Quotes about women
page 20

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the … confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Ford Fiftieth Anniversary Show, CBS and NBC (June 1953)

Men, Confidence, Freedom, Country

“Greek mythology tells us that the Gods invented woman as a punishment after man got a hold of some stolen goods. Obviously, this was just the mythological explanation given by the primitive early men to explain the real origin of women, which was this: THEY CAME DOWN IN SPACESHIPS. Yes, all women are space aliens who have come from a far-off galaxy to enslave mankind.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Ask Yahtzee
Fully Ramblomatic, Features

Men, God

“I love beautiful women, and beautiful women love me. It has to be both ways.”

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

Interview with Norwegian talk show host Fredrik Skavlan in (November 2003).
2000s

Love, Beauty, Way

“The national Democratic Party and its southern affiliates labored mightily to re-subjugate the newly free blacks, eventually succeeding by implementing Jim Crow laws, motivating the birth of the Klan and then protecting it, establishing separate-but-equal schools and public facilities, and enacting codes of lawful segregation, all of which Democrats defended in a fight to the death until the 1960s. In U. S. history, from the ratification of the Constitution to the economic devastation wrought by Obama on contemporary black Americans, the men and women who run Democratic Party, from Jefferson and Jackson forward, have been the ferocious enemy of black Americans entering the mainstream of American life, to this day bending every tool of political power to keep them angry, unemployed, mired in poverty, and politically and economically dependent in a manner that approaches quite near to re-enslavement.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention https://archive.is/QBuxT (22 June 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Life, Death, Men, School

“As I wanted to suggest a luxuriant and untamed type of nature, a tropical sun that sets aglow everything around it, I was obliged to give my figures a suitable setting.It is indeed the outdoor life — yet intimate at the same time, in the thickets and the shady streams, these women whispering in an immense palace decorated by nature itself, with all the riches that Tahiti has to offer. This is the reason behind all these fabulous colors, this subdued and silent glow."But none of this exists!""Oh yes it does, as an equivalent of the grandeur, the depth, the mystery of Tahiti, when you have to express it on a canvas measuring only one square meter."Very subtle, very knowing in her naïveté is the Tahitian Eve. The riddle hiding in the depth of her childlike eyes is still incommunicable to me.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 137: Diverse Choses, his notebook (1896 - 1898)

Life, Color, Nature, Time

“AIDS respects no national boundaries; spares no race or religion; devastates men and women, rich and poor.
No country can ignore this crisis. Fighting AIDS is an urgent calling — because every life, in every land, has value and dignity.”

Laura Bush (1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009

Remarks at United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS (June 2, 2006) http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060602-2.html

Life, Men, Religion, Fight

“It is the vanity of women to spend hours in front of the mirror. It is the vanity of men not to bother.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), How To Live (2005)

Men

“Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

March 9, 1666
Diary

Way, Business

“There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Priestly Lie"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Men, God, Age, Law

“[As graduates with] all the status and connections that degree confers, you don’t get to have no hands. No, you don’t get to be precious or cautious or cynical. No, not when the earth is warming and the oceans are rising. You don’t get to be cynical. Not when too many young people still languish in communities ripped apart by violence and despair. Not when women still make less than men for the same work. Not when millions of girls across the globe never set foot inside a school. (Applause.) No, not when many young people just like you — the men and women we honor this Memorial Day—have sacrificed their lives for your freedom to make your voice heard. You don’t get to have no hands.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Oberlin College Prep graduates (2015)

Men, People, School, Girl

“If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone. This is not the threat I see. I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims — a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2005, Address to the Nation on Iraqi Elections (December 2005)

Books, Peace, Thinking, Sense

“The eternally repetitive routine, the imposed anonymity and the rigid atomization of numbers and cages are just a few of the dehumanizing, desocializing mechanisms. As for the relationship of prisoners to life outside, it is supposed to be virtually nonexistent. In this respect, the impenetrable concrete, the barbed wire and the armed keepers, ostensibly there to deter escape-bound captives, also suggest something further: prisoners must be guarded from the ingressions of a moving, developing world outside. Disengaged from normal social life, its revelations and influences, they must finally be robbed of their humanity. Yet human beings cannot be willed and molded into nonexistence. In reality the facts of prison life have begun in recent years to bespeak the irrationality of its goals. Even the most drastic repressive measures have not obstructed the progressive ascent of captive men and women to new heights of social consciousness. This has been especially intense among Black and Brown prisoners”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Source: If They Come in The Morning (1971), Chapter 2, "Lessons: From Attica to Soledad"

Life, Men, World, Reality

“Long long ago, before the days of Islam, Sikander e Aazem came to India. The Two Horned one whom you British people call Alexander the Great. He conquered the world, and was a very great man, brave and dauntless and generous to his followers. When he left to go back to Greece, some of his men did not wish to go back with him but preferred to stay here. Their leader was a general called Shalakash (Seleucus). With some of his officers and men, he came to these valleys and they settled here and took local women, and here they stayed. We, the Kalash, the Black Kafir of the Hindu Kush, are the descendants of their children. Still some of our words are the same as theirs, our music and our dances, too; we worship the same gods. This is why we believe the Greeks are our first ancestors…”

Michael Wood (1948) English historian and broadcaster

Statement made by a Kalash named Kazi Khushnawaz, "Footsteps of Alexander the Great p. 8
i.e.: Seleucus was one of the Generals of Alexander the Great. He was born in 358 or 354 BC in the town of Europos, Macedonia and died in August/September 281 BC near Lysimathia, Thrace.

