“Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.”

I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before.

Men of genius and talents have started out of a class, in which women have never yet been placed.

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?

Only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves.

Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.

Like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty.

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.

I never wanted but your heart-that gone, you have nothing more to give.

They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

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

She would stand and behold the waves rolling, and think of the voice that could still the tumultuous deep.

Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart.

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.

Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

If an advertiser can use that information to home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what’s to stop a Fascist government from doing the same?

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Happy it is when the interest which the government has in the preservation of its own power, coincides with a proper distribution of the public burthens, and tends to guard the least wealthy part of the community from oppression!

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.