5 quotations linked to A Vindication of the Rights of Men by or associated with Mary Wollstonecraft, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Rights, liberty of reason, justice, truth, humanity, principled character and criticism of inherited political deference.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“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.
“truth, in morals, has ever appeared to me the essence of the sublime; and, in taste, simplicity the only criterion of the beautiful.”
Wollstonecraft makes moral truth and aesthetic simplicity standards of seriousness, rejecting ornate politeness when it conceals what a writer actually believes.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke, second edition (1790); this sentence follows Wollstonecraft’s refusal to disguise her sentiments behind courtly politeness.
“truly sublime is the character that acts from principle, and governs the inferior springs of activity without slackening their vigour;”
The passage praises principled character that can use emotion and energy without allowing immediate feeling to overrule deliberate judgment.
Source note: A Vindication of the Rights of Men; this clause appears in Wollstonecraft’s contrast between habit, manipulated passion, and a character governed by principle.
“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.