Men, God, Children, People

“We have signed international conventions, such as on women's rights, and we should respect them.”

Talal bin Abdul Aziz (1931–2018) Member of House of Saud

Senior Saudi royal demands reform, BBC News, 5 September 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6980056.stm,

“Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

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

Men, Hunger

“The historical Muhammad was the savage leader of a gang of robbers from Medina. Without scruples they looted, raped and murdered. The sources describe orgies of savagery where hundreds of people’s throats were cut, hands and feet chopped off, eyes cut out, entire tribes massacred. An example is the extinction of the jewish Kurayza tribe in Medina in 627. One of those who chopped off their heads was Muhammad. The women and children were sold as slaves. Confronted with the lunacy of Islamic terrorists today, it is not hard to find out where the lunacy comes from.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"Time To Unmask Muhammad", The Brussels Journal (30 March 2011) http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4714 2010s

Children, People

“You don't understand Mexican women. They don't like to be treated like human beings. If you're nice to them, they walk all over you.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Understanding

“Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male "culture," in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our "society" are raving sex maniacs.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 12.

Sex

“All native-born Americans, directly or indirectly, have the advantage of our schools, our colleges, and our religious bodies. It is our belief that America could not otherwise exist. Faith in mankind is in no wise inconsistent with a requirement for trained citizenship, both for men and women. No civilization can exist without a background—an active community of interest, a common aspiration—spiritual, social, and economic. It is a duty our country owes itself to require of all those aliens who come here that they have a background not inconsistent with American institutions.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Men, School, Faith, Communication

“Whether it is tennis or any other sport, the situation for women now is far better than it was 10 years ago when I had started playing. Now, people support and promote their daughters to play and take up sports as their career. It wasn't the case during my time. I am glad that things are looking better for girls. Taking a step in this direction, I too have opened my training academy in Hyderabad. Sport for girls in India is in great shape now.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Ekta Yadav "Bhopal's adulation has energised me: Sania Mirza"

People, Girl, Support, Sport

“I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part I “Snake’s Road”, Chapter 2 (p. 323)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Men, God, Pleasure, Soul

“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Death, Disease, Tree

“In my experience women are like cats. When you don't want them you can't get rid of them and when you do want them it's like trying to pick up lint with a magnet. (p. 267)”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

Collected Letters 2004

Cats

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

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

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

People, Imagination, Understanding, Question

“Don't mix wine and women, Doro.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The Beach (1941), Chapter 2, p. 13

Wine

“I conceive there lies a clear rule in Titus, that the elder women should instruct the younger and then I must have a time wherein I must do it.”

Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) participant in the Antinomian Controversy

Referring to Titus 2:1-5 "Speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."
Trial and Interrogation (1637)

Time

“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?" https://archive.is/20121212151230/www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/lowell/gvidal.html, Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992) 1990s

God, Age, Religion, Affliction

“(The Queen of Housewife Rock) means I’ve reached a lot of people in a simplistic manner who would never go to a lecture or read an article on Women’s Lib. My basic audience is women who have had their heads turned around by the knowledge that something’s going on out there—that they can stay married and have their own identities. I’m not for the swinging singles. I have a career and marriage happening all at the same time, and that’s the example I set.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On the title Alice Cooper gave to her, as quoted in "Helen Reddy Sings Out for Women's Lib—but Jeffrey Calls the Tune" by Robert Windeler, People Magazines, 3 February 1975 http://people.com/archive/helen-reddy-sings-out-for-womens-lib-but-jeffrey-calls-the-tune-vol-3-no-4/

Marriage, People, Knowledge, Time

“I think another impact that it's really important that we all think about, is that contraception when it first became available was a revolution in this country. It allowed women to enter employment and educational opportunities that had previously not been accessible because they were unable to control their reproduction in the same way. And I just can't imagine rolling back the clock on that progress.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

"Sandra Fluke responds to Nationwide Campaign Against Contraceptives", (February 23, 2012).
U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Education, Way, Imagination, Thinking

“"The edge of evening … the long curve of people all wishing on the first star…. Always remember those men and women along the thousands of miles of land and sea. The true moment of shadow is the moment in which you see the point of light in the sky. The single point, and the Shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep …"
Always remember.
The first star hangs between his feet.
Now”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Men, People, Star, Light

“Male privilege' is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male in most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women. Male privilege is not something that's given to men in this culture; it's something that men take. It's not that women don't have the ability to have and wield this privilege; some do. It's that in most cases, this privilege is withheld from them culturally and emotionally. Male privilege is woven into all levels of the culture, from unearned higher wages to more opportunities in the workplace, from higher quality, less expensive clothing to better bathroom facilities. Male privilege extends into sexual harassment, rape, and war. Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and the mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the reward of acquisition and makes invisible its penalties), and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means. Male privilege is not the exclusive province of men; there are some few women who have a degree of this horrifying personality trait. Male privilege is, in a word, violence.”

