“However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion that until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.”
Lecture II: Of Free Inquiry, considered as a Means for obtaining Just Knowledge
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
Context: However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion that until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good they will for evil, if they advance not knowledge they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.
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Frances Wright 36
American activist 1795–1852Related quotes

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 338

Essays in The Public Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=nD3zAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+principles+of+the+good+society+call+for+a+concern+with+an+order+of+being+which+cannot+be+proved+existentially+to+the+sense+organs+where+it+matters+supremely+that+the+human+person+is+inviolable+that+reason+shall+regulate+the+will+that+truth+shall+prevail+over+error%22 (1955)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Sept. 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 326) p. 38
Vincent is referring to his former relation with Sien, in The Hague
1880s, 1883

Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
(Buch II) (1893)

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 10
Context: 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.

Hermetic and Alchemical Writings http://books.google.com/books?id=_Q0MAAAAIAAJ& (1894), edited by Arthur Edward Waite; Coelum Philosophorum or Book of Vexations, originally 1543