Quotes about women
page 15

Subhash Kak photo

“Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid.”

Subhash Kak (1947) Indian computer scientist

Recursionism and Reality, 2002.
Miscellaneous

Donald J. Trump photo

“I thought today's women were independent and had a lot of sexual freedom. … Well, I guess they fooled me.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

In April 2006, about women's disaproval of one-night stands. As quoted in Trump on Clinton in 2008: ‘She'd make a good president' https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-on-clinton-in-2008-shed-make-a-good-president-2016-07-11 (July 11, 2016) by Michael Rothfield and Mark Maremont, MarketWatch.
2000s

Hillary Clinton photo

“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Conference on domestic violence https://web.archive.org/web/20010726225357/http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html in San Salvador, El Salvador (17 November 1998).
White House years (1993–2000)

Warren Farrell photo

“Just as women needed the help of the law to enter the workplace in the 20th century, men will need the help of the law to love their children in the 21st century.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 122.

Andrea Dworkin photo
Aristophanés photo
Lupe Fiasco photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Camille Paglia photo
Toni Morrison photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Dylan Moran photo

“Men look at breasts the way women look at babies. 'Aw, isn't that lovely.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom photo

“Italy: "…they are indeed a repulsive nation these dagoes, both the men and the women & I'm just longing to quit them for good & all!!!"”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

18 September 1918
Around the World with the Prince of Wales

David Lloyd George photo
Ray Comfort photo

“Darwin believed that women were not as competent as men, and less intelligent than men, but they were better than a dog.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Pope John Paul II photo

“Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Letter to artists, 4 April 1999
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists_en.html

Frederick Douglass photo
Bell Hooks photo

“While I expected serious, rigorous evaluation of my work, I was totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean we have a basis for communication, that our political commitments should lead us to talk and struggle together. Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation. Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to the book from black women who felt it compelled them to either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist movement, I might have become terribly disheartened and disillusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men this book was not written in isolation. … Such encouragement renews my commitment to feminist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a work is received among feminist activists but by the extent to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist struggle inside.”

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Jesse Helms photo

“Look carefully into the faces of the people participating. What you will see, for the most part, are dirty, unshaven, often crude young men and stringy-haired awkward young women who cannot attract attention any other way.”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

(1968) The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/us/politics/00helms.html (2008) in reference to Viet Nam war protestors.
1960s

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Lupe Fiasco photo

“Dancing and singing are legitimate professions, not new to women. Banning such bars, would violate the right of these women to earn a livelihood, as laid down under Article 21 of the Constitution, as well as the right to carry on a legitimate profession under Article 19.”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On Maharashtra government's ban on dancing girls in bars, as quoted in " Razing the Bar http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050430/saturday/main1.htm" The Tribune (30 April 2005)

Anthony Burgess photo
William Osler photo

“There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

As quoted in Women in Medicine (1968) by Carol Lopate and Josiah Macy, Jr., p. 178.

Warren Farrell photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“SOME YEARS, like some poets, and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, A Year To Remember, p. 1

Maimónides photo
Henri Fantin-Latour photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“The liberal program aims to dissolve 'the constitution of man' in the service of sexual sameness. It is predicated on the imbecilic belief that biology is incidental, and that men and women are essentially interchangeable.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Are Liberal Pervs Sexually Obsessed With Refugees?" https://constitution.com/are-liberal-pervs-sexually-obsessed-with-refugees/, Constitution.com, April 27, 2018.
2010s, 2018

Matilda Joslyn Gage photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favor) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" On Disagreeable People http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Disagreeable.htm" (August 1827)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Wilfred Thesiger photo
David Morrison photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Ann Coulter photo

“The subject of men and women is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Try to Behave Myself: Peg Bracken's Etiquette Book (1966)

Denise Scott Brown photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner photo

“Our society needs women to be more numerous in decision-making positions and in entrepreneurial areas. We always have to pass a twofold test: first to prove that, though women, we are no idiots, and second, the test anybody has to pass.”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (1953) Argentine politician and ex President of Argentina

Nota en Clarin 20/10/2005 http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/10/20/elpais/p-01201.htm
Unsourced, 2005