Kate Bornstein (1948) American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist

Source: Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (1995), p. 108

Men, War, Penalty, Girl

“I like strong/vulnerable interesting women, and then sometimes I like painting beautiful men, like Kurt Cobain, or Mr Darcy.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

"Stella Vine's The Waltz at Museum of New Art" http://www.detroitmona.com/stella_vine.htm, Detroit Museum of New Art, (2006-09-15. On the subjects she paints.

Men, Beauty, Strong, Painting

“Most women’s ideal is to not be sexual until nine conditions are met: physical attraction; respect; emotional compatibility; intelligence; singleness; success (or potential ); being asked out; being paid for; and the man risking rejection by initiating the first kiss…. Men want sex as long as only one condition is met—physical attraction.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 13.

Men, Sex, Intelligence, Kiss

“While feminists have spoken about prostitution as the buying and selling of women’s bodies, one trick more specifically explained what he did in prostitution as "renting an organ for ten minutes." Another explained, "Guys get off on controlling women, they use physical power to control women, really. If you look at it, [prostitution is] paid rape. You’re making them subservient during that time, so you’re the dominant person. She has to do what you want."”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia (2006)

Guy, Time, Personality

“Coming back to Iraq, obviously the situation has been getting worse over time, but I think it is still salvageable. We now have a political process going on, and I think if one looks at the place and what's been happening there, one has to marvel at what has been accomplished. There is an old saying, no news is good news, and the media obviously work on the reverse principle: Good news is no news. Most of the good things that have happened have not been reported, but there has been tremendous progress in many respects. Three elections were held three fair elections in which millions of Iraqis stood in line waiting to vote and knowing they were risking their lives every moment that they did so. And all this wrangling that's going on now is part of the democratic process, the fact that they argue, that they negotiate, that they try to find a compromise. This is part of their democratic education.
So I find all this both annoying and encouraging. I see that more and more people are becoming involved in the political process. And there's one thing in Iraq in particular that I think is encouraging, and that is the role of women. Of all the Arab countries, with the possible exception of Tunisia, Iraq is the one where women have made most progress. I'm not talking about rights, a word that has no meaning in that context. I'm talking about opportunity, access. Women in Iraq had access to education, to higher education, and therefore to the professions, and therefore to the political process to a degree without parallel elsewhere in the Arab world, as I said, with the possible exception of Tunisia. And I think that the participation of women the increasing participation of women is a very encouraging sign for the development of democratic institutions.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

People, World, Education, Thinking

“The immorality of men triumphs over the amorality of women.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Men

“It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics: One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group. Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery. Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no. Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men. Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line. You put them all together gentlemen -- You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. Or the People's Temple.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Ibid., February 5, 1979.

Death, Men, God, Children

“Carol James, who is my physician's assistant and my right-hand person, frequently teases me by saying, "It's because women need only half of their brain to think as well as men. That's why you can do this operation on so many women."”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (1990), p. 161

Men, Thinking, Personality

“The less our sons our trusted, the less women are able to really love them, and the more women feel entitled to use them as wallets.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 98.

Love, Feeling

“We have to care about our bodies and what we put in them. Women have to take the time to focus on our mental health—take time for self, for the spiritual, without feeling guilty or selfish. The world will see you the way you see you, and treat you the way you treat yourself.”

Beyoncé (1981) American singer, songwriter and actress

"Beyoncé Wants to Change the Conversation", interview with Elle (4 April 2016) http://www.elle.com/fashion/a35286/beyonce-elle-cover-photos

Health, World, Way, Feeling

“Of women he [Voltaire] has no very high opinion. To judge from his treatment of them, their minds are exclusively occupied by the prospect of making love to handsome young men with good figures, though, being both venal and timid, they are prepared to hire their bodies to old inquisitors or soldiers if, by so doing, they can save their own lives or amass riches. They are inconstant, and will gladly cut off the nose of a husband fondly mourned in order to cure a new lover.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Love, Men, Making love, Lovers

