11 quotes
How many, how omnipotent are the interests which engage men to break the mental chains of women!
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
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.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
A Course of Popular Lectures (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!
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine; enquire. Look into the nature of things.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
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.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
But your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
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.
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.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)
Your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it.
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)