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It is for Americans, more especially to nourish a nobler sentiment; one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country, not because it is their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty.

— Frances Wright

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Source, in full

Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182 (Full text online at Wikisource)

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Freedom

More quotes by Frances Wright

I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.

From the era which dates the national existence of the American people, dates also a mighty step in the march of human knowledge.

Independence Day speech (1828)

We detect … throughout the whole of things — in the operations of nature, of human society, and in those of our own internal percipient and sentient soul — two master energies.

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

A Few Days in Athens (1822)

The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frances Wright (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.