“Where is my daddy? asked the emerald. My da?
Moll dropped a glass, which shattered.
Your father.
Yes, said the emerald, amn’t I supposed to have one?
He’s not here.
Noticed that, said the emerald.
I’m never sure what you know and what you don’t know.
I ask in true perplexity.
He was Deus Lunus. The moon god. Sometimes thought of as the man in the moon.
Bosh! said the emerald. I don’t believe it.
Do you believe I’m your mother?
I do.
Do you believe you’re an emerald?
I am an emerald.
Used to be, said Moll, women wouldn’t drink from a glass into which the moon had shone. For fear of getting knocked up.
Surely this is a superstition?
Hoo, hoo, said Moll. I like superstition.
I thought the moon was female.
Don’t be culture-bound. It’s been female in some cultures at some times, and in others, not.
What did it feel like? The experience.
Not a proper subject for discussion with a child.
The emerald sulking. Green looks here and there.
Well it wasn’t the worst. Wasn’t the worst. I had an orgasm that lasted three hours. I judge that not the worst.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“The Emerald”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

God, Fear, Feeling, Drink

“On United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law…Throughout the world, there are many who have been seeking to have their voices heard, to stand up for their right to freedom, and to break the chains of tyranny. Too many of those courageous women and men are paying a terrible price for their brave acts of dissent. Many have been detained, arrested, thrown in prison, and subjected to torture by regimes that fail to understand that their habits of control will not serve them well in the long-term.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

June 26 http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2005/Jun/27-499670.html 2000s, 2005

Men, World, Law, Courage

“In an excellent report compiled by Major General Craig Orme titled Beyond Compliance: Professionalism, Trust and Capability in the Australian Profession of Arms, this aspect of our culture was analysed with insight and frankness. Yes, we do need to bond our soldiers to one another and instil toughness and resilience into them. But when this goal is invoked to degrade and demonise women and minorities it is undermining rather than enhancing capability. We need to define the true meaning of teamwork to embrace a band of brothers and sisters.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Sister

“Because there are indeed women in Iceland, it will now be proven to you, you ugly wench, that there are also men in Iceland!”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men

“There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.”

Karl Kraus Sprüche und Widersprüche

Sprüche und Widersprüche (Dicta and Contradictions) (1909); as translated by Richard Hanser

Beauty, Way

“Have I your word?” “yes, you have my word. But, you don’t believe me.” “no, men’s promises to women are easily made and even more easily broken.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Beguiled

Men

“I have sought permanently to associate the advancement of knowledge with the widest possible civic and public diffusion of it; and this without any academic limitations, henceforth to all races and languages, to both men and women alike, and for all time coming.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

Men, Knowledge, Time

“Cherie Blair can call herself a feminist all she likes, but any feminist worth her salt would have made a point of having a termination - on the NHS, naturally - when she got knocked up the last time... Famous women would rather admit to having been sexually abused as children than to having had a termination... Myself, I'd as soon weep over my taken tonsils or my absent appendix as snivel over those [five] abortions. I had a choice, and I chose life - mine.”

Julie Burchill (1959) British writer

Julie Burchill (2005), British feminist and abortion advocate, from "Abortion: still a dirty word" in The Guardian (May 25, 2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,720719,00.html.

Life, Children, Nature, Time

“I'm empowered to stand here thanks to the ensemble of actors, men and women, who I shared the screen with and who in ways they will never understand made me a better actor.”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

67th Academy Award Speech (1995)

Men, Way, Understanding

“(Television) The brain is differently wired in men and women. (Sylvia) In men, the wires are loose.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 26

Men

“Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time.
This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program.
But if you bought into the idea that boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something that every parent who had ever raised a boy had to take seriously—then it was difficult to envision a lot of them spending their lives in tin cans.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Scouts"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Men, People, Food, Boy

“I could have been a serious athlete, only to have my promise cut short when I discovered Woodbines and women. Thankfully I have long since given up the former, and the latter have long since given up on me—except, of course, for the lovely Lady Stratford, who for reasons beyond my comprehension still tolerates my presence.”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

maiden speech to the House of Lords http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldhansrd/vo050720/text/50720-23.htm, 20 July 2005; quoted by United Kingdom Parliament World Wide Web Service.

Love

“Where women are, are arguments and strife.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Canto XLIII, stanza 120 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Love

“I believe that the shocking toll of AIDS on gay men in the West was partly due to their Seventies delusionism that a world without women was possible. All-male energies, unbalanced and ravenous, literally tore the body apart.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 69

Men, World

“As we look back, it seems like willful blindness. The abandonment of the radical economic foundation of the women's and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully retrained generation of activists in the politics of image, not action.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

“Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

For women, Change

“All I can say is that women, when they govern, are much harsher than men. Much crueler. Much more bloodthirsty. I'm citing facts, not opinions. You're heartless when you have power. Think of Catherine de Medicis, Catherine of Russia, Elizabeth I of England. Not to mention Lucrezia Borgia, with her poisons and intrigues. You're schemers, you're evil. All of you.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

