Frances Wright
Frances Wright
Frances Wrightalso 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 l, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation. She inteded to create an egalitarian place, but it lasted only three years. Her Views of Society and Manners in Americabrought her the most attention as a critique of the new nation...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
may causes unseen
Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
soul ease virtuous
I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.
law curiosity mind
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.
ridiculous credulity
Credulity is always ridiculous.
christmas pet littles
Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.
spiritual teacher book
... 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.
education wise religious
... 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?
leadership men bird
Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.
heart ignorance thinking
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!
mind church analysis
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!
happiness government people
... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.
errors imagination facts
Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.
mean exercise men
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.
hypocrisy promise useless
it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises.