A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · ¶476

Many of those children whose conduct has been most narrowly watched, become the weakest men, because their instructors only instill certain notions into their minds, that have no other foundation than their authority; and if they are loved or respected, the mind is cramped in its exertions and wavering in its advances. The business of education in this case, is only to conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgment itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illuminated it themselves; and be, when they enter life, what their parents are at the close. They do not consider that the tree, and even the human body, does not strengthen its fibres till it has reached its full growth.

Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
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