As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40
“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 79.
“He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.”
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation
Not Disraeli but La Rochefoucauld; it is Maxim 308 in his Reflections.
Misattributed
On a fait une vertu de la modération pour borner l’ambition des grands hommes, et pour consoler les gens médiocres de leur peu de fortune, et de leur peu de mérite.
Maxim 308.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.”
Thorold, in Ch. 2 : The Witches
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)
Context: Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.
“It was clear to me that men and women were equal — if not more so.”
A joke used during his campaign speeches, about childhood impressions of hearing his parents arguing; as quoted in "Gore Campaign, Trailing Among Women, Sharpens Its Pitch to Them" by Melinda Henneberger in The New York Times (6 July 1999) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DE1E3DF935A35754C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
As quoted in "The 2000 Campaign : The Vice President" by David Barstow in The New York Times (12 August 2000) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404EFD6153FF931A2575BC0A9669C8B63.
Variant: When my sister and I were growing up, there was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so.
From a letter to Harold Preece (c. December 1928)
Letters
Context: I could name all day, those women I deem great in Greece alone and the records would scarcely be complete. And what of Joan of Arc and Emma Goldman? Kate Richards O’Hare and Sarah Bernhardt? Katherine the Great and Elizabeth Barrett Browning? H. D. and Sara Teasdale? Isibella of Spain who pawned her gems that Columbus might sail, and Edna St. Vincent Millay? And that queen, Marie, I think her name was, of some small province - Hungary I believe - who fought Prussia and Russia so long and so bitterly. And Rome – oh, the list is endless there, also - most of them were glorified harlots but better be a glorified harlot than a drab and moral drone, such as the text books teach us woman should be. Woman have always been the inspiration of men, and just as there are thousands of unknown great ones among men, there have been countless women whose names have never been blazoned across the stars, but who have inspired men on to glory. And as for their fickleness – as long as men write the literature of the world, they will rant about the unfaithfulness of the fair sex, forgetting their own infidelities. Men are as fickle as women. Women have been kept in servitude so long that if they lack in discernment and intellect it is scarcely their fault.
Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 197.
