Frances Wright Quotations

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.

Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.

However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.

Awaken its powers, and it will respect itself.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.

It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.

Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us.

We hear of the wealth of nations, of the powers of production, of the demand and supply of markets, and we forget that these words mean no more, if they mean any thing, then the happiness, and the labor, and the necessities of men.

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.

The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.

It will appear evident upon attentive consideration that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality may best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests and cooperation in labor.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being.

Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against.

These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.

Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.

He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.

We have seen that no religion stands on the basis of things known; none bounds its horizon within the field of human observation; and, therefore, as it can never present us with indisputable facts, so must it ever be at once a source of error and contention.

Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers.

And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.

Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ.

Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.

Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?

But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?

I have been swamped with tremendous response. I am expecting a huge crowd.

Who among us but has had occasion to remark the ill-judged, however well-intentioned government of children by their teachers; and, yet more especially, by their parents?

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I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family...

The man possessed of a dollar, feels himself to be not merely one hundred cents richer, but also one hundred cents better, than the man who is penniless; so on through all the gradations of earthly possessions - the estimate of our own moral and political importance swelling always in a ratio exactly proportionate to the growth of our purse.

Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.

the leading error of the human mind, - the bane of human happiness - the perverter of human virtue ... is Religion - that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion - that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion - that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion - that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!

The world is full of religion, and full of misery and crime.

It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled... This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State.

The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.

Fathers and husbands! do ye not also understand this fact? Do ye not see how, in the mental bondage of your wives and fair companions, ye yourselves are bound?

What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?

The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.

the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself.

the language of truth is too simple for inexperienced ears.

You have heard of, and studied various systems of philosophy; but real philosophy is opposed to all systems.

I never walked through the streets of any city with as much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia. The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements, and citizens, is not to be surpassed.

No man can see his own prejudices ...

Love of power more frequently originates in vanity than pride (two qualities, by the way, which are often confounded) and is, consequently, yet more peculiarly the sin of little than of great minds.

... we have broken down the self-respecting spirit of man with nursery tales and priestly threats, and we dare to assert, that inproportion as we have prostrated our understanding and degraded our nature, we have exhibited virtue, wisdom, and happiness, in our words, our actions, and our lives!

It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.

Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.

Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

... so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.

I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of your sex instead of poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements as any male child of Adam.

Let us enquire. Who, then, shall challenge the words? Why are they challenged. And by whom? By those who call themselves the guardians of morality, and who are the constituted guardians of religion. Enquiry, it seems, suits not them. They have drawn the line, beyond which human reason shall not pass -- above which human virtue shall not aspire! All that is without their faith or above their rule, is immorality, is atheism, is -- I know not what.

Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.

Truth is but approved facts.

We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

It is singular to look round upon a country where the dreams of sages, smiled at as utopian, seem distinctly realized, a people voluntarily submitting to laws of their own imposing, with arms in their hands respecting the voice of a government which their breath created and which their breath could in a moment destroy!

... it would be impossible for women to stand in higher estimation than they do here. The deference that is paid to them at all times and in all places has often occasioned me as much surprise as pleasure.

There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.

To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing ...

So long as the mental and moral instruction of man is left solely in the hands of hired servants of the public--let them be teachers of religion, professors of colleges, authors of books, or editors of journals or periodical publications, dependent upon their literary incomes for their daily bread, so long shall we hear but half the truth; and well if we hear so much. Our teachers, political, scientific, moral, or religious; our writers, grave or gay, are compelled to administer to our prejudices and to perpetuate our ignorance.

Knowledge signifies things known. Where there are no things known, there is no knowledge. Where there are no things to be known, there can be no knowledge. We have observed that every science, that is, every branch of knowledge, is compounded of certain facts, of which our sensations furnish the evidence. Where no such evidence is supplied, we are without data; we are without first premises; and when, without these, we attempt to build up a science, we do as those who raise edifices without foundations. And what do such builders construct? Castles in the air.

Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding.

I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.

Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten.

Credulity is always ridiculous.

... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.

... the yearly expenses of the existing religious systemexceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?

Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety!

Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!

... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.

it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises.

Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored.

We are on the earth, and they tell us of heaven; we are human beings, and they tell us of angels and devils; we are matter, and they tell us of spirit; we have five senses whereby to admit truths, and a reasoning faculty by which to build our belief upon them; and they tell us of dreams dreamed thousands of years ago, which our experience flatly contradicts.

The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.

... a nation to be strong, must be united; to be united, must be equal in condition; to be equal in condition, must be similar inhabits and feeling; to be similar in habits and feeling, must be raised in national institutions as the children of a common family, and citizens of a common country.

Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mohammedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family, and would accept of truth by whomsoever offered -- that truth which we can all find, if we will but seek in things, not in words; in nature, not in human imagination; in our own hearts, not in temples made with hands.