Browse 7 quotations connecting Mary Wollstonecraft with Justice, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution.
“I contend for the rights of men and the liberty of reason.”
The line joins political rights with intellectual liberty: the argument is not merely for a different ruler but for people’s capacity to reason without inherited deference.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke; Wollstonecraft frames the pamphlet as a defense of human rights and the liberty of reason.
“Reverencing the rights of humanity, I shall dare to assert them.”
Wollstonecraft presents public argument as an obligation to defend human rights even when ridicule or social pressure makes such advocacy uncomfortable.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening pages; the sentence immediately follows her statement that she contends for the rights of men and liberty of reason.
“Sensibility is the manie of the day, and compassion the virtue which is to cover a multitude of vices, whilst justice is left to mourn in sullen silence, and balance truth in vain.”
The polemical contrast warns that displays of feeling can become morally evasive when sympathy is praised while justice and truth are neglected.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men; Wollstonecraft is criticizing sentimental rhetoric in Burke, so the passage should not be read as a rejection of compassion itself.
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”
The problem is framed as structural fairness rather than occasional benevolence: charity cannot substitute for restoring dignity and rights.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the sentence appears during a discussion of social conditions that punish women while leaving the underlying injustice intact.
“Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.”
Different roles do not require different moral standards; Wollstonecraft argues for common principles of responsibility and virtue.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the passage rejects a separate moral standard built around sex rather than shared human duties.
“One principal of action is sufficient—Respect thyself.”
Wollstonecraft makes self-respect a moral standard rather than self-flattery: conduct should remain compatible with one’s own sense of truth and justice instead of being reorganized around gaining a respectable social position.
Source note: An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, Project Gutenberg #68724. Wollstonecraft connects “Respect thyself” with religion, justice and self-love while criticizing social arrangements that encourage people to sacrifice truthful character for status.
“the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.”
Wollstonecraft warns that replacing hereditary rank with concentrated economic power does not automatically secure meaningful liberty.
Source note: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Letter XIV; the sentence follows her claim that commerce helped undermine feudal power in England and America.