Vindication Quotes

• Truth is generally the best vindication against slander

  Abraham Lincoln

  Truth, Honesty, Libel

  Gordon Leidner, Abraham Lincoln (2009). “Abraham Lincoln: Quotes, Quips, and Speeches”, p.37, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• Our goal is not victory of might but the vindication of right - not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

  John F. Kennedy

  Freedom, Goal, Victory

  Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation, delivered 22 October 1962

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• Humility recognizes that no one can change someone else, but with faith, effort, and the help of God, we can undergo our own mighty change of heart.

  L. Whitney Clayton

  Heart, Humility, Effort

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• No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Happiness, Mistake, Men

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women & a Vindication of the Rights of Men”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Compassion, Rose

  Letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, 24 Jan. 1786

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• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, World

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli (1995). “Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints”, p.149, Cambridge University Press

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• Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

  Jalal Talabani

  Rights, Justice, Individual

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• Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Sex, Women, Thinking

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Speech, Association, Should

  Mahatma Gandhi, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (1993). “The Penguin Gandhi Reader”, p.149, Penguin Books India

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• Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, Men, Degrees

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1793). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects”, p.19

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• It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Intelligent, Men, Voice

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.107, Rowman & Littlefield

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• When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Wise, Innovation, Prejudice

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.52, Booklassic

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• It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Time, Female, Revolution

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.113, Oxford University Press

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• It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Women, Independent, Feminism

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.155, Lulu.com

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• How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Literature, Rational, Exertion

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Beauty, Women, Infancy Is

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Power, Literature, Dependence On Others

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• [I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Beautiful, Sex, Gentle

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (1999). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.95, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Life, Single, Blessing

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)”, p.608, Delphi Classics

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• I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Heart, Mind, Wish

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2012). “Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria”, p.303, Broadview Press

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• In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Character, Age, Popular Song

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.29, Booklassic

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• The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Kings, Husband, Afterlife

  'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' (1792) ch. 3

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• ... wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind!

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Female, Wealth, Mankind

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Philip Barnard, Stephen Shapiro (2013). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Abridged with Related Texts”, p.32, Hackett Publishing

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• But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Way, Weak, Hypothesis

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.42, Lulu.com

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• To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Mother, Children, Husband

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.188, Booklassic

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