Quotes about sex
page 8

“(After chatting about the Serbian sex machine invention and Karl said 'Did it have to be a woman or could they have got a gay fella in - butt plugs and that')..”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

On Sex

“Harry Dresden: Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, White Night (2007)

Death, Books, Parent, Appearance

“American feminism’s nose dive began when Kate Millet, that imploding beanbag of poisonous self-pity, declared Freud a sexist. Trying to build a sex theory without studying Freud, women have made nothing but mud pies.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 243

Women, Study

“We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with.”

James Blish book The Quincunx of Time

Source: The Quincunx of Time (1973), Chapter 10, “Weinbaum on Sinai” (p. 116)

“Most religions, and certainly the Abrahamic ones, have three features that are foreign to science. The most important is religion’s linkage to moral codes that define and enforce proper behavior, behavior supposedly reflecting God’s will. The second is the widespread belief in eternal reward and punishment: the notion that after death not just your fate but everyone else’s depends on adherence to conduct mandated by your religion. And the third is the notion of absolute truth: that the nature of your god, and what it wants, is unchanging. While some believers see their ability to fathom God’s nature as limited, and don’t accept the notion of a heaven or hell, the certainty of religious dogma is ar more absolute and far less provisional than the pronouncements of science.
This combination of certainty, morality, and universal punishment is toxic. It is what leads many believers not only to accept unenlightened views, like the disenfranchisement of women and gays, opposition to birth control, and intrusions into people’s private sex lives, but also to force those views on others, including their own children and society at large, and sometimes even to kill those who disagree.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 219-220

Death, Women, God, Fate

“Back then "cruel and unusual punishment" meant the rack and burning at the stake — both of those things that had been used in pre-Revolutionary America — but in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.”

Tom Clancy book Executive Orders

Executive Orders (1996), p. 613
1990s

Change

“When it comes to the traits we consider most important in a long-term mate, human beings are largely monomorphic. This is one of the most significant findings of these studies; however, it is easily overlooked when the discussion becomes fixated on traits that people consider less important but where sex differences are found. By shining a spotlight on these traits, we may create an inaccurate picture of our species, even though the differences are real. Our picture of human nature may be built on a foundation of exceptions to the rule. The rule — the fact that males and females in our species are surprisingly similar in many ways — may be relegated to the background. By taking genuine differences and then exaggerating their importance, our picture of our evolved nature may become a caricature: It may contain a recognizable grain of truth but distort its object.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013), p. 267

People, Truth, Way, Nature

“Few people in the world get to hit their bosses but those who do will tell you it is better than sex.”

Chetan Bhagat book One Night @ the Call Center

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 248

People, World

“I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby — I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters… "Betrayal"… "Confrontation"… "Management"… My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Milne, Act I
Night and Day (1978)

Life, Death, God, Way

“Reproducing sexually must improve an individual´s reproductive success or else sex would not persist… It is increasingly hard to understand how human beings came to be so clever without considering sexual competition.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 1. Human Nature

Understanding, Success

“I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

Foreword by Quentin Crisp to Conversations with my Elders by Boze Hadleigh (1986)

Error, Thinking

“Who causes war? War is caused by our primal fear of not surviving. This is a two-sex fear. And because the fear is so primal, we are easily seduced into exaggerating the evil intent of anyone [who] might threaten our survival. Why? One mistake of underestimating a threat could leave everyone wiped out; many mistakes of overestimating would just leave men wiped out.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 142.

Men, War, Fear, Evil

“Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.”

