Quote#Freedom
Changes that are from better to worse can originate only in…
Quote byFrances Wright · 1795–1852
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Independence Day speech (1828).
English (original)
Changes that are from better to worse can originate only in ignorance, and are ever amended so soon as experience has substantiated their mischief. Where men then are free to consult experience they will correct their practice, and make changes for the better.
— Frances Wright
More from Frances Wright
The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals.
To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that …
Another revolution! Naples free and all of Italy in insurrection! How wonderful has been the march of the human mind in these last thirty years … so may it be till the last link of the chains of slavery is broken and the banner of freedom …
Is not an hereditary nobility inconsistent with liberty? I will ask more, is it not inconsistent with public virtue?
If imperfect in any or all of its parts, it bears within it a perfect principle — the principle of improvement. And, let us observe, that this principle is all that we can ever know of perfection. Knowledge, and all the blessings which …
I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of your sex instead of poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and …