Karol Cariola photo

“Education in Chile has been modeled as a "consumer good" and this was accepted with much resignation by a broad layer of society for many years, they believed that education and health were to be treated like any other topic…. For this reason we cannot fail to recognize the intervention that the student movement made on the consciousness of thousands of Chileans who today are dissatisfied with the reality of today's education model, to whom a change of the outdated constitution makes sense, who understand the need to reform the taxation system, who no longer put up with the overexploitation of our natural resources, to benefit foreign capital, i. e. Chile awoke and once again came to believe in the possibility of building a different country. One which is more just, a country where education and health are guaranteed, a country where workers have dignified working conditions, where young people are not exploited nor ill-treated in their work-place, where women are integrated with rights and equal opportunities, a country where the environment is protected, where natural resources are exploited to improve the living condition of its people, a country were culture develops freely, where there is access to literature, a country where children don't suffer discrimination because they don't have any money, a country where a walk down your street doesn't mean constant fear of being assaulted, a country where the most disadvantaged youth don't have to resort to drugs or delinquency to give sense to their lives, a country where grandparents are not made to feel as burdens, a country where the development of knowledge becomes a task of society as a whole, where advances in science are placed at the service of the people. We are once again beginning to dream of this beautiful country …because we are not the same that we were a year ago, hope has resurfaced despite the elaborate effort of those who foster neoliberal ideology and who are trying to eternalize capitalism in a process of permanent auto-reproduction, excluding all possibility of a social revolution.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, La Jota de Ingenieria, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.jotainjenieria.cl/ser-un-joven-comunista-por-karol-cariola, Ser un joven comunista, por Karol Cariola, Oceansur.com, November 2011, 2013-10-03 http://www.oceansur.com/media/uploads/documents/files/prologo-karol.pdf,
Original: La educación en Chile ha sido modelada como un “bien de consumo”, hecho que fue aceptado por un amplio sector de la sociedad, con mucha resignación durante años, ellos creyeron que la Educación y la Salud debían ser tratados como cualquier otro tema.... Por esto no podemos dejar de reconocer el gran acierto del movimiento estudiantil al intervenir en las conciencias de miles de chilenos que hoy , ya no se conforman con la realidad del actual modelo de educación, que le hace sentido el cambio de esta añeja constitución, que entendieron necesaria una reforma tributaria, que ya no aguantan la sobre explotación de nuestros recursos naturales en beneficio de capitales extranjeros, es decir, Chile despertó y volvió a creer en la posibilidad de construir un país distinto, un país más justo, un país donde la educación y la salud estén garantizadas, un país donde los trabajadores tengan condiciones laborales dignas, donde los jóvenes no sean explotados ni mal tratados en su fuente laboral, donde las mujeres sean integradas con igualdad de derechos y oportunidades, un país donde se proteja el medio ambiente, en que los recursos naturales sean explotados para mejorar las condiciones de su pueblo, un país donde la cultura se desarrolle libremente, un país en el que haya acceso a la literatura, un país donde los niños no sufran la discriminación desde que nacen por no tener dinero, un país donde caminar por las calles no sean un temor constante de ser asaltados, un país donde los jóvenes más desposeídos no tengan que recurrir a las drogas y la delincuencia para dar sentido a sus vidas, un país donde los abuelos no se sientan un estorbo, un país donde el desarrollo del conocimiento sea una tarea de la sociedad en su conjunto, un país donde el avance de la ciencia se ponga al servicio del pueblo, ese hermoso país es el que hoy estamos volviendo a soñar, porque con emoción lo vuelvo a mencionar, Chile está cambiando, hoy no somos los mismos que hace un año atrás, las esperanzas han resurgido a pesar del esmero de aquellos que propician la ideología neoliberal y que pretenden eternizar el capitalismo en un proceso de auto reproducción permanente, excluyendo toda posibilidad de una revolución social.

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Anatole France photo

“We have medicines to make women speak; we have none to make them keep silence.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Nous avons des remèdes pour faire parler les femmes; nous n'en avons pas pour les faire taire.
La Comédie de celui qui épousa une femme muette [The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife] (1912), Act II, sc. iv

Julie Christie photo

“To people who've been looked at and considered beautiful, particularly women who relied on it so much… age is quite a challenge. The thing which you've always used, a power, is taken away from you.”

Julie Christie (1940) British actress and activist

"Reflecting on ageing when she was approaching fifty" as quoted in: A Century of Women : The History of Women in Britain and the United States (1997) by Sheila Rowbotham, Viking, p. 475

Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“Eventually there was a split between my parents about me. My mother obviously knew what was going on with me and the girls my friends lined up. She never came out and said anything directly, but she let me know she was concerned. Things were different between me and my father. He assumed that when I was eighteen, I would just go into the Army and they would straighten me out. He accepted some of the things my mother condemned. He felt it was perfectly all right to make out with all the girls I could. In fact, he was proud I was dating the fast girls. He bragged about them to his friends. 'Jesus Christ, you should see some of the women my son's coming up with'. He was showing off, of course. But still, our whole relationship had changed because I'd established myself by winning a few trophies and now had some girls. He was particularly excited about the girls. And he liked the idea that I didn't get involved. 'That's right, Arnold', he'd say, as though he'd had endless experience, 'never be fooled by them'. That continued to be an avenue of communication between us for a couple of years. In fact, the few nights I took girls home when I was on leave from the Army, my father was always very pleasant and would bring out a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/067122879X (1977), New York: Simon & Schuster.
1970s, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977)