Men, Thinking, Evil

“Women have two orgasms, the real ones and the ones they make up on their own. And I can give you the male point of view on this, which is: we're fine with it. You do whatever you have to do, and we'll do whatever we have to…. To a man, sex is like a car accident anyway, and trying to determine a female orgasm is like asking, "What did you see after the car went out of control?" "Well, there were a lot of screeching noises, I was facing the wrong way at one point, and in the end, my body was thrown clear."”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Sex, Cars, Way

“Indeed I am ill-starred, for even if he dies I have no hope of happiness; with Jason dead, I should taste real misery. Away with modesty, farewell to my good name! Saved from all harm by me, let him go where he pleases, and let me die. On the very day of his success I could hang myself from a rafter or take a deadly poison. Yet even so my death would never save me from their wicked tongues. My fate would be the talk of every city in the world; and here the Colchian women would bandy my name about and drag it in mud – the girl who fancied a foreigner enough to die for him, disgraced her parents and her home, went off her head for love. What infamy would not be mine? Ah, how I grieve now for the folly of my passion! Better to die here in my room this very night, passing from life unnoticed, unreproached, than to carry through this horrible, this despicable scheme.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 783–801

Love, Life, Death, Fate

“It is too easy to see Crowley as an overgrown juvenile delinquent with a passion for self-advertisement. But there was another Crowley, the Crowley recognized and admired by Frank Bennett. Unless we understand this, we totally fail to grasp the extraordinary influence that Crowley could exert on women like Rose and Leah, and on men like Neuberg, Sullivan and Bennett. They came to believe that Crowley was exactly what he claimed to be: a great teacher, the messiah of a new age. And this was not the gullibility of born dupes; Sullivan, at least, was one of the most intelligent men of his age (as his book on Beethoven reveals). Crowley was, in part, a great teacher, a man of profound insights. Mencius says: 'Those who follow the part of themselves that is great become great men; those who follow the part of themselves that is small will become small men.' But Crowley was a strange mixture who devoted about equal time to following both parts of himself, and so became a curious combination of greatness and smallness. A summary of his life, and his extraordinary goings-on, makes us aware of the smallness; but it would be sheer short-sightedness to overlook the element of greatness that so impressed Bennett.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 127-128

Life, Men, Books, Age

“Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.”

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) English poet and soldier (1893-1918)

Disabled

Men, Strong

“Erotica: the depiction of naked men. Depictions of naked women are far less innocent and are known as "pornography."”

Richard Summerbell (1956) Canadian mycologist

Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)

Men

“Well he knew she was one of those women who, giving themselves, give wholly, reckoning not the cost; love of body and of soul, strength of arm in the daily task, the unmeasured devotion of a spirit that does not waver. So precious the gift appeared to him that he dared not ask it.”

Louis Hémon book Maria Chapdelaine

Source: Maria Chapdelaine (1913), Ch. 5, p. 76

Love, Soul, Appearance

“I believe that more women are disappointed in marriage than men; a woman gives the whole of her heart — the man only gives the remains of his, and very often there is only a little left. Besides his idol is rarely so much the work of his own hands as her's; at the end of the first year she may ask, where are the picturesque and ennobling qualities with which she invested her lover? in nine cases out of ten echo will indeed answer “where."”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.15. Ivanhoe — REBECCA.
Literary Remains

Men, Marriage, Disappointment, Lovers

“Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.)”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Richard Ames; chapter 16, p. 200
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

Forgiveness

“Good afternoon, Marines. Thank you for your attention so late on a Friday. I know the women of Southern California are waiting for you, so I won't waste your time.”

James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general

Opening remark made by Mattis in an address of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Marines at Camp Pendleton in September 2002. As quoted by Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), p. 163.

Time, Waiting

“Both sexes work on their lines before they appear onstage. His lines are a lifetime of work; her introductory 'line' is her appearance--or her lack of lines. Just as careers give men power, so beauty gives women power. But just as the comparison between herself and the most beautiful women makes a woman feel powerless, so the comparison between himself and the most successful men makes a man feel powerless.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 106.

Men, Beauty, Sex, Feeling

“It has never been in my power to study anything, — mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Victoria (23 December 1908)

Men, History, Mathematics, Study

“Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "Once Solomon, son of David said, '(By Allah) Tonight I will have sexual intercourse with one hundred (or ninety-nine) women each of whom will give birth to a knight who will fight in Allah's Cause.' On that a (i. e. if Allah wills) but he did not say, Allah willing.' Therefore only one of those women conceived and gave birth to a half-man. By Him in Whose Hands Muhammad's life is, if he had said, "Allah willing', (he would have begotten sons) all of whom would have been knights striving in Allah's Cause."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Bukhari 4:52:74i http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/052.sbt.html#004.052.074i Sunni Hadith

Life, Birth, Fight

“How many times, have I had to seat women whom I received at audiences next to me, rather than facing me, in order to avoid general embarrassment? Nothing should compel us to suffer such trials. It puts the nerves of men and the modesty of women to a severe test.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Men, Suffering, Time

“I have tremendous respect for women after watching my wife give birth three times. I could never, ever raise a child to whom I gave birth. You know, because a newborn is about the size of a basketball, and if I had to expel a basketball from my body via a very restricted passageway, I would never want to see that basketball again. Not even on weekends.”