Seth Lloyd (1960) American engineer

Seth Lloyd, cited in: Michael Schmiechen (2009) Newton's Principia Revisited. p. 885

Life, World, Way, History

“But so far as the Hindus are concerned, this period was a prolonged spell of darkness which ended only when the Marathas and the Jats and the Sikhs broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the middle of the 18th century. The situation of the Hindus under Muslim rule is summed up by the author of Tãrîkh-i-Wassãf in the following words: “The vein of the zeal of religion beat high for the subjection of infidelity and destruction of idols… The Mohammadan forces began to kill and slaughter, on the right and the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islãm, and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of precious stones as well as a great variety of cloths… They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens and children of both sexes, more than pen can enumerate… In short, the Mohammadan army brought the country to utter ruin and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants and plundered the cities, and captured their off-springs, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was Somnãt. The fragments were conveyed to Dehlî and the entrance of the Jãmi‘ Masjid was paved with them so that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory… Praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Children, People, World, Religion

“Muslims still take their religion too seriously, whereas we have the good sense to blow it off. Catholics don’t follow the Pope. In overwhelming numbers they divorce, they have pre-marital sex, they masturbate. And unlike the Koran, no one here seriously considers following the Bible literally. Guys don't look over their fence on Sunday morning and see a neighbor mowing the lawn and think, "Working on Sunday? I really should kill him."… But, before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that, in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

"The South Park Mohammad controversy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUEaMA4gRIk Real Time with Bill Maher

Love, Women, People, Peace

“I was so tired of seeing these stupid, cheerful books about ageing. One of them even has this whole thing in it about how you are going to have the greatest sex of your life in your sixties and seventies. Which is just garbage.I thought about it and realised that there was one circumstance that you could have the best sex of your life in your sixties and seventies. That would be if you had never had sex until you were 60 or 70.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Quoted in Christopher Goodwin, "Get real – ageing’s not all Helen Mirren" http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article1466183.ece, Times Online (UK) (4 March 2007)

Life, Books, Age, Stupidity

“Theology is just like sex, the art of penetrating the mystery.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

Arts http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2007/06/arts.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 15/6/2007

Art

“One minute, he's just a teenage lad in Alaska having joyful unprotected sex, the next minute: 'Get to the Republican Convention!' I think that is the best safe sex message of all time: 'Use a condom, or become Republican!”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

MTV Video Music Awards (2008)

Thinking, Time

“New Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate.”

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

Sony press release, January 2007 http://www.sonybmg.com.au/news/details.do?newsId=20030829004111

“!-- This is my most misunderstood book, and I have devoted some attention to trying to understand why. … --> I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences … This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi 
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither
1950s

Books, Understanding

“Learned stickball as a formal education.
Lost a lot of fights
But it taught me how to lose O. K..
Oh, I heard about sex
But not enough.
I found you could dance
And still look tough anyway.
Oh yes I did.
I found out a man ain't just being macho.
Ate an awful lot of late night drive-in food, drank a lot of take home pay.
I thought I was the Duke of Earl
When I made it with a red-haired girl
In the Chevrolet.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Keeping the Faith.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

Education, Food, Home, Girl

“For a decade, feminists have drilled their disciples to say, “Rape is a crime of violence but not of sex.” This sugar-coated Shirley Temple nonsense has exposed young women to disaster. Misled by feminism, they do not expect rape from the nice boys from good homes who sit next to them in class.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 51

Women, Home, Boy

“The only thing more difficult than persuading someone else to start having sex with you is persuading yourself to stop.”

Jacob M. Appel book The Biology of Luck

The Biology of Luck (2013)

“The basic paradox about sex is that it always seems to be offering more than it can deliver. A glimpse of a girl undressing through a lighted bedroom window induces a vision of ecstatic delight, but in the actual process of persuading the girl into bed, the vision somehow evaporates.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 16

Girl, Light

“You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

" Limbaugh: The Left Sends Out "The Rape Police" Whenever There's Sex With "No Consent" (Also Known As Rape) http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/12/limbaugh-left-sends-out-rape-police-whenever-theres-sex-no-consent-also-known-rape/213787", Media Matters (October 12, 2016).

Understanding, Sense, Parting

“You've got a couple of same-sex guys kissing, do you "like" that? Well, that makes me want to throw up. To me, I would punch "vomit" not "like", but they don't give you that option on Facebook.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2013-07-08
Pat Robertson
The 700 Club
Television, quoted in * 2013-07-08
Robertson: Facebook Should Have 'Vomit' Button for Pictures of Gay Couples
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-facebook-should-have-vomit-button-pictures-gay-couples
Answering a viewer question from Tyza: "When we "like" things on Facebook, if it's something that goes against what is written in the Bible—such as pictures of same sex couples—is that considered condoning the behavior?"

