Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

Bad company corrupts good character.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

Unfaithfulness in public stations is deeply criminal …. There is too much corruption even at this infant stage of our republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not infamous.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station.

Cities are ruined when they were unable to distinguish worthless citizens from virtuous ones.

Great men are almost always bad men.

There are certain seasons in the course of human affairs, when Genius, Virtue, and Patriotism, seems to nod over the vices of the times.

When the religion is subjected to restriction, evil, crime, corruption and pornography become spread everywhere

Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and the Godless and all who love lies and commit them.

Tolerating organized crime promotes the cheap philosophy that everything is a racket. It promotes cynicism among adults. It contributes to the confusion of the young and to the increase of juvenile delinquency.

Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds, to destroy them.

Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.

Vice is its own reward.

Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them.

Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts every heart, and eradicates every virtue. Fly! wherefore dost thou linger? Fly, cast not one look behind thee; nor let even thy thought return to the accursed evil for a moment.

When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise?

No wicked man knows happiness, and least of all the seducer of others.

Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?

Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors.