Quotes about marriage
page 5

“The marriage-bed is the most degenerating influence of the social order.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Alice Groff, "The Marriage Bed", The Woman Rebel, V.I No. 5, p. 39 (edited by Margaret Sanger)
Misattributed

“All my life I have tried to do too many different things. I wonder if this is not a perpetual dilemma for women. A man enters on a job or profession, needs to stick to it to earn his living, and is unlikely to have to change it on marriage. For a woman marriage presents not only practical problems, but she finds herself emotionally pulled all ways, and tends by tradition and impulse to put the needs of others before her own. What is more, opening her eyes on the world, she feels intensely responsible for setting it to rights.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. IX

Life, Women, World, Way

“He treats people as objects for manipulation.One part of this orientation was cogently expressed by Dorothy Schiff, one-time owner, publisher and sole stock holder of the New York Post, and for many years one of America's most powerful women. In a published interview she commented, "Most people to me are nothing but personnel problems."Discussing her personal life, she commented, "Unforeseen problems always arise in my marriages. Maybe very common problems, but they always take me by surprise." When the interviewer asked her what sort of problems she was referring to, she replied, "That the other person has needs …"”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The "Secrets" of Success, pp. 41–42
The New Male (1979)

Life, Women, People, Problem

“I found out Scott (Brown) is anti-union and I’m a Teamster guy. I found out he’s also against gay marriage, and I say if you love someone, you should have the same rights no matter who you are.”

Micky Ward

Reported in Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, Report: Boxer Micky Ward cancels planned endorsement of Scott Brown, Boston.com, 31-8-2012

Love, Guy

“You know not that the earth was given in marriage to the sun, and that earth it is who sends us forth to the mountain and the desert.
There is a gulf that yawns between those who love Him and those who hate Him, between those who believe and those who do not believe.
But when the years have bridged that gulf you shall know that He who lived in us is deathless, that He was the Son of God even as we are the children of God; that He was born of a virgin even as we are born of the husbandless earth.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

Love, God, Hate, Children

“In a word, the home is a little dull. When you have got a woman in a box, and you pay rent on the box, her relationship to you insensibly changes character. It loses the fine excitement of democracy. It ceases to be companionship, for companionship is only possible in a democracy. It is no longer a sharing of life together—it is a breaking of life apart. Half a life—cooking, clothes, and children; half a life—business, politics, and baseball. It doesn’t make much difference which is the poorer half. Either half, when it comes to life, is very near to none at all.Of course, this artificial distinction does not strictly obtain in any particular marriage. There is an attempt to break it down. It is an honourable attempt. But our civilization is nevertheless built on that distinction, In order to break down that distinction utterly, it will be necessary to break down all the codes and restrictions and prejudices that keep women out of the great world. It is in the great world that a man finds his sweetheart, and in that narrow little box outside of the world that he loses her. When she has left that box and gone back into the great world, a citizen and a worker, then with surprise and delight he will discover her again, and never let her go.”

Floyd Dell (1887–1969) novelist, poet, playwright, critic, editor

[Dell, Floyd, Feminism for Men, The Masses, New York, 1914]

Life, Women, Children, World

“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”

John Updike book Couples

Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 1

Teachers

“The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication. The Hindus have their social evils. But there is relieving feature about them-namely, that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 233

Age, Law, Girl, Boy

“When I left school, I had a list of priorities headed by 'marriage' and 'children'. That is how, I suppose, as a woman, you are brought up to think. At the same time, as I grew older, I told myself that if it happens, it happens, and that will be fine, but if it doesn't, that will be fine, too.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Women's Weekly interview (2006)

Children, School, Thinking, Time

“There are more love marriages in the United States than in any other country, but Americans are also given to quick and frequent divorces.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Love, Country

“The truth is, the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.”

Cokie Roberts (1943–2019) American journalist

Real Time with Bill Maher (6 August 2004)

People, Truth

“Let us examine therefore, in summary fashion, the laws whereby a woman in Israel might obtain a divorce by death and re-marry. The laws calling for the death penalty against the man. To list these without taking time to give all the references, the Biblical references, which can be given although we dealt with many of them:
1. Adultery, 2. Rape, 3. Incest, 4. Homosexuality or sodomy, 5. Bestiality, 6. Premeditated Murder, 7. Smiting Father or Mother, 8. Death of a woman from miscarriage due to assault and battery, 9. Sacrificing children to Molech, 10. Cursing Father or Mother, 11. Kidnapping, 12. Being a wizard, 13. Being a false prophet or dreamer, 14. Apostacy, 15. Sacrificing to other Gods, 16. Refusing to follow the decision of judges, 17. Blasphemy, 18. Transgressing the Covenant.
In other words, for all these offenses, a woman gained a divorce by death. On the other hand, a divorce by death was obtainable by men because of the following death penalties cited for women: 1. Unchastity before marriage, 2. Adultery after marriage, 3. Prostituion by a priests daughter, 4. Bestiality, 5. Being a witch or a sorceress, 6. Transgressing the covenant, and 7. Incest.
Now it is obvious that that the list for men is more than twice as long. And it is obvious that some of the death penalties for men would also apply to women, as for example murder. But many of the crimes that are cited for men such as rape and kidnapping, while it is conceivable that the woman would be guilty of those it is not very likely. Those are primarily masculine offenses.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Death, Women, Men, God

“So she prays for a prankster and lust in the marriage bed
And he waits till she can give
And he waits and he waits.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

Lust, a song on a couple's healing after trauma.
Songs

Waiting

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Children, World, Girl, Lovers

“I couldn't advise others to try such a long distance marriage, but for us it works perfectly. We are three thousand miles apart, it is true, but the big thing is that we each have our careers without interference from the other. My husband can't leave his practice and I can't leave Hollywood, but neither of us has any thought of giving up either the career or each other. Some day we shall again live in our 'honeymoon' apartment - but in the meantime, for us, this is the best possible way.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

The Girl Nobody Knows; New Movie Magazine, Reginald Taviner (October 1932) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/new-movie-magazine-october-1932/.

Way

“Under Shahjahan, Akbar's Sulehkul was almost reversed. During his reign temples were destroyed in Gujarat, Banaras and Allahabad, and at Orchha. Like Jahangir he stopped marriages between Muslim girls and Hindu men. Apostasy from Islam again became a capital crime in accordance with the tenets of the Shariat. During the reign of Shahjahan titles in use among Khalifas and Ghaznavids were revived.”

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Men, Girl

“Gay marriage is a policy which has been pursued by the metro elite gay activists and needs to be put into the same bin”

Nadine Dorries (1957) British politician

as reform of the House of Lords Comment http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2012/05/nadine-dorries-mp-jettison-lords-reform-jettison-gay-marriage-and-focus-on-jobs-crime-and-household-.html in article published on the CosnservativeHome website, 6 May 2012

Housing

“When divorces meant marriage no longer provided security for a lifetime, women adjusted by focusing on careers as empowerment. But when the sacrifice of a career met the sacrifices in a career, the fantasy of a career became the reality of trade-offs. Women developed career ambivalence.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 101.

Women, Reality

“She calls it marriage now; such name
She chooses to conceal her shame.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IV, p. 117

“Ah, by what Fates
Hath he been toss'd? what Battles he relates!
Were I not fix'd, did not my changeless Vow
All thoughts of second Marriage dis-allow,
Since my first Love by Death deceiv'd me…
I had perhaps with this one Crime comply'd.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Love, Death, Fate

“The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm-rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you'll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric and whether you'll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, make your life yours. And everything - everything - will be on it.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

Introduction to Crash Course World History https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yocja_N5s1I&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9 YouTube

Life, World, School, Communication

“I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors, we make pictures — and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn't feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighbourhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends — and not impose one upon the other.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul Newman (1975) by Charles Hamblett ISBN 0-491-01761-8, p. 176

Men, People, Feeling, Game

“When women are at the height of their beauty power and exercise it, we call it marriage. When men are at the height of their success power and exercise it, we call it a mid-life crisis.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 103.