Guy, Kiss

“Our claim is not that pair bonding is humanity’s singular mating pattern. Our claim instead is simply that the pair bond is the most common setting for sex and reproduction in our species, that it has been for a long time, and that this has left a deep imprint on our evolved nature.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 145

Nature, Time

“on genders of nouns: Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

“I am unclear what a "role model" is, but those who used the term seemed to be saying that teachers are people children tend to emulate. In any event, many Miamians must have thought their children would become homosexual if subjected to homosexual teachers.
That prompted me to ponder teachers I haven't seen, and scarcely thought about, for decades, and for the first time I reflected on how their sex lives had affected my own. My first thought was that it was curious, perhaps perverse, that I have not turned out to be a spinster.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Role Models" (p.202)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Children, People, Teachers, Time

“He gets sex, she gets sex; if that is considered unequal, no wonder men are afraid of commitment.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 240.

Men

“Imagine that we didn't know the chimpanzee, that all we knew were those bonobos who have sex all the time and are peaceful and female-dominated and that people would say that this is our only close relative. I think we would have totally different theories about ourselves and our background. But, of course, it didn't happen that way.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)

People, Peace, Way, Imagination

“Every play which is produced—and for that matter, every book that is published, every picture which is exhibited, every film which is turned—is subjected to the Board of Censors… Romantic love in even its purest phases is not thought to be a fitting subject for consideration of citizens of a communist state;... the sex play is unknown in modern Russia… There remains as the ubiquitous theme for plays: revolution, with all the patriotic and nationalistic connotations which have grown up around it; heroism, sacrifice for the nation and class; consciousness of solidarity with one’s fellow proletarians; common suffering; great adventures with new ideas; great prospects for future machine age which is to be a sort of Russian-communist Americanism.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "The New Russia" 1928, pp. 27-28

Love, Books, Age, Idea

“With mankind the differences between the sexes are greater than in most species of Quadrumana, but not so great as in some, for instance, the mandrill. Man on an average is considerably taller, heavier, and stronger than woman, with squarer shoulders and more plainly-pronounced muscles. … Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether relatively to the larger size of his body, in comparison with that of woman, has not, I believe been fully ascertained. In woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of her body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 316-317 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=333&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Age, Courage, Parting

“All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her sexuality, p. 309
Autobiography

Love, Disappointment, Feeling

“I just wanted to study how to portray clairvoyance, and I finally took an ocular approach. She has these beautiful blue eyes and her gaze is gently penetrating. All the obvious stuff about her you can find online but I wanted more of the nitty-gritty, like how did it affect her sex life? If you're domestic ballbuster by day and a ghostbuster by night, how does that affect your home life? I opted not to go down to their museum of the occult that they maintain in the basement, Patrick and I both. We stayed upstairs.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

On getting to know Lorraine Warren for her role in The Conjuring, as quoted in " Vera Farmiga on The Conjuring, Bates Motel, maternal angst … and knitting https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/01/vera-farmiga-conjuring-bates-motel-interview" by John Patterson at The Guardian (August 2, 2013)

Life, Beauty, Home, Study

“Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"A Rally Against Rape" (1981), p. 82
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Feeling

“If you confine it, you're confining a whole thing. If you make it spontaneous, so that anything can happen, like we don't want to confine or restrict anything. What we can do, whatever we can let happen, you just let it happen…. we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now. Biologically, everyone is male and female, so many male genes and so many female. And so what it is is we're saying "OK, what's the big deal. Why is everybody so up tight about sex?" About faggots, queers, things like that. That's the way they are…. People don't accept that they are both male and female, and people are afraid to break out of their sex thing because that's a big insecurity that's doing that. Consequently, people will make fun of us. We don't mind that, that's making them accept more, making fun that we accept that. The thing is this is the way we are. We think it's a gas…. We like reactions — a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction. Reaction's applauding, passing out or throwing up, and all of that is a reaction, and as much of that we can get, the better. I don't care how they react, as long as they react.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

Interview in Poppin (September 1969).
Poppin (1969)

People, Way, Thinking

“It is essential that we raise the image of sex, which is currently seen as a purely biological affair and often portrayed in its worst manifestations, to that of a spiritually based activity”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 154.

