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 WollstonecraftRead
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True virtue arises from the use of one's own reasoning rather than blind adherence to societal norms.
This quote highlights the importance of individual reasoning and moral judgment in determining virtue. Mary Wollstonecraft argues that virtues cannot be genuinely claimed unless they stem from one's own thoughtful consideration, implying that thoughtless conformity to tradition or external influence lacks true moral value.
Themes
VirtueReasonIndividualityMoral JudgmentPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about ethics classes to emphasize critical thinking.
More from Mary Wollstonecraft
All quotes βMake 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 WollstonecraftRead
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
Mary WollstonecraftRead
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
Mary WollstonecraftRead
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
Mary WollstonecraftRead
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Mary WollstonecraftRead
Similar quotes
What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation.
Mark FisherRead
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin ArtaudRead
In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in an incommunicable and particular way.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
Thomas PaineRead
There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.
Bram StokerRead
Wonder knows that while you cannot look at the light, you cannot look at anything else without it. It is not exhausted by childhood, but finds its key there. It is a journey like a walk through the woods over the usual obstacles and around the common distractions while the voice of direction leads, saying, 'This is the way, walk ye in it.'
Ravi ZachariasRead