Fay Weldon photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Still more serious was the emergence of an insidious image of Hindu personality as a direct result of this loss of the national perspective on Indian history. In due course, most Hindus, particularly the English-educated Hindu elite, have been made to believe that a Hindu is not true to himself nor to his religion and culture unless he 1) honours as his own heroes all those invaders and crusaders who demolished his temples, desecrated the images of his Gods and Goddesses, burnt his Shãstras, humiliated his holy men, dishonoured his women, pillaged his property, massacred his countrymen en masse, sold his children into slavery, trampled upon every symbol of his religion and culture, and coerced his co-religionists to swear by an aggressive and intolerant dogma glorified as the Kalima; 2) shows reverence for an ideology of calculated and cold-blooded gangesterism masquerading as the only true religion; 3) pays homage to all those pretenders, scoundrels, and hoodlums which this ideology presents as its sufis, saints and heroes; 4) practises patience and tolerance towards those who vow openly and work ceaselessly to destroy his religion and culture, and to take forcible possession of his homeland; and 5) is always prepared to surrender everything he possesses or cherishes in order to avoid violence and bloodshed.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984; 2001)

Matilda Joslyn Gage photo
Camille Paglia photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Muhammad of Ghor photo
Lucy Stone photo
Warren Farrell photo
Warren Farrell photo
Sandra Bullock photo

“Women should do a lot more fighting. I don't think it's fair that we can't get into a good bar fight once in a while. We'd get out a lot of stuff we're supposed to repress.”

Sandra Bullock (1964) American actress and producer

As quoted in "Calling Her Own Shots" by Karen S. Schneider in People, Vol. 63, No. 13 (4 April 2005) http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20147269,00.html

Alain-René Lesage photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Arshile Gorky photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1871/may/03/second-reading in the House of Commons (3 May 1871) on the Women's Disabilities Bill.
1870s

Bell Hooks photo
Lin Yutang photo
Amir Taheri photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos photo

“One has lived long enough if one has had time to win the love of women and the esteem of men.”

On a toujours assez vécu, quand on a eu le temps d’acquérir l’amour des femmes et l’estime des hommes.
Letter 79: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_79
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Henry Thomas Buckle photo
Ann E. Dunwoody photo
John Gay photo

“Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Lucy, Act II, sc. xiii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Anne Bancroft photo

“I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now— women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial.”

Anne Bancroft (1931–2005) American actress

On her decision to play Emma, in The Turning Point (1977). Interview People magazine, quoted in "Anne Bancroft" http://archive.salon.com/people/bc/2001/09/18/anne_bancroft/index2.html at Salon.com (18 September 2001).

Saddam Hussein photo
John J. Pershing photo

“I am very sorry these Moros are such fools—but this Dajo will not mean the slaugter of women and children, nor hasty assaults against strong entrenchments. I shall lose as few men and kill as few Moros as possible.”

John J. Pershing (1860–1948) United States Army general in World War I

My Life Before the World War, 1860--1917: A Memoir, p. 293 https://books.google.com/books?id=a74_JIbehzsC&pg=PA293

Anthony Burgess photo

“…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Tremor of Intent (1966)

Bea Arthur photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Mes avis sur vos relations avec les femmes sont aussi dans ce mot de chevalerie: Les servir toutes, n'en aimer qu'une.
Le lys dans la vallée (1836), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, part II: First Love.

Warren Farrell photo
Warren Farrell photo
Maria Mitchell photo

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“Wikipedia needs to recruit women, yes, but, more importantly, it needs to recruit feminists. And feminists can be of any gender.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wadewitz, Adrianne. (July 26, 2013) "Wikipedia's gender gap and the complicated reality of systemic gender bias" https://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/07/26/wikipedias-gender-gap-and-complicated-reality-systemic-gender-bias. HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance Collaboratory. — reprinted and cited in: Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times.

Stephen Baxter photo
Margaret Atwood photo
C. V. Raman photo

“I have a feeling that if the women of India take to science and interest themselves in the progress and advance of science as well, they will achieve what even men have failed to do. Women have one quality--the quality of devotion. It is one of the most important passports to success in science. Let us therefore not imagine that intellect is a sole prerogative of males only in science.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Raman's views on role of women quoted in Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern India's Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

“I ask the media to concentrate on positive things rather than just doing the rounds on rape, incest, molestation on women.”

Asenaca Caucau Fijian politician

Opening address to the Pacific Regional Media Training Workshop on "Women's Issues, Women's Voices," January 2005

Alexandra Kollontai photo
V. P. Singh photo
Tarja Halonen photo

“Women receive easily the most difficult assignments.”

Tarja Halonen (1943) 11th President of Finland

Te naiset, te naiset: Sitaatteja vain naisilta (Ed. Laine Jarkko; Jung Irmeli) Otava 2006 In Finnish: Naisille annetaan helposti vaikeimmat tehtävät (translated)