of the female education."

"I plead for my sex, not for myself."

"It is a melancholy truth that the most respectable women are the most oppressed."

"To reason on Rousseau's ground, if woman be not prepared by education to become man's companion, she will stop the progress of knowledge."

"How shameful it is to require a girl to sacrifice her conscience and her health to something called propriety."

"Nothing could be more absurd than the notion that a woman was created to be the companion of man's leisure hours."

"The lessons given to women to form their character lead them astray more than any other circumstances in life."

"Ignorance and the want of character go hand in hand."

"The most important thing is that women should be taught to think, not what to think."

"A woman must have a profession or she cannot be a woman of independence."