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Who really said it

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

Written by Mary Wollstonecraft 1759–1797 · English writer & philosopher, foundational feminist
Verified Free to reuse

From “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792), Chapter IV. Answering Rousseau, Wollstonecraft wrote: “This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.” The popular version simply swaps the pronoun “them” for “women” and softens the semicolon to a comma — a light modernization of a genuine line.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves” Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ch. IV (1792). Original: "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."

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Provenance

The source

Work
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Author
Mary Wollstonecraft
Location
Chapter IV, first published 1792
Original wording
“power over men; but over themselves” (“them,” not “women”)

‘Educate women like men,’ says Rousseau, ‘and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.’ This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

The words in the shared quote are Wollstonecraft’s; the widely circulated form replaces “them” with “women” and a semicolon with a comma.

Read Chapter IV on Wikisource

How we verified this

  • The full text of Chapter IV on Wikisource contains the line verbatim: “I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.”
  • The quotation archive WIST logs it to “Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ch. 4 (1792)” and notes it is “typically shortened” to the “women” wording.
  • The line answers Rousseau directly — Wollstonecraft quotes his claim that educated women will have “less power” over men, then turns it: self-command, not dominion, is the aim.
Public domain

“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” was first published in 1792, so both the original text and this passage are firmly in the public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

Who it’s wrongly credited to

The attribution to Wollstonecraft is correct, but two things go astray online: who said it, and its exact words.

Mary Shelley her daughter

The line is regularly credited to Mary Shelley — Wollstonecraft’s daughter — including on a widely shared Goodreads quote page and various blogs. Shelley was an infant when her mother died in 1797 and never wrote it; the mother-daughter connection simply invites the mix-up.

The popular “women” version

Wollstonecraft’s original says “I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves” (per Wikisource, ch. IV). The circulating form replaces “them” with “women” and the semicolon with a comma — a faithful modernization, not a distortion of meaning.

The words are Mary Wollstonecraft’s, written in 1792 in Chapter IV of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — not Mary Shelley’s, and only lightly reworded.

Context

Why it mattered

Wollstonecraft frames the line as a direct rebuttal to Rousseau, who had argued that educating women would only make them “resemble our sex” and so lose their power over men. Her answer inverts the whole premise: the goal is not for women to rule men, but to govern themselves — autonomy, not dominion.

The sentiment recurs across the book. A chapter later she presses the same idea in different words: women should contend for equality, “not empire.”

Not power over men — power over themselves.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch. IVWikisource

Full public-domain text of the chapter containing the line.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (full text)Project Gutenberg

Complete 1792 treatise, free to read and download.
Wollstonecraft, Vindication ch. 4 (1792)WIST Quotations

Sourced quotation record noting the original vs. shortened wording.
A Vindication of the Rights of WomanWikipedia

Background on the work, its arguments, and reception.
Mary WollstonecraftBritannica

Biography of the author and her place in feminist thought.
Mary Wollstonecraft quotesGoodreads

Collected quotations attributed to Wollstonecraft (attribution reference).

The author

About Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

1759–1797 · English writer, philosopher & pioneering feminist

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and philosopher whose 1792 treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a founding text of feminist thought, arguing that women appear inferior only because they are denied education. She died in 1797, days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, the future author of Frankenstein — a family link that fuels the frequent misattribution of this very quote.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter IV (London: J. Johnson, 1792).

MLA (9th ed.)

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. J. Johnson, 1792.

APA (7th ed.)

Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). A vindication of the rights of woman. J. Johnson.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-do-not-wish-women-to-have-power-over-men-but-over

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