“The distinction of the female sex is that a woman was the person who was permitted to help establish God's new kingdom; the distinction of the male sex is that redemption came through the Son of Man, the new Adam.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

God, Help, Personality

“Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

“To a Husband,” letter 4.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

Women, Law, Nature

“The tendency in the media is to portray everyone in the film industry as sex-starved creatures. Please spare us.”

Madhuri Dixit (1967) Indian actress

Quote, When personality comes first.....

“Marijuana is like sex. If I don't do it every day, I get a headache. I think marijuana should be recognized for what it is, as a medicine, an herb that grows in the ground. If you need it, use it.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[Nelson, Willie; Bud Shrake; Edwin Shrake, 2000, Willie: An Autobiography, Cooper Square Press, 197]

Thinking, Marijuana

“Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 40

Water

“Visson has said, "Today's profits are yesterday's good will ripened," and though friendship is no basis for Business yet Business is an excellent basis for lasting friendship. To cement this friendship the Businessman recalls the fact that the memory of quality remains long after the price is forgotten, and keeps Buskin's dictum in mind that there is nothing in this world that cannot be made a little worse and sold a little cheaper. While it is equally true that men will make a beaten path to your door to acquire a better quality article even if it be a mouse trap. Nevertheless, a man is known by the Company he floats, or the Secretaries he employs, though the latter fluctuate more than the market, especially if of the gentler sex!”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), Businessmen

Men, Friendship, World, Business

“Oh, wow, what a scene that place was - that heavenly drug down sexual perversion get their rocks off health spa. I was already so bombed I don't know how I got there. I got down to the pool, where all the freaks were. I met Paul America at the pool and I told him we were probably in danger if we stayed, but we were so blasted we forgot what was good for us and what wasn't, and the whole place turned into a giant orgy... every kind of sex freak, from homosexuals to nymphomaniacs... oh, everybody eating each other on the raft, and drinking, guzzling tequila and vodka and Scotch and bourbon and shooting up every other second... losing syringes down the pool drains, the needles of the mainline scene, blocking the water infiltration system with broken syringes. Oh, it was really some night just going on an incredible sexual tailspin. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Couldn't get enough of it. It was one of the wildest scenes I've ever been in or ever hope to be in. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not, but I should be. Sex and speed, wow! Like, oh God. A twenty-four-hour climax that can go on for days. And there's no way to explain it unless you've been through it; there's no way to tell anyone who hasn't tasted it. I'd like to turn on the whole world for just a moment... just for a moment. I'm greedy; I'd like to keep most of it for myself and a few others, a few of my friends... to keep that superlative high, just on the cusp of each day... so that I'd radiate sunshine.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Ciao! Manhattan tapes, recalling its pool spa orgy scene
Edie : American Girl (1982)

God, Health, World, Hope

“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, Marriage, Game

“About sex especially men are born unbalanced; we might almost say men are born mad. They scarcely reach sanity till they reach sanctity.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Everlasting Man

The Everlasting Man (1925)

Men, Madness

“People who love science fiction really do love sex.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

Love, People, Science

“With the possible exception of sex, there is no more basic human activity than eating, rendering it an appropriate candidate for Jewish rituals designed to maintain our focus on Godliness. The table is seen as an altar, and the concern with Kashrut extends to removing knives, instruments of war, from the table during the Birkat HaMazon (blessing after the meal). Tsaar baalei khayim, the concern for the pain of all living things and the reverence for life, is another essential aspect of kashrut. Vegetarianism is clearly the Torah's ideal; the Garden of Eden is a vegetarian society.”

Bonnie Koppell American rabbi

Source: Vegetarianism, p. 37

Life, Pain, War

“Intercourse is a world that moves through the sexed world of dominance and submission. It moves in descending circles, not in a straight line, and as in a vortex each spiral goes down deeper.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Introduction
Intercourse (1987)

World

“And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Cruising While Republican" (5 September 2007) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=206. 2007

Time

“Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

“The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

“Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Crossfire (17 May 1997)

Men

“Americans are well aware that there has been a revolution. In morals. In manners. In speech. In crime rates. In riots. In violence. In drugs. In sex. In pornography. In politics. In movies. In education. In music. What most of us failed to realize at the moment was how important the music revolution would become. It turned out to be the catalyst for all the rest. It became the prod to promote drugs, the advertiser of sex in the hedonism manner, the mind-conditioner for four-letter gutter speech, and eventually the blatant propaganda funnel for political subversion. It also became the seductive Jezebel for a modern philosophy of no God, of Man as merely a graduate beast of the jungle, of Jesus Christ as a phoney actor--a superstar, of peace and prosperity being possible only under communism, of America as the enemy of the world, of Russia as the hope of the world.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

Preface to Rock 'N' Reality: Mirrors of Rock Music--Its Relationship to Sex, Drugs, Family and Religion (1971)

God, World, Education, Peace

“The news departments have become corporate profit centers. And their only obligation now is to their shareholders. Which is to create large audiences and viewership so they can sell more ad space. So they're airing stories that appeal to the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian core of our brain: for sex and celebrity gossip. And now, for terror. So they give us Kobe Bryant and they give us Michael Jackson. And they give us Laci Peterson and they give us lots and lots of terror alerts. But they're not telling us the really critical stories that impact our way of life.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

Real Time with Bill Maher (22 October 2004).

Life, Way

“Art is like sex: when you're doing it, nothing else matters. Away from his desk the novelist can care deeply about the social, political, moral aspects of what he is writing but when he sits down to write, all those concerns fall away and nothing matters except the putting down of one carefully chosen word after another carefully chosen word, until a sentence is finished, then a paragraph, then a page, then a chapter, then a book. When I'm working I don't care about anything, not even myself. All my concentration is directed towards the making of the thing on the page. The rest is just stuff — even though it is the stuff of life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Life, Books, Art

“I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, p. 54-55

Women, Children, Girl, Thinking

“You can be a virgin in horror the same as in sex.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Chapter 2

“My own proposals for reform [in academia] include the abolition of all literary conferences and the replacement of women's studies with sex studies, based on the rigorous study of world history, anthropology, psychology, and science. Today, in politically correct America, questions of quality, learning, and intellectual distinction are out of style.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 102

Women, World, History, Question

“I tell ya, my wife likes to talk during sex. Last night, she called me from a motel.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 59

Night

“At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films — the freedom to analyze their implications. If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us — that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Actually, those who believe in censorship are primarily concerned with sex, and they generally worry about violence only when it's eroticized. This means that practically no one raises the issue of the possible cumulative effects of movie brutality. Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking what's in it. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?”

Pauline Kael book Deeper into Movies

"Stanley Strangelove" (January 1972) http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html, review of A Clockwork Orange Deeper into Movies (1973)

People, Pleasure, Fools, Freedom

“Earth is in space, too, so really sex in space isn't anything new.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

“Sexual reproduction exists solely as a means to defeat parasites. By mixing male and female genes, sex produces offspring not exactly like either the male or female—making each generation different from the last, and presenting a moving target to intruders intent on compromising this system. … Even with this variation, parasites continue to pose a threat… and parasitism evolves and moves through any system—not just living things. The less variation there is in a system, the more readily parasites will evolve to infest it…”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol

“Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

“We are all British. We respect democracy and the rule of law. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, equal rights regardless of race, sex, sexuality or faith. We believe in respecting different faiths but also expecting those faiths to support the British way of life. These are British values. And are underpinned by distinct British institutions. Our freedom comes from our Parliamentary democracy. The rule of law exists because of our independent judiciary. This is the home that we are building together.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Life, Faith, Law, Way

“We want rights. The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest.”