Life, Women, Men, Beauty

“I don't believe in marriage, myself. It's an arbitrary human concept with no reality beyond that. It isn't always necessarily romantic; it is often political. Even if you believe in God, and swear to love one another for better or worse, till death do you part, none of that is assured. In fact, evangelicals are statistically more likely to get divorced than people with no religion.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Love, Death, God, People

“Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Ylla (1950)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)

People

“The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman… I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an immortal being—every employment was closed to me, except those of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Remark made at a National Woman's Rights Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. (1855) as quoted in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972) by Miriam Schnier

Life, Women, Education, Religion

“The institution of marriage is obsolete”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Jane Would Have Been a Star Even as a Smith. Associated Press/Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 30 June 1963 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=230eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OcoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3114,5294465&dq=the-institution-of-marriage-is-obsolete+fonda&hl=en

“Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Protecting Marriage From Judicial Tyranny
LewRockwell.com
2004-07-22
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul197.html
2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility, People

“You can't build marriage on a foundation of selfish hedonism, because that would be to promise people only roses, and marriage is also thorns.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Party for the President, September 2, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_09_02partypresident.htm. 2009

People, Selfishness

“Yes, throughout our marriage [with Gerhard Richter during 1982 - 1993], we influenced each other mutually. We didn't have a student-teacher kind of relationship.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

Teachers

“Have you seen a room from which faith has gone?…Like a marriage from which love has gone…And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.”

Graham Greene The Potting Shed

The Potting Shed (1957)

Love, Faith, Patience

“Communist writers likewise maintain that the Judaic-Christian code of ethics is "class" morality. By this they mean that the Ten Commandments and the ethics of Christianity were created to protect private property and the property class. To show the lengths to which Communist writers have gone to defend this view we will mention several of their favorite interpretations of the Ten Commandments. They believe that "Honor thy Father and thy Mother" was created by the early Hebrews to emphasize to their children the fact that they were the private property of their parents. "Thou shalt not kill" was attributed to the belief of the dominant class that their bodies were private property and therefore they should be protected along with other property rights. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" were said to have been created to implement the idea that a husband was the master of the home and the wife was strictly private property belonging to him. This last line of reasoning led to some catastrophic consequences when the Communists came into power in Russia. In their anxiety to make women "equal with men" and prevent them from becoming private property, they degraded womankind to the lowest and most primitive level. Some Communist leaders advocated complete libertinism and promiscuity to replace marriage and the family.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Women, Men, Children, Family

“After seven years of marriage,
He wanted out.
Now after seven months of freedom,
It's clear that there's no doubt.She's gonna make it,
And he never will.
He's at the foot of the mountain,
And she's over that hill.
He's sinkin' at sea,
And her sails are filled.
She's gonna make it,
And he never will.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

She's Gonna Make It, written by Kent Blazy, Kim Williams, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Mountain, Freedom, Sea

“An efficient marriage market develops ‘‘shadow’’ prices to guide participants to marriages that will maximize their expected well-being. These prices, central to the analysis in this chapter and the subsequent one, are responsible for the more powerful implications found in these chapters than in traditional discussions of marriage. Some other approaches are evaluated in Chapter 4.”

Gary S. Becker book A Treatise on the Family

Source: A Treatise on the Family, 1981, p. 39

“An incestuous marriage establishes no new bonds between unrelated groups; it is an absurd denial to the right to increase the number of people whom one can trust. Marriages in simple societies are… usually alliances between families rather than romantic arrangements between individuals.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

p, 125
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

People, Family

“I am guilty that I raised your hopes about wedding, marriage, children and family, and many other things.”

Ziad Jarrah (1975–2001) September 11th hijacker

Letter to Aysel Şengün (2001)

Children, Family, Hope, Wedding

“Those who marry God can become domesticated too—it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves—it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”

Graham Greene book A Burnt-Out Case

Pt. 1, ch. 1, sct. 2
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)

Love, God, World, Night

“[The Cinderella Complex] used to hit girls of sixteen or seventeen, preventing them, often, from going to college, hastening them into early marriages. Now it tends to hit women after college—after they've been out in the world awhile. When the first thrill of freedom subsides and anxiety rises to take its place, they begin to be tugged by that old yearning for safety: the wish to be saved.”

Colette Dowling (1938)

Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), pp. 69–70

Women, World, Girl, Freedom

“The most important thing about marriage is that the man must not let the woman feel downtrodden simply because she is a woman and he is a man.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Interview with the Al-Mar'a magazine in 1978, quoted in Price of Honor (2002) by Jane Goodwin.

Feeling

“It wasn't easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid. And Mariam was afraid.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mariam, p. 98
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Way, Cats, Past, Housing

“I said to him [Hugh Dowding], "Well, as you eat meat, as you are a peer and have a seat in the House of Lords, could you do something about getting it humanely killed?" He said, "Well, isn't it?" I said, "I'm asking you." Well, we had a very, very happy marriage, and he never went anywhere without telling me where he was going. He'd nearly always say, "Look, can't you get out of what you are doing and come too?" And on three occasions he didn't tell me where he was going, he had just gone. He came back very depressed and didn't seem to want to talk about whatever it was. I wondered what was worrying him. When Sunday came, his usual salted beef was served, a dish that he liked very much. And he stood up to carve it, then he sat down, and he said, "What is it you're eating?" "Oh," I said, "well, as you know, it's a vegetarian dish." He said, "Would you have enough for me to have some? And don't ever get meat in this house for me again!" And he became a vegetarian then and there, and was one for about seventeen years till his death. … Well, if you're going to speak in the House of Lords, you've jolly well got to know your facts. Yes, he'd been to three slaughterhouses and was appalled.”

Muriel Dowding, Baroness Dowding (1908–1993) British noble

Source: Interview by Rynn Berry, pp. 137-38

Death, Housing, Happiness

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Morality and literature,” p. 164
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Beauty, Girl, Literature

“Let all thy joys be as the month of May
And all thy days be as a marriage day:
Let sorrow, sickness, and a troubled mind
Be stranger to thee.”

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English poet

To a Bride.

Joy

“Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce … That would be sad. If two people were married and they were really and they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-annotated-wisdom-of-louis-c-k/

People, Sadness, Time

“According to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies 'must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided'. They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is however 'objectively disordered' and homosexual practices are 'sins gravely contrary to chastity'.In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Doctrinal document Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, July 31, 2003
2003

Women, Men, Law, Exercises

“It's in the fight, in the striving, in the mountains unclimbed that fulfillment lies, so if you have nothing to strive for, you have nothing to make you happy. When it comes to "for better" or "for worse," "for better" is often harder on a marriage.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Mountain, Fight, Happiness

“Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you’re never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 100
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

Love, Parent

“Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it… or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right and wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 12, A Special Delivery, II

Love, Hate, Friendship, Pleasure

“There was very little that prevented the vandalism of 1793 from suddenly producing a second revolution as marvelous as the first was horrible. The whole human race was approaching its release; the civilized, barbarian, and savage order would have disappeared forever if the Convention, which trampled down all prejudices, had not bowed down before the only one that had to be destroyed, the institution of marriage.”

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) French utopian socialist and philosopher

Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 304-5
New Amorous World

“Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law… Just who do we think we are?”

John Roberts (1955) Chief Justice of the United States

Dissent on Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling — Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015)

Law, Thinking

“Marriage is fine as an institution, but bad as a habit”

Buster Keaton (1895–1966) American actor and filmmaker

Interview in Motion Picture (October 1921) "Six Interviews with Buster Keaton" http://www.silentera.com/taylorology/issues/Taylor68.txt

“It doesn't matter that [Christians] aren't paying attention to their religious doctrine, because marriage is not a sacred institution; it's a human invention. I'm married for the same reason other atheists like Penn Jillette are; it's partly for tax purposes, but also rights for partnership, possession, deathbed presence, inheritance and other benefits that civil unions just don't provide. But even if we made civil unions exactly identical to marriage, why can't we call it a marriage? "Because the Bible defines a marriage as one man and one woman". No, it doesn't! It is so irritating when everybody says that, because it's so wrong. First of all, the Bible doesn't define marriage at all. Secondly, if it did, that's not the description that it gives; the way the Bible describes marriage is creepy, criminal and cruel. According to the Bible, anyone you "cleave into" more than once becomes your bride if she happens to be living with you, and there's no limit on how many of them you can have, so it seems to me that the Bible defines marriage as one man and however many women that man can afford to keep in his house.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Women, Way, Housing, Partnership

“We have these two different understandings of human sexuality: the hedonistic, self-indulgent understanding, the self-interested one; and the one that has procreation at its heart, and that is characterized by the need to acknowledge responsibility and obligation. And just so no one will miss the point: the reason that homosexuality epitomizes the [first] one is that homosexuals are not haunted by the prospect or possibility of procreation — because they're simply not capable of it. I think this is pretty obvious, isn't it? And it was understood in human society at one point that if you're not capable of procreation, marriage doesn't have anything to do with you, because marriage is about procreation.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Rally in defense of marriage, Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_05_14boston.htm. 2009

Understanding, Thinking, Heart

“I didn't go into this marriage with the idea of just trying it out. I fell in love and wanted to make a new life with him. A lot of people said to me, "How could you go out with someone with his past?" But I've always believed that everyone deserves a second chance. I fell in love with who he was when I met him: a strong man who could admit his weaknesses and work through them.”

Denise Richards (1971) American actress and model

Of her ex-husband, Charlie Sheen
Red Book interview

Love, Life, People, Idea

“What can I do if everyone from the president to a junior bureaucrat is dying to convict me. If I am such a criminal, what was I doing outside jail before my marriage to Benazir?”

Asif Ali Zardari (1955) politician in Pakistan

Zardari at an interview of India Today, responding about his corruption charges http://m.indiatoday.in/story/asif-zardari-a-man-with-an-incredibly-attractive-personality/1/319298.html

“Government policy, legislation on the family and marriage, and propaganda should not encourage an increase in the birth rates of advanced countries while demanding that it be curtailed in underdeveloped countries that are receiving assistance. Such a two-faced game would produce nothing but bitterness and nationalism.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Hunger and Overpopulation (and the Psychology of Racism)

Family, Game, Birth, Country

“If people need a book to tell them that in marriage kindness and forbearance are necessary, and that the sexual act is happier when it is undertaken to give pleasure as well as to receive it, these books are what they want. Possibly people so lacking in understanding of themselves and others do not mind being addressed in the coarse, grainy prose of the marriage counselor.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

People, Pleasure, Books, Understanding

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XXI Race Improvement

Children, Health, World, Feeling

“Grafenwalder shoots a sidelong glance at Ursula Goodglass, wondering what their marriage must be like. Clearly sex isn’t in the cards, but he doubts that it was ever the main interest in their lives. Games, especially those of prestige and subterfuge, are amongst the chief entertainments of the Rust Belt moneyed.”

Alastair Reynolds (1966) British novelist and astronomer

Grafenwalder’s Bestiary (p. 212)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

Money, Sex, Game

“[When asked how he's keeping his 12-year marriage to wife Jill fresh] Hookers, drugs. We’re playing the field right now.”

Harry Connick, Jr. (1967) American singer, conductor, pianist, actor, and composer

ExtraTV interview, November 2006 http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2006/11/happily_ever_after_catherine_a.html

“If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up!”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna says it's time US says “I do” to gay marriage, The Sunday Times, 2008-11-09 http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/International/sundaytimesinternational-07.html,

Support

“…the eyes, black, were all East - houris, harems, beds scented with Biblical spices; nose and lips were pan-Mediterranean. Her body…was that of the Shulamite and Italian film stars. The décolletage, with its promise of round, brown, infinitely smooth, vertiginous sensual treasure, was a torment to the blood…. Many had promised marriage, but all had gone home, the promise unfulfilled…. quite considerable capacity for all kinds of sensuous pleasure.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Pleasure, Home, Star

“To opine that, unknown to humans, God had hitherto created some people to be homosexuals and lesbians (i. e., sexual orientations) is tantamount to creating God in our own image and introducing a cancerous element into the fabric of the African understanding of marriage and family.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

God, People, Family, Understanding

“Well, despite what many gay “marriage” activists say, having two mummies or two daddies does not replace God’s design of one mum and one dad. God designed marriage—for one man and one woman—from the very beginning and blessed this union and said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This is God’s design for the family! And since God is the all-wise, all-knowing Creator, what He designed is obviously the only true way for us, not what sinful, fallible human beings try to make. Of course, no family is perfect—we live in a fallen world that is groaning from sin—but we are not at liberty to change the design for marriage and family that was given to us by our Creator. When we do, disaster is around the corner. I encourage you to be bold in standing on God’s Word and refusing to compromise with man’s ideas about what a marriage or a family should look like. We need to unashamedly uphold the design given to us by our Creator.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Gay “Marriage”—Tragic for America’s Children https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/07/13/gay-marriage-tragic-americas-children/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 13, 2015) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, World, Family, Way

“The analysis of engineering systems and the understanding of economic structure have advanced since then, and the time is now more ripe to bring these topics into a potentially fruitful marriage.”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. v

Understanding, Time

“I am not asking for conformity. I am dedicated to the two-party system, and you know which party I belong to.
I do not want a honeymoon with you. I want a good marriage. I want progress, and I want problemsolving which requires my best efforts and also your best efforts. I have no need to learn how Congress speaks for the people. As President, I intend to listen. But I also intend to listen to the people themselves — all the people — as I promised last Friday. I want to be sure that we are all tuned in to the real voice of America.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)

People, Effort, Learning

“The secret of a long marriage is shaving your legs every day... because it shows you still care.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Style Network (December 15, 2006)
2007, 2008

Secret

“The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Help

“Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Lady Chatterly's Trial (The Old Bailey, 20 October - 2 November 1960)", p. 409
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Home, Literature

“Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Political Precepts
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Business

“Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Life, Children, Peace

“After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage!”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

Wedding, Love

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life, Children, World, Peace

“There is a greater and thicker plot around this issue which has undermined my confidence in this relationship. The marriage has been hijacked and there is an apparent active political hand that is now driving the processes. State security agents have weighed in to force and direct proceedings, which has resulted in everything regarding this relationship now taking place on camera. The intention is clear: to inflict maximum damage on my person and character for political gain.”

Morgan Tsvangirai (1952–2018) former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe

On his divorce http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068594/Zimbabwe-prime-minister-Morgan-Tsvangirai-divorces-wife-12-DAYS.html

Confidence, Personality

“It returns us to the dark ages of human oppression, which America was founded to remove humanity from, and it is the whole point of the push for homosexual marriage and homosexual rights. The aim is not compassion for homosexuals, respect for homosexuals and all of this; the aim in the mind of these hardheaded, calculating, leftist, Communist, totalitarians is to destroy the family and to establish the notion that once you have seized power there is no limit whatsoever to what you can do. If you want to tolerate abuses then those abuses can be imposed upon the people. Once you establish that, the abuses are then not going to be confined to egregious outrages like this; those abuses are going to be committed against the whole society and they will in the end include the murder of the masses as has occurred in all Communist regimes that existed.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

2013-04-12
The Talk to Solomon Show Live, quoted in * 2013-04-12
Keyes: Gay Marriage Will Lead to Communism and 'The Murder of the Masses'
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/keyes-gay-marriage-will-lead-communism-and-murder-masses
2009

People, Age, Family

“[A]s I regularly emphasize when discussing Islam, no one is suffering under its doctrine more than Muslims themselves: Muslim jihadists primarily kill other Muslims. And the laws against apostasy, blasphemy, idolatry, and other forms of peaceful expression diminish the freedoms of Muslims far more than those of non-Muslims living in the West. Liberals like [Glenn] Greenwald, who are so eager to swing the flail of Islamophobia, display a sickening insensitivity to the plight of women, homosexuals, and freethinkers throughout the Muslim world. At this moment, millions of women and girls have been abandoned to illiteracy, compulsory marriage, and lives of slavery and abuse under the guise of “multiculturalism” and “religious sensitivity.” And the most liberal Muslim minds are forced into hiding. The best way to address this problem is by no means obvious. But lying about its cause, and defaming those who speak honestly in defense of a global civil society, seems a very unlikely path to a solution.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Reponse to controverys https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/response-to-controversy (June 21, 2014) 2010s

Women, World, Peace, Law

“There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad. And while a lot of women would probably consider it better to have the man they care about rip-off other women if he must but hurry home again, I think I'd rather he be concerned about the survival of the people he sleeps with, even those who are not me. Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all, and if he's going to have an experience in which I can't share, then I'd rather it be a good one, so if there are any benefits to trickle down the spout they'll be the kind I'd want.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Women, Men, People, Faith

“I feel like my marriage came apart because of me, not because of anyone else. I can take responsibility. I knew I was a good mom. I thought I was adult enough to be a wife and a mother, but really I wasn't. Tommy bore the brunt of that. It was this constant pressure and it was hard for both of us to take. We broke up when my son was a little more than 18 months old. I came out of a divorced home. I did what I knew, which was to take my son and leave.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

pg. 98-99
Pretty Mess book (2018)

Feeling, Home, Moms

“I know you're still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now, he said. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You're a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila No chance. -Babi”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Women, Men, War, Education

“Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.... That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Concurring, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 169-170 (1973).

