Quotes by Mary Astell

"If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?"

"Strip him of equipage and fortune, and such things as only dazzle our eyes and imaginations, but don't in any measure affect our reason or cause a reverence in our hearts, and the poor creature sinks beneath our notice, because not supported by real worth."

"If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, how comes it to be so in a family? Or if in a family why not in a state? Since no reason alleg'd for the one that will not hold more strongly than the other... If all men are born free, how is it that women are born slaves? As they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men, be the perfect condition of slavery?"