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
Variant: ...when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the difference.

Money, Housing

“When you're as hollow as Enoch Kane, the emptiness aches. He's desperate to fill it, but he doesn't have the patience or the commitment to fill it with anything worthwhile… So a man like Kane obsesses on one thing after another — sex, money, food, power, drugs, alcohol — anything that seems to give meaning to his days, but that requires no real self-discovery or self-sacrifice.”

Dean Koontz book From the Corner of His Eye

Source: From the Corner of His Eye (2000), Chapter 64; words of former policeman Thomas Vanadium

Money, Alcohol, Food, Patience

“Could I new-model Nature, your sex should rule supreme, there should be no other ambition but that of pleasing the ladies, no other warfare but the contention of obsequious lovers, nor any glory but the bliss of being approved by the Fair.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 46: 15 Aug 1777, to Miss C___ ).

Lovers, Nature

“In some domains, women are more sexually selected than men; one could say in these cases that women have the larger “peacock’s tail.” An example can be found in the domain of physical attractiveness. Women are typically rated as better looking than men, by both men and women. The difference is plausibly a consequence of the fact that, although both sexes care about good looks in a mate, on average, men care somewhat more. This means that, since this sex difference first evolved, there has been a somewhat stronger selection pressure on women than men for physical attractiveness — the opposite of what we find in peacocks.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

(p. 149)
The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)

Women, Men

“Sex education should only be taught by veterinarians.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

"As 1.000 melhores frases de Nelson Rodrigues" Companhia das Letras, 1997)

Education

“Christ, all you psychiatrists think about is sex — sex, sex, sex, sex, sex …”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal

Thinking, Christ

“Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. […] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?' Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:…. and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 162, to Malcolm Darling, 1 December 1916
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Pleasure, World, Beauty, Passion

“The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Speech before the New York Legislature (1860-02-18).

Color, Way

“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Vol. III, p. 390
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)

God

“Mo: The man's clearly a sex addict. He's out of control. Lying, suborning perjury…
Sydney: It's this puritanical culture that's the problem. Do people really expect someone with the ruthless lust for power it takes to become president to spend evenings at home with his stamp collection?
Mo: Oh, please! You wouldn't be quite so indulgent if it was Newt Gingrich getting blowjobs in the Oval Office.
Sydney: Thank you for that image.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#282, "Divert & Conquer" (1998), collected in Split-Level DTWOF (1998).
Dykes to Watch Out For

People, Home, Lying, Problem

“People have been making love and having sex in space over the thousands of years that our ancestors lived and traveled in small hunting-and-gathering bands. Earth is in Space.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Source: Zero Gravity interview (2006), p. 90

Love, People, Making love, Travel

“Cognitively we don’t know and will never discover what occasions the cause of our existence, we don’t know the purpose of our existence and we don’t know why we have to disappear from here once we have been placed here, I don’t know, why I have to live this fragmentary existence, which happened to be my lot, instead of a life that perhaps does exist somewhere. Why did I get this lot? This sex, this body, this awareness, this geographic setting, this fate, this language, this history, this rented room?”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

Life, Fate, History

“The embodiment of the unconscious of a woman as a figure of the opposite sex, the animus, also has positive and negative features. The animus, however, does not express itself so often in women as an erotic fantasy or mood, but rather as "sacred" convictions. When these latter are expressed loudly and energetically in a masculine style, this masculine side of a woman is easily recognizable. However, it can also manifest in a woman who appears very feminine externally as a quiet but relentless power that is hard as iron. Suddenly one comes up against something in her that is cold, stubborn, and completely inaccessible.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Animus, a Woman's Inner Man

Women, Mood, Appearance

“Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code… so automatically your stomach did flip-flops… and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw"
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Feeling, Soul, Problem, Thinking

“This in turn suggests an answer to our question: what happened between the birth of De Sade and the birth of Krafft-Ebbing? The rise of the novel taught Europe to use its imagination. And when imagination was applied to sex, the result was the rise of pornography -- and of "sexual perversion."”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 86

Imagination, Birth, Question

“The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 7

“Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal."”

