Mary Wollstonecraft
It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education.
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.
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.
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.
In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own 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.
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?
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.
How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?