Jeff Stilson American comedian

Comedy Central Presents Jeff Stilson (2003)

Birth, Time

“With women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

La Parure (The Necklace) (1884)

People, Family, Beauty, Feeling

“The fact is we are all, no matter where we live, surrounded constantly by stories, whether they are literal, oral or visual…the benign story I'm really growing tired of is the "humorous" story of the blonde woman who is either injured or humiliated all in order to sell beer. Not funny. I am tired of these stories. I am angered by these stories. There are other stories far more wondrous — stories of women claiming and reclaiming power, stories of rage and resistance and indefatigable courage, and stories of women and some men — reaching across great divides and into the most treacherous places on Earth where turmoil reigns and violence against women is unchecked, taking the hands of those women, helping to lift them up and leading them toward safety and sanctuary and self-determination.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at private fundraiser for V-Day (March 2008) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/vday.html.

Men, Courage, Beer, Rage

“The public censure of women as if we are rabid because we speak without apology about the world in which we live is a trategy of threat that usually works. Men often react to women's words - speaking and writing - as if they were acts of violence' sometimes men react to women's words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men - control, violence, insult, contempt - that no threat seems empty.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Introduction
Intercourse (1987)

Men, World

“The two sets of sources, textual and nontextual, reveal bits of history to us in different ways, like the lame man riding on the shoulders of the blind man. When it comes to history, you can’t trust anyone: The texts lie one way, while images and archeology mislead us in other ways. On the one hand, the gods did not fly around in big palaces, as the texts insist that they did, and we cannot know if women really did speak up as Gargi does in the Upanishads, or Draupadi in the Mahabharata.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Source: The Hindus: An Alternative History, p. 34.

God, Lie, Way, History

“Jake jerked a thumb at the door. "Al right. Get the hell out of here, and take all your pictures of naked women with you." "Yes, sir." Chuckling, Potter scooped up the folder of reconnaissance photos and started out. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Good luck," he said. "You've done everything you could to get us ready, but we'll still need it." "I'll put in a fresh requisition with the Quartermaster Corps," Jake said. Potter nodded and left. Jake shook his head in bemusement. He might have made stupid jokes like that with Ferd Koenig and a couple of other old-time Party buddies, but not with anybody else. So why make them with Potter? But he didn't need long to find the answer. He'd known Potter longer than he'd known Koenig or any of the other Party men. They'd both hung tough when the Army of Northern Virginia was falling to pieces all around them. If the president of the greatest country in North America- no, in the world!”

Harry Turtledove book American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

couldn't joke around with the one man who'd known him when he was just a sergeant, with whom could he joke? Nobody. Nobody at all.
Source: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003), p. 533

Men, Stupidity, World, Jerk

“You were so kind to us yesterday. Never have I seen such magnanimity and such tenderness.
Can you imagine the gift you gave me? To return to the White House privately with my little ones while they are still young enough to rediscover their childhood — with you both as guides — and with your daughters, such extraordinary young women.
What a tribute to have brought them up like that in the limelight. I pray I can do half the same with my Caroline. It was good to see her exposed to their example, and John to their charm!
You spoiled us beyond belief... I have never seen the White House look so perfect. There is no hidden corner of it that is not beautiful now.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Letter to Richard and Pat Nixon after a White House visit (February 1971)] as quoted in "Can You Imagine The Gift You Gave Me?" by Bob Greene, in The Chicago Tribune (28 July 1999) http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-07-28/features/9907280018_1_white-house-john-kennedy-richard-nixon-library

Beauty, Imagination, Childhood, Housing

“It is the slow, but steady movement of the lower classes along the scale of the class system. But it has been very very slow. It took 2000 years. But it is something which is going on, and something which is almost spectacular in certain sectors today -assertion of the backward classes, of scheduled castes, of women.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

“There's a great deal of criticism about the United States, but there is one thing that nobody criticizes the United States. Nobody thinks the United States went to strike against Iraq in order to gain land or water or oil, nobody thinks America has any ambitions about real estate. As it happened in the 20th century, the American boys went to fight in two world wars, many of them lost their lives. The United States won the wars, won the land, but you gave back every piece of it. America didn't keep anything out of her victories for herself. You gave back Japan, an improved Japan, you gave Germany, an improved Germany, you've heard the Marshall Plan. And today, I do not believe there is any serious person on earth who thinks the United States, whether you agree or don't agree with this strike, has any egoistic or material purposes in the war against Iraq. The reason is, for this strike, that you cannot let the world run wild. And people who are coming from different corners of our life, attack and kill women and children and innocent people, just out of the blue. And I think the whole world is lucky that there is a United States that has the will and the power to handle the new danger that has arrived on the 21st century.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Speech at Harvard University (20 October 2004)

Life, War, Children, People

“This is an organised crime. There is money coming from the Gulf and other countries to enable a gang of Muslim men trap Hindu women, marry them and then use them for crime including terror.”

