Quotes about women

A collection of quotes on the topic of love, marriage, partnership, men.

Best quotes about women

“Women love only those whom they do not know!”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“I always play women I would date.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“Women are never so strong as after their defeat.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: Queen Margot, or Marguerite de Valois

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir… mighty scarce.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“According to polygamy, men are royals and women so loyal.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Although I'm big and strong I've never touched a women”

#1 Broncos Fan

Freddie Mercury quote: “Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them. ”

Louis XIV of France quote: “I could sooner reconcile all Europe than two women.”

Quotes about women

“Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

Beauty, Light, Night

“This generation has lost the true meaning of romance. There are so many songs that disrespect women. You can’t treat the woman you love as a piece of meat. You should treat your love like a princess. Give her love songs, something with real meaning. Maybe I’m old fashioned but to respect the woman you love should be a priority.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Love, Princess, Fashion, Making love

“Since we all came from a women, got our name from a women, and our game from a women. I wonder why we take from women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think its time we killed for our women, be real to our women, try to heal our women, cus if we dont we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies, who make the babies. And since a man can't make one he has no right to tell a women when and where to create one”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Hate, Game, Thinking, Time

“Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them. ”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

Understanding, Painting

“In my first video diary I explained my love for women who have a taste in carrots.”

Louis Tomlinson (1991) English pop singer

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5834782.Louis_Tomlinson

Love

“Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

For women, Men

“No. We don't really do that. We feel that objectifies women and that's not really what we're about.”

Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor

When asked by a radio DJ if One Direction calls "dibs" on girls (26 June 2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV85tICyfEA&t=546

Feeling

“This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Mr. Tesla Explains Why He Will Never Marry (1924)

“At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Incesticide liner notes (1992)

People, Hate, Way, Color

“It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

God, Beauty, Joy, Making love

“Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men, Dreams

“Begum Rokeya had dreamt of a society where women would be magistrates, judges and barristers”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

Context: Begum Rokeya had dreamt of a society where women would be magistrates, judges and barristers and that has come true as many women are already there in such posts.

“One wife is justified to the common men. But the higher you climb the ladder of power and success, the more women you'll meet along the way.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Success, Way, Men

“Just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper.”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Men, Understanding

“Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Source: Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

Thinking, Personality

“The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing - and then marry him.”

Cher (1946) American singer and actress

“I also think it is important for women to help one another. I have a saying: There is a special place in hell for women who don't.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Hell, Thinking, Help

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)

For women, Men, Dogs, Cats

“The tragedy is that women so committed to survival cannot recognize that they are committing suicide.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Suicide

“Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, plows and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best.”

Xenophon book Cyropaedia

Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC

Men, Food, Shoe, Way

“Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored?”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in "Atatürk" in Images of a Divided World (29 October 2006) http://jmilton6000.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/ataturk/ Variant translation: Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies? Context: Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?

Men, Sex, Parting

“I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say "yes women can".”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

For women, Girl, Hope

“There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

Keynote speech at "Celebrating Inspiration" luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, quoted in Mechelle Voepel, ESPN (July 13, 2006)
2000s

Hell, Help

“There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tryant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And remember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation.”

Amos Oz book A Tale of Love and Darkness

Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Love, Men, Friendship, Feeling

“This knotted dilemma lies at the center of women's development. How can girls both enter and stay outside of, be educated in and then try to change, what for millennia has been a man's world?”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: Joining the Resistance

World, Education, Girl, Change

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Truth

“Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Thom Merrilin
(15 October 1991)

For women, Men, Fools, Forgiveness

“Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.”

Christine de Pizan book The Book of the City of Ladies

Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Men, Education

“Women were created from the rib of man to be beside him, not from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled by him, but from under his arm to be protected by him, near to his heart to be loved by him.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

Source: An Exposition of the Old and New Testament

Love, Heart

“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Nature

“Nine, nine… There have been nine men there for a long, long time, right? So why not nine women?”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

In response to the question “How many women would be enough” [on the Supreme Court] during interview https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/chat-women-supreme-court-11976773 with Diane Sawyer at The Women’s Conference (Long Beach, California, October 26, 2010)

Men, Time

“Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?' 'Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.' 'A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.”

Begum Rokeya Sultana's Dream

Sultana's Dream (1905)

Nature, Help

“Why do they always show Christ up there bleeding and dying on the cross? We don't remember John Lennon lying there with a bullet hole in his head. I'm against the arbitrary organization of 'God' as a concept. We should all experience it all individually and purely. I don't agree with the separation of God and the body, I don't believe that we aren't a part of 'it', I don't agree that it's a man. In most religions there's no place for women. There aren't any women in the Holy Trinity and I need that. I love women, I came from a woman.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

B-Side Magazine, October/November 1994
From Interviews

Love, God, Religion, Lying

“Nazism says that women are absolutely equal to men. But they're different. And thank god for the difference.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

undated

Men, God

“If we can’t solve our problems we must DESTROY our problems… One day incels will realise their true strength and numbers and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system. Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

As quoted in Rhys Blakely, "‘I will be a god. I will slaughter you like animals’", The Australian (July 19, 2014)
Bodybuilding.com, PUAhate and ForeverAlone posts

World, Fear, Problem

“Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

Interview at Brown's official site http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html Context: Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power.

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html

Money, God, Law, Dead

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Men

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Relationship, Wedding, Men

“Stand true to your calling to be a man. Real women will always be relieved and grateful when men are willing to be men”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: The Mark of a Man

For Men, Men

“It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse

Freedom

“For me, there are two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in: Briton Hadden, ‎Henry Robinson Luce (1969), Time, Vol. 93. p. 66.
1960s

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act II
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Relationship, Love, Men, Friendship

“One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love

“I was ecstatic when they re-named "French fries" as "freedom fries." Grown men and women in positions of power in the U. S. government showing themselves as idiots.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Men, Freedom

“Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Wise, For Men, Love, Men

“Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

" Women: One Half of Our Society http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Women_-_One_half_of_our_society" (1981). Source: The Revolution and Woman in Iraq Context: The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.

Education

“I am often asked why men don’t get as worked up as they might about women—particularly poor women—having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day—the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker—these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.”

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. 233.

Men, Money, Family, Sense

“I wish more of us could understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values which were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy. We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and our young, our women as well as our men.
I see nothing inconsistent between being proud of oneself and one's ancestors and, at the same time, seeing oneself first and foremost a member of the commonwealth of all races and creeds.”

Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) American tennis player

Source: Days of Grace: A Memoir (1994), p. 186

Love, Men, God, Friendship

“Few are the women and maidens who would let themselves think that one could at the same time be joyous and modest. They are all bold and coarse in their speech, in their demeanor wild and lewd. That is now the fashion of being in good cheer. But it is specially evil that the young maiden folk are exceedingly bold of speech and bearing, and curse like troopers, to say nothing of their shameful words and scandalous coarse sayings, which one always hears and learns from another.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Fashion, Thinking, Learning, Evil

“What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened…. Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town…. People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes — his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good — you will get that…. Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox — then watch him start, alert and interested!”

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) American novelist

Works, Pollyanna (1913)

Men, People, Beauty, Hope

“Live morally, do not aspire for other's Wealth, Women and God.”

Basava (1134–1196) a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism

Basavanna's Preachings

God, Wealth

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

National Prayer Breakfast speech, Washington, D.C. (3 February 1994) http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0039.html. 1990s

Love, War, People, World

“Had God Himself intended women to be inferior, He would have ordained it so that mothers would have given birth to daughters at the end of the fifth month of pregnancy. The supply of mother’s milk would naturally have been half of that in case of a son. But that is not the case. How can it be? Is not God just and most merciful?”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

On God Gives, Man Robs , 1927. http://archive.thedailystar.net/magazine/2005/07/05/reflections.htm

God, Birth, Nature, Daughters

“I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.

Beauty, Music, Way, Strong

“I live and work with three basic assumptions, 1) There is no problem in science that can be solved by a man that cannot be solved by a woman. 2) Worldwide, half of all brains are in women. 3) We all need permission to do science, but, for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

As quoted in NPR obituary http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/26/507022497/vera-rubin-who-confirmed-existence-of-dark-matter-dies-at-88

Men, History, Problem, Science

“Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Le più caritative persone che sieno sono le donne, e le più fastidiose. Chi le scaccia, fugge e fastidii e l'utile; chi le intrattiene, ha l'utile ed e fastidii insieme. Ed è 'l vero che non è el mele sanza le mosche.
Act III, scene iv
The Mandrake (1524)

Bee

“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

Death, Men, Children, People

“Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 235

“You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time. You lug around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You shouldn't be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are stupid. They shouldn't have any women in there. They don't know how to teach. And they shouldn't make anyone go to school. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Books, Stupidity, School, Learning

“In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Reported in Ned Sherrin, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (2008), p. 153.

Life, Alcohol

“That's why there are so few women stars today. Pornography has taken away the mystery.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

A Visit With Irene Dunne (1977)

Star

“Women should not feel obliged towards any men for eternity. They earned this privilege by gathering berries, digging roots, picking wild rice, and chewing the skin to make it soft for 999 thousand years, while the men were having fun in the open chasing deer and fighting among themselves.”

Vinko Vrbanić (1951)

Women

Men, Feeling, Fight

“They call themselves muslims and yet go against the basic tenet of islam which gives equal right to education. If men are not led astray once educated, why should women?”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

In 1926, when she addressed the bengal women's education conference http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/148459.Rokeya_Sakhawat_Hossain Context: The opponents of the female education say that women will be unruly... fie! They call themselves muslims and yet go against the basic tenet of islam which gives equal right to education. If men are not led astray once educated, why should women?

Men, Education

“Here is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, proﬁteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders. I leave it to the reader to decide whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times.”

Michael Parenti book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

Introduction
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)

Money, Time, Self-confidence, Death

“The lives of most men and women are blighted by problems they cannot solve. Many events in our lives are the result of things beyond our control. While it is comforting to think, “I’m in charge,” in truth most changes effected by individuals are very limited in scope.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Truth, Problem, Thinking, Change

“At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Men, World, Intelligence, Problem

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lord Illingworth, Act III.
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Variant: Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Relationship, Men, Disappointment

“Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
Source: When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?

Funny, For women, For Men, Men

“All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Preface, 2nd edition (22 July 1848)
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Context: I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

Men, Loss, Reading

“Women may fall when there's no strength in men.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet, Act II

Men

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

World, Feeling, Thinking, Freedom

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Children, World, Hell

“I also have the impression that many women have been able, instinctively, to sniff out this loneliness of mine, which I confided to no one, and this in later years was to become one of the causes of my being taken advantage of.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

Confidence, Loneliness

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

Oscar Wilde book Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

Source: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

love, Cute, Romantic, For Her

“If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

As quoted in Sojourner Truth : A Self-made Woman (1974) by Victoria Ortiz
Variant: Sisters, I ain't clear what you be after. If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it?

“There is a saying in the Islands. Beware the women of the warrior class, for all they touch is both decorative and deadly.-Yuki”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

“How many women are there…who because of their husbands' harshness spend their weary lives in the bond of marriage in greater suffering than if they were slaves among the Saracens?”

Christine de Pizan book The Book of the City of Ladies

Quantes femmes est il qui usent leur vie au lien de mariage par la durte de leurs maris en plus grant penitence que se elles feussent esclaves entre les sarazins.
Part II, ch. 13, pp. 118-19.
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405)
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies

Marriage, Suffering

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act II
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

“The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Variant: Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Men

“Aphrodite makes us understand why women have drowned their babies.”

P. C. Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

Understanding, Baby

“If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 1
Source: Why I Write
Context: Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters. And how right they are, after all! For, moneyless, you are unlovable. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. But then, if I haven't money, I DON'T speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Love, Men, Money

“There shall never be another season of silence until women have the same rights men have on this green earth.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Men, Silence, Season

“Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Another quote often attributed to her without an original source in her writings, as in The Wit and Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt (1996), p. 199. But once again archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above.
A very similar remark was attributed to Nancy Reagan, in The Observer (29 March 1981): "A woman is like a teabag — only in hot water do you realize how strong she is."
Variants:
A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
A woman is like a tea bag; you can't tell how strong she is and how much to trust her until you put her in hot water.
Disputed

Strong, Water, Tea, Funny

“It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.”

Agatha Christie book The Man in the Brown Suit

Source: The Man in the Brown Suit

Life, Men

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…. Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

For women, Men, People

“It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Men, War, Children, Religion

“Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Source: Murder in Mesopotamia

Swine

“Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

People, Feeling, Sense, Silence

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Context: "Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives — let us admit it — a certain weight to the opinions expressed.) So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.

For women, Men