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Frances Wright Biography

Frances Wright (September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852) also widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a US citizen in 1825. The same year, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation, but it lasted only five years. Her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) brought her to public attention as a critic of the new nation.

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Frances Wright Quotes

Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.

Diversity, Equal, Exist, Instruction, Justice, Rights

Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.

Barely, Paid, Pedestal, Thought, Virtue

How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers.

Equality, Exercise, Mean, Mental, Rights, Secured

Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.

Denying, Different, God, Having, Neighbor, Thinking

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.

Arrogance, Curiosity, Law, Reach, Violate, Words

It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.

Already, Destiny, Fall, Sex, Women

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.

Animal, Curiously, Exercise, Men, Usefully

. . . the yearly expenses of the existing religious systemexceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!. . . Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?

Dollars, Education, Religious, United, Wise

It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled. . . This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State.

Christian, Clergy, Influence, Party, Unfurled, Years

What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?

Darkness, Gloom, Glory, Sun

I never walked through the streets of any city with as much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia. The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements, and citizens, is not to be surpassed.

Animate, Cities, Citizens, House, Philadelphia

The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.

Affords, Character, Countries, Country, Judge, Men

. . . so far from entrenching human conduct within the gentle barriers of peace and love, religion has ever been, and now is, the deepest source of contentions, wars, persecutions for conscience sake, angry words, angry feelings, backbitings, slanders, suspicions, false judgments, evil interpretations, unwise, unjust, injurious, inconsistent actions.

Evil, False, Feelings, Human, Slanders, War

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

Guides, Sciences, Surest, Virtue

. . . a nation to be strong, must be united; to be united, must be equal in condition; to be equal in condition, must be similar inhabits and feeling; to be similar in habits and feeling, must be raised in national institutions as the children of a common family, and citizens of a common country.

Children, Citizens, Condition, Country, Habits, Strong

. . . it would be impossible for women to stand in higher estimation than they do here. The deference that is paid to them at all times and in all places has often occasioned me as much surprise as pleasure.

Impossible, Stand, Surprise, Times, Women, Would Be

We have. . . dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

Dream, Grown, Imagination, Imaginations, Live, World

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.

Error, Errors, Fixed, Mind, Practice, Simplest

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety!

Break, Heart, Ignorance, Judge, Think, Thinking

All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.

Against, Believe, Faith, Looks, Reason

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