Pramod Muthalik (1963) Indian politician

On Love Jihad, as quoted in " Muthalik finds cases of ‘love jihad’ in state, cites RTI info http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/muthalik-finds-cases-of-love-jihad-in-state-cites-rti-info/", The Indian Express (20 September 2014)

Men, Money, Country

“We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

Love, Life, War, People

“A child raised every 2. years is of more profit then the crop of the best laboring man. in this, as in all other cases, providence has made our duties and our interests coincide perfectly…. [W]ith respect therefore to our women & their children I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with us.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

In letter to plantation manager, as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine, (October 2012) Attributed

Children

“Could it be that people accept evolution because […. ] They know that evolution is the only philosophy that can be used to justify their political agenda of: i. Communism, ii. Racism, iii. Abortion, iv. Nazism, v. Socialism, vi. Gay rights, vii. Women's liberation, viii. Extreme environmentalism, ix. Euthanasia, x. Pornography, xi. Humanism, xii. New Age Movement.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

People, Age, Communication

“It was the poor part of town—small houses and courts with mailboxes full of spiders, mailboxes hanging by one nail, old women inside rolling cigarettes and chewing tobacco and humming to their canaries and watching you, an idiot lost in the rain.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

Parting, Housing

“…as with most redheaded women what beauty she possessed was protean and odd.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Beauty

“You are what is keeping and making the black race look bad. Wake up fool. Do not glorify this half a man, he has worked for nothing. He chose to keep himself where he is, not the white people. It is time to take responsibility for your own actions, and not act like a stinking fool. Kids and young black men and women look at this site, and believe that they are abused. That is a bold-faced lie. It is out of the mouths of cheap thugs like you that are hurting our young and taking away the chances they have to make themselves a productive part of society. Brothers and sisters, the only slavery in America now is the one you put yourself into. Rise up like Doctor King as taught us, and be a real human being. We are all in this togehter, white and black. Peace to all, and I hope this stupid fake hate stops real soon. We are all brothers and sisters. Do not be fooled by the tyranny of evil men like this. Lift yourself up, educate yourselves, and work hard for a good life. No one owes you anything. Stand proud as a person of color, and do something meaningful with your life. I did and I am the best at what I do! Peace out, R. Sherman.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Posted on a website under the alias "RSherman25", quoted in "Richard Sherman Blasts 'Black Lives Matter' Activist" https://web.archive.org/web/20150916235759/http://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/dylan-gwinn/2015/09/14/richard-sherman-blasts-black-lives-matter-activist (14 September 2015), by Dylan Gwinn, NewsBusters (2015), Reston, Virginia: Media Research Center. Sherman has said that although he agreed with some of the sentiments expressed, he did not write or say this http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/video-richard-sherman-speaks-passionately-on-black-lives-matter/. Misattributed

Life, Men, Hate, People

“[W]hat al Qaeda is fighting for is a traditional understanding of the family. This is not a minor part of their program: it is at its heart. The traditional family is built around some clearly defined principles. First, the home is the domain of the woman and life outside the house is the purview of the man. Second, sexuality is something confined to the family and the home, and extramarital, extrafamilial sexuality is unacceptable. Women who move outside the home invite extramarital sexuality just by being there. Third, women have as their primary tasks reproduction and nurturing of the next generation. Therefore, intense controls on women are necessary to maintain the integrity of the family and of society. In an interesting way it is all about women, and bin Laden's letter [to the U. S. ] drives this home. What he hates about America is that it promotes a completely different view of women and the family.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 50

Life, Hate, Family, Way

“As far as fanatical Muslims are concerned, Yazidis must be classified among the heathen because they do not belong to any of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Under Islamic rules, Jews and Christians are regarded as “people of the book” and thus could live among Muslims provided they pay a protection fee known as “dhimma.” Even if they wanted to, Yazidis cannot make use of that provision because they regard themselves as followers of Zoroaster, a prophet of ancient Iranian peoples who preached around 700 BC… A peaceful people opposed to violence and bloodshed, Yazidis believe that no cause is worth killing people for, something that scandalizes fanatical Muslims who regard the spread of “The Only True Faith” by sword as a duty and the man who does it as the “Ghazi” (Holy Warrior) who is assured a place in paradise. The Yazidis tradition of equality between men and women, including the rejection of polygamy, also scandalizes their fanatical Muslim neighbors.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Why some Muslims want to kill the Yazidis by genocide" http://nypost.com/2014/08/17/why-some-muslims-want-to-destroy-the-yazidis-by-genocide/, New York Post (August 17, 2014). New York Post

Men, People, Books, Peace

“Selfish men make the best lovers. They're prepared to invest in the women's pleasures so that they can collect an even bigger dividend for themselves.”