Life, Family, Decision, Freedom

“Marriage is what marriage is. Marriage existed before there was a government. It's like, you know, handing up this and saying this glass of water is a glass of beer. Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it's not a glass of beer. It's a glass of water. And water is what water is. Marriage is what marriage is.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Santorum: Marriage Is Like Water, Not Beer
2011-08-09
Think Progress LGBT
Think Progress
Igor
Volsky
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/08/09/292121/santorum-marriage-is-like-water-not-beer/
2011-08-28

Beer, Water

“We want to be able to freely associate, without fear that our privacy, including the privacy of our intimate consensual relations, will be compromised by intrusive and abusive selective enforcement of laws or moral codes.
We want to be able to live with the person we choose in legally sanctioned arrangements or marriage, to be able to build and maintain families and raise children, with the full protections and benefits that attain to those relationships.
We want GLBT youth to have access to safe and inclusive education experiences, in both public and private educational institutions, no longer dispirited by judgmental, prejudicial systems that contribute to low self-esteem and leave them at risk. These are the basic rights and expectations yet to be achieved for GLBT people in this land of the free.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

America...You Kill Me

Children, People, Youth, Education

“I don't know how they do it but those two love each other so much. They're this husband and wife duo that work together all the time and yet I've never seen them have an argument. I've never seen them kind'of roll their eyes at each other. I've never seen anything like that. They are the perfect example of a fabulous marriage.”

Cat Deeley (1976) English television presenter, actress, singer and model

On Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo, in "So You Think You Can Dance" host Cat Deeley dishes on her colleagues.mp4 interview for The Los Angeles Times (May 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hekmnJWg1k

Love, Time, Perfection

“The truth is that the family, like marriage, is one of those institutions whose very importance renders them complex. Abstract ideas are the only simple ones, because they have little to do with life. The family is not the arbitrary creation of a legislator; it is a natural consequence of the division of the species into two sexes, of the human child's protracted helplessness, of maternal love which ministers to this helplessness, of paternal love which is far more artificial and recent in human history, and composed just as much of love for the mother as of that for the child.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Family Life

Love, Life, Truth, Family

“My dad A. D. King, Uncle MLK, and Granddaddy King passed on to me their beliefs on biblical marriage. Life is a human and civil right, so is procreative marriage… We must now go back to the beginning, starting with Genesis, and teach about God’s plan for marriage… It's time to start from scratch and lay the foundation all over again.”

Alveda King (1951) American, civil rights activist, Christian minister, conservative, pro-life activist, and author

Human Sexuality: It All Started With An Apple! http://www.priestsforlife.org/library/5154-and-it-all-started-with-an-apple (January 13, 2015)

Life, God, Time

“I revolted against this marriage of convenience, this marriage for money and wanted to marry only for love, out of a great passion.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Love, Money, Passion

“(First Bad Girl) Conservatives say gay marriage undermines the institution of marriage....(Second Bad Girl) The minute women got driver's licenses, marriage was doomed.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 21

Women, Girl

“More and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections. Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job. … Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.
In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.
You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

New Rules (2005)

Men, People, Books, School

“Mel and I genuinely get on. It's like another marriage. He is very straightforward and never loses his rag. I run around in a frenzy most of the time. London cabbies will say to me, 'Your mate Mel's a miserable bastard', but he's far more grounded than me.”

Griff Rhys Jones (1953) British actor and comedian

Michael Odell, "This much I know: Griff Rhys Jones", The Guardian, November 5 2006.
Talking about Mel Smith

Time

“Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Life

“Uncertainty over working conditions caused by mobility and deregulation, when it becomes endemic, tends to create new forms of psychological instability, giving rise to difficulty in forging coherent life-plans, including that of marriage.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Life

“Mama and Daddy King represent the best in manhood and womanhood, the best in a marriage, the kind of people we are trying to become.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the parents of her husband, in The Christian Science Monitor (2 July 1974)

People

“The Bible describes only the worst that a marriage can be, but never defines what a marriage should be.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

“I was not yet inclined to live the life of a celibate.... I have taken a young wife of honest but middle-class family although everyone tried to persuade me to make a court marriage. But I feared pride, that inherent vice of the nobility, particularly in that sex, and that is why I chose one who would not blush to see me take my brushes in hand. And to tell the truth it would have been hard for me to exchange the priceless treasure of liberty for the embraces of an old woman.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to his friend Peiresc, c. 1635; as quoted in Rubens and the Roman Circle, Huemer, p. 44
his second wife was Helena Fourment, the daughter of a silk merchant, Daniel Fourment; when Rubens married her in 1630 she was just
1625 - 1640

Life, Truth, Fear, Family