Top 160 Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

2. “My husband – my king.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

3. “Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated...”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

4. “Virtue can only flourish among equals.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

5. “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

6. “Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

7. “It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

8. “Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

9. “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.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

10. “Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

11. “The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

12. “The appetites will rule if the mind is vacant.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

13. “Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

14. “Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

15. “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

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

— Mary Wollstonecraft

17. “The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

18. “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.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

19. “A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

20. “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

21. “The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

22. “The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

23. “When we feel deeply, we reason profoundly.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

24. “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

25. “Age demands respect; youth, love.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

26. “Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

27. “The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

28. “As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

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

— Mary Wollstonecraft

30. “You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

31. “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

32. “It is far better to be often deceived than never to trust; to be disappointed in love, than never to love.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

33. “No deseo que las mujeres tengan poder sobre otros hombres, sino sobre si mismas.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

34. “Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers – in a word, better citizens.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

38. “The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty at home.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

39. “Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

40. “When man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

41. “At boarding schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

42. “Women all want to be ladies, which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “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

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

— Mary Wollstonecraft

48. “Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

49. “How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty!”

— Mary Wollstonecraft

50. “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