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 WollstonecraftBut women are very differently situated with respect to eachother - for they are all rivals (...) Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of woman centres in beauty, and interest gives vanity additional force, perpetual rivalships should ensue? They are all running the same race, and would rise above the virtue of morals, if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye.
Mary WollstonecraftThe being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.
Mary WollstonecraftIn this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.
Mary WollstonecraftA king is always a king - and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse
Mary WollstonecraftAn immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and for sway, are the passions of savages; the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not yet extended the dominion of the mind, or even learned to think with the energy necessary to concatenate that abstract train of thought which produces principles.... that women from their education and the present state of civilized life, are in the same condition, cannotbe controverted.
Mary Wollstonecraft