Sergio Leone (1929–1989) Italian film director, screenwriter and producer

Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981), p. 129. Quoted in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization (2007), ed. R. Wilson, ‎C. L. Connery, Ch. 6: "'But I Did Not Shoot the Deputy': Dubbing the Yankee Frontier" by Louis Chude-Sokei, pp. 158–159, as well as in The A to Z of Westerns in Cinema (2009) by Paul Varner, p. 198, and in The Quick, the Dead and the Revived: The Many Lives of the Western Film (2016) by Joseph Maddrey, p. 104.

Women, Way, Imagination, Star

“Crimes against women happening in urban India are shameful. It is a dangerous trend. But such crimes won't happen in "Bharat" or the rural areas of the country. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

As quoted in " Rapes occur in India, not Bharat, says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rapes-occur-in-india-not-bharat-says-rss-chief-mohan-bhagwat-509401", NDTV (4 January 2013) 2011-2014

Women, Country

“In the past we believed both sexes were born with original sin. Today, we have come to unconsciously believe in the original sin of boys, but the original innocence of girls.”

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

page 103.
Father and Child Reunion (2001)

Girl, Boy, Past

“Male makeup is men’s titles, status and paying for dates. Makeup is what both sexes use to bridge the gap between the power they have and the power they’d like to have. Both male and female makeup are compensations for feelings of powerlessness.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 215.

Men, Feeling

“Sex role training becomes divorce training.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 136.

Training

“For moral reasons, the young Reverend Peter Sparrow declined to join the Saturday night gatherings of the Erebus Poker Club. Gambling, he knew, was Satan’s third favorite pastime, after sex and ecumenicalism.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 8, “In Which Our Hero Witnesses Some of the Many Surprising Effects of Nuclear War, Including Sundeath, Timefolds, and Unadmittance” (p. 97)

Night

“"What does she want?"
"Constant meetings. Depositions. The Clave keeps wanting to hear what happened when we fought Sebastian at the Burren. We've all had to give accounts, like, fifty times. How Jace absorbed the heavenly fire from Glorious. Descriptions of the Dark Shadowhunters, the Infernal Cup, the weapons they used, the runes that were on them. What we were wearing, what Sebastian was wearing, what everyone was wearing… like phone sex but boring."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Simon Lewis and Isabelle Lightwood, pg. 34-35
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Time

“People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter One

Happiness, People, Loneliness, Madness

“This women's movement is a great movement of the sexes toward each other, with common ideals as to government, as well as common ideals in domestic life, where fully developed manhood must seek and find its real mate in the mother of his children, as well as the solace of his home.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

'Why I Am a Suffragist? Cornerstones of Georgia History, p. 169 http://books.google.com/books?id=0qdkKS2F42MC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=rebecca+latimer+felton+why+i+am+a+suffragist&source=bl&ots=B1fM_lWjgv&sig=bOmSGdPp921qKNy3TlmDU3uWaEc#PPA169,M1.

Life, Women, Children, Home

“The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skits, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. There are tyrants, not Muslims. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not only by what we are for but by what we are against. I would reverse that proposition, because in the present instance what we are against is a no brainer. Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for? What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we unanimously concur that all the items in the preceding list — yes, even the short skirts and the dancing — are worth dying for? The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002

Love, Life, Women, War

“Fidelity (the name given to the constancy and exclusivity with which one particular sex organ penetrates or is penetrated by another particular sex organ, or abstains from being penetrated by or from penetrating others) is mainly the product of habit, as is its so-called opposite, infidelity (the name given to inconstancy and change, and the enjoyment of more than one sex organ).”

Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer

La fidelidad (lo que así se llama para referirse a la constancia y exclusividad con que un determinado sexo penetra o es penetrado por otro igualmente determinado, o se abstiene de ser penetrado o penetrar en otros) es producto de la costumbre principalmente, como lo es también la llamada—contrariamente— infidelidad (la inconstancia y alternación y el abarcamiento de más de un sexo).
Source: Todas las Almas [All Souls] (1989), p. 122

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