Frances Wright Quotes
September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852
More Frances Wright Quotes
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.
Frances Wright— Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette (11 February 1822) as quoted in Lafayette in Two Worlds (1996), by Lloyd Kramer, p. 158
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.
Frances Wright— A Few Days in Athens (1822) Vol. II
I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.
Frances Wright— Self-written epitaph on her tombstone in Cincinnati Ohio.
Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ.
Frances Wright— Address III, Delivered at the opening of the Hall of Science, New York, Sunday, April 26, 1829
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!
Frances Wright— Page 74 (A Course of Popular Lectures (1829))
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.
Frances Wright— Lecture III: Of the more Important Divisions and Essential Parts of Knowledge
Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
Frances Wright— Lecture V: Morals
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.
Frances Wright— Lecture VI: Formation of Opinions
I come to tell you this, and to advise you to shut the gates of your gardens forthwith, and to cease the harangues of a master, since you only pass for a philosopher among fools, and for a fool among philosophers.
Frances Wright— Frances Wright, A few days in Athens (1822), p. 51.
