Vindication Quotes

• Our goal is not victory of might but the vindication of right - not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

  John F. Kennedy

  Freedom, Goal, Victory

  Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation, delivered 22 October 1962

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• Truth is generally the best vindication against slander

  Abraham Lincoln

  Truth, Honesty, Libel

  Gordon Leidner, Abraham Lincoln (2009). “Abraham Lincoln: Quotes, Quips, and Speeches”, p.37, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• Humility recognizes that no one can change someone else, but with faith, effort, and the help of God, we can undergo our own mighty change of heart.

  L. Whitney Clayton

  Heart, Humility, Effort

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• What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Compassion, Rose

  Letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, 24 Jan. 1786

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• No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Happiness, Mistake, Men

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women & a Vindication of the Rights of Men”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Sex, Women, Thinking

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, World

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli (1995). “Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints”, p.149, Cambridge University Press

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• When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Wise, Innovation, Prejudice

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.52, Booklassic

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• I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Heart, Mind, Wish

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2012). “Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria”, p.303, Broadview Press

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• It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Time, Female, Revolution

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.113, Oxford University Press

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• In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, Accomplishment, Understanding

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• [I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Beautiful, Sex, Gentle

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (1999). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.95, Oxford Paperbacks

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• We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands.

  Robert Toombs

  Rights, Hands, Long

  Robert Augustus Toombs (1860). “Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs: On the Crisis. Delivered Before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, 1860”, p.3

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• To the rest of us the supreme vindication of the scholar's view lies in their invincible allegiance to the Jewish heritage - a steadfastness that has been matched only by that of their rescuers.

  Henrietta Szold

  Lying, Views, Heritage

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• Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

  Jalal Talabani

  Rights, Justice, Individual

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• In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Character, Age, Popular Song

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.29, Booklassic

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  Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Women, Mother And Daughter, Mind

  1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pt.1, ch.2.

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• Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Beauty, Women, Infancy Is

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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  I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Life, Strong Women, Independent

  "The original suffragette: the extraordinary Mary Wollstonecraft" by Bee Rowlatt, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2015.

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• IT has been observed by several gentlemen, in vindication of this motion, that if it should be carried, neither my life, liberty, nor estate will be affected.

  Robert Walpole

  Gentleman, Liberty, Should

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• I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Love, Real, Men

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.72

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• If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Power, Literature, Dependence On Others

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Progress

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Literature, Rational, Exertion

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 3 (1792)

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• It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Intelligent, Men, Voice

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.107, Rowman & Littlefield

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