J. G. Ballard book Cocaine Nights

"Paula Hamilton"
Cocaine Nights (1996)

Men, Pleasure, Lovers, Selfishness

““Mama’s beautiful?” I asked. “Are you blind?” said my brother. “Don’t you see how men and women are always looking at our mother everywhere she goes. Our mother is more beautiful than any movie star you’ll ever see, and yet this isn’t why papa chose her. He chose her, he’s told us a thousand times, because when he first saw her, she was in line to go into the dance hall over in Carlos Malo with her brother and sister. And when a fight broke out, she didn’t get excited and enjoy it like her sister and the other women. No, she and her brother moved away, wanting no part of it, and so, by seeing this, papa knew that she was a woman of high intelligence, respect, and responsibility; a person that he could trust with his life. And trust, remember, is the foundation of all love, papa says.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Love, Life, Men, Beauty

“My friends, there have been dozens of economic programs these past 60 years. I myself have seen so many Medium Term Development Programs prepared by very capable men and women from government, academe and the private sector.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Men, Past

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Declaration of Sentiments

First Woman's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, [July, 19-20, 1848]. Declaration of Sentiments.

Men, Truth

“When I first started out, I was considered a crackpot, [he said]. The doctors used to say, 'Don't go to that Jack LaLanne, you'll get hemorrhoids, you won't get an erection, you women will look like men, you athletes will get muscle-bound — this is what I had to go through.”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

Men

“Just released in 1994 is Christina Hoff Sommers’s landmark study, Who Stole Feminism?, which uses ingenious detective work to unmask the shocking fraud and propaganda of establishment feminism and the servility of American media and academe to Machiavellian feminist manipulation. This bracingly precise, fact-based book should be required reading for every journalist. Sommers is a courageous academic philosopher who was one of the very first to systematically critique current feminist ideology and who took tremendous abuse for it. … Sommers has done a great service for women and for feminism, whose fundamental precepts she has clarified and strengthened.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. xvi

Books, Courage, Fraud, Study

“Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution.One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first.Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing.Third, the United States in now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism, as we learned tragically on September eleventh. We are opposed by Osama Bin Ladin and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former national security adviser for President George Bush senior, who stated and I quote, "An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize if not destroy the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken."Fourth, at a time when this country has a six-trillion dollar national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.Fifth, I am concerned about the problems with so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed? And what role will the US play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the regions who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speech on Iraq War Resolution in US House of Representatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM (9 October 2002) 2000s

Men, War, Children, Law

“Women from earliest times have been used as conveniences of communication with unseen, inaccessible powers, but always in the sense that such exposing of self to dangerous mysteries, such destruction of the understanding as was required to become the slave of unseen powers, did not matter because the communicant was only a woman, in herself an undetermined cipher – a nothing.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Idea of God" from Essays from Epilogue (Manchester: Carcanet, 2001)

Communication, Understanding, Sense, Time

“Christianity is ever-present, with its wonderful parable of the prodigal son, to urge us to counsels of forbearance and forgiveness. Jesus was full of love for souls of women wounded by the passions of men, and He loved to bind their wounds, drawing from those same wounds the balm which would heal them. Thus he said to Mary Magdalene: "Your sins, which are many, shall be forgiven, because you loved much?" a sublime pardon which was to awaken a sublime faith.
Why should we judge more strictly than Christ? Why, clinging stubbornly to the opinions of the world which waxes hard so that we shall think it strong, why should we too turn away souls that bleed from wounds oozing with the evil of their past, like infected blood from a sick body, as they wait only for a friendly hand to bind them up and restore them to a convalescent heart?”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Le christianisme est là avec sa merveilleuse parabole de l'enfant prodigue pour nous conseiller l'indulgence et le pardon. Jésus était plein d'amour pour ces âmes blessées par les passions des hommes, et dont il aimait à panser les plaies en tirant le baume qui devait les guérir des plaies elles-mêmes. Ainsi, il disait à Madeleine : - "il te sera beaucoup remis parce que tu as beaucoup aimé", sublime pardon qui devait éveiller une foi sublime. Pourquoi nous ferions-nous plus rigides que le Christ ?
Pourquoi, nous en tenant obstinément aux opinions de ce monde qui se fait dur pour qu'on le croie fort, rejetterions-nous avec lui des âmes saignantes souvent de blessures par où, comme le mauvais sang d'un malade, s'épanche le mal de leur passé, et n'attendant qu'une main amie qui les panse et leur rende la convalescence du coeur ?
La Dame aux Camélias, English translation by David Coward; Oxford University Press, Sep 18, 1986.

Love, Men, World, Faith

“To love intelligent women is the pleasure of a pederast.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pédéraste. VI http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fus%C3%A9es#VI Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Fusées (1867)

Love, Pleasure, Intelligence

Quotes about women page 20

Quotes about women
page 20