Frances Wright Quotes

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in Imaginations, Wrong, Action

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Equality, Liberty

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Belief

  Tags in Ideas, Religious

• Awaken its powers, and it will respect itself.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Respect

  Tags in Itself

• 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?

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Nations, Attention

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Things, Something

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Facts, Imaginations

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Single, Exercise, Imperfect

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reason, Believe

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Foundation, Equality, Interests, Appear

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Opinions, Against

• Man has been adjudged a social animal.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Social, Animal

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in True, Real, Action, Wrong

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

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Change, World

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Personal, Simple, Observation

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Difficult, Simplest, Mind

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Selfish, Generous, Interest

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opinions, Conformity, Religions

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in Contention, Facts

• 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.

  Frances Wright

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Forget, Happiness, Nations

Frances Wright (22)

Birth:	6th September, 1795
Death:	13th December, 1852
Nationality:	Scottish
Profession:	Social Reformer, Writer

About

Frances Wright was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a U. S. citizen in 1825. That year she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation, intending to create an egalitarian place, but it lasted only three years. Her Views of Society and Manners in America brought her the most attention as a critique of the new nation.

Related Authors

• Henry Ward Beecher
• Josephine K. Henry
• Jacob August Riis
• Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
• Florence Kelley
• William Lloyd Garrison
• John Bachman
• Felix Adler
• Daniel Carter Beard
• George Ripley

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 10th December

Births

• 1957 - Michael Clarke Duncan
• 1941 - Tommy Kirk
• 1907 - Rumer Godden
• 1913 - Morton Gould
• 1957 - Prem Rawat

Deaths

• 2000 - Marie Windsor
• 1808 - James Sullivan
• 1999 - Rick Danko
• 1968 - Thomas Merton
• 1972 - Mark Van Doren