Quotes about women
page 21

Eugene V. Debs photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“Fortunately, President Obama and most world leaders understand that the idea that Iran's goal is not to develop nuclear weapons is ridiculous. Yet incredibly, some are prepared to accept an idea only slightly less preposterous: That we should accept a world in which the Ayatollahs have atomic bombs. Sure, they say, Iran is cruel, but it's not crazy. It's detestable but it's deterrable. Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the belief that the world's most dangerous regime won't use the world's most dangerous weapons. And I promise you that as Prime Minister, I will never gamble with the security of Israel. From the beginning, the Ayatollah regime has broken every international rule and flouted every norm. It has seized embassies, targeted diplomats and sent its own children through mine fields. It hangs gays and stones women. It supports Assad's brutal slaughter of the Syrian people. Iran is the world's foremost sponsor of terror. It sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and terrorists throughout the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Iran's proxies have dispatched hundreds of suicide bombers, planted thousands of roadside bombs, and fired over twenty thousand missiles at civilians. Through terror from the skies and terror on the ground, Iran is responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. In 1983, Iran's proxy Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 240 American servicemen. In the last decade, its been responsible for murdering and maiming American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just a few months ago, it tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in a restaurant just a few blocks from here. The assassins didn't care that several Senators and members of Congress would have been murdered in the process. Iran accuses the American government of orchestrating 9/11, and it denies the Holocaust. Iran brazenly calls for Israel's destruction, and they work for its destruction – each day, every day. This is how Iran behaves today, without nuclear weapons. Think of how they will behave tomorrow, with nuclear weapons. Iran will be even more reckless and far more dangerous.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference http://www.aipac.org/pc/videos/2012/monday-gala-plenary/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu (March 2012).
2010s, 2012

Lesslie Newbigin photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“As Hamas's charter makes clear, Hamas's immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that's why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common. Boko Haram in Nigeria; Ash-Shabab in Somalia; Hezbollah in Lebanon; An-Nusrah in Syria; The Mahdi Army in Iraq; And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere. Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims. Ladies and Gentlemen, Militant Islam's ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago. The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That's what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the United Nations General Assembly (September 2014), New York City, New York.
As quoted in The Jerusalem Post https://web.archive.org/save/http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Full-text-of-Prime-Minister-Netanyahus-UN-speech-376626.
2010s, 2014

Fay Weldon photo
Sandra Fluke photo

“Attacking me and women who use contraception by calling us prostitutes and worse cannot silence us.”

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

CNN, (March 13, 2012).
Articles

James Mattis photo

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

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

Panel discussion in San Diego, California (1 February 2005) as quoted in "General: It's 'fun to shoot some people'" CNN (4 February 2005) http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/general.shoot/(For a more contextualized explanation of General Mattis' remarks, see this essay by one of the Marines who served under Mattis: "Breaking the Warrior Code" The American Spectator (February 11, 2005) by John R. Guardiano https://spectator.org/48978_breaking-warrior-code/

Gloria Estefan photo

“I tell him [husband Emilio] you are lucky I am not a jealous woman, because look at the women he's worked with: Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Thalia, Madonna. These very sexy women. I trust him.”

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

Dutch television interview (March 1, 2007)
2007, 2008

Dylan Moran photo
Dora Russell photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo

“It is possible to be a woman who is intelligent, thoughtful, articulate, ambitious while being a woman who is maternal, nurturing, sexual and for other women.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

At Variety‘s Power of Women luncheon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TttzBPTmAxc (October 9, 2015)

Sarah Grimké photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.”

Les femmes tiennent et doivent toutes tenir à être honorées, car sans l'estime elles n'existent plus. Aussi est-ce le premier sentiment qu'elles demandent à l'amour.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

George W. Bush photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Camille Paglia photo
George W. Bush photo
Warren Farrell photo
Ernest King photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo

“All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!”

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

Susan B. Anthony (1884)

Philip K. Dick photo
Floyd Dell photo
Ann Richards photo
Richard Nixon photo

“I don't think women should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic and emotional.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Quoted in John Boertlein, Presidential Confidential (2010), p. 293
2000s

Gloria Estefan photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
André Maurois photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Joe Biden photo
Elton John photo
Mario Savio photo
Roger Ebert photo
Kunti photo

“Kunti and Draupadi are two women who shape the entire course of dynastic destiny in the Mahabharata. Kunti chooses the scion of Hastinapura, Pandu, to wed, and becomes the mother of the epic’s protagonists: the Pandavas.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 1.

Richard Holbrooke photo

“The fighting in western Bosnia intensified as the cease-fire approached. (…) Facing the end of the fighting, the Croats and the Bosnians finally buried their differences, if only momentarily, and took Sanski Most and several other smaller towns. But Prijedor still eluded them. For reasons we never fully undestood, they did not capture this important town, a famous symbol of ethnic cleansing.* (*In March 1997, I attended a showing at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York of a powerful documentary film, Calling the ghosts, that recounted the brual treatmen two Bosnian women from Prijedor had suffered during their incarceration at the notorious Omarska prison camp. Following the film, the two women angrily asked me why they were still unable to return to their hometown. I told them we'd repeatedly encouraged an assault on Prijedor. They were stonished; they said General Dudakovic, the Bosnian commander, had told them personally that "Holbrooke would not let us capture Prijedor and Bosanski Novi". I subsequently learned that this story was widely believed in the region. This revisionism was not surprising; it absolved Dudakovic and his associates of responsibility for the failure to take Prijedor. I suspect the truth is that after the disaster at the Una River the Croatians did not want to fight for a town the would have to turn over to the Muslims - and the Bosnians could not capture it unaided.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 206

Isa Genzken photo

“Some women love only what they can hold in their arms; others, only what they can't.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

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

Camille Paglia photo
Harriet Harman photo
Hans Arp photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo

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

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

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

Philip Schaff photo
Warren Farrell photo

“So, all through the medieval period, Foreign and Indian Muslims strove hard to make India a Muslim country by converting and eliminating the Hindus. They killed and converted, and converted and killed by turns. In the earlier centuries of their presence here, the picture was sombre indeed. Turkish rule was established in northern India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Within fifteen years of Muhammad Ghori’s occupation of Delhi, the Turks rapidly conquered most of the major cities of northern India. Their lightening success, as described by contemporary chroniclers, entailed great loss of life. Qutbuddin Aibak’s conquests during the life-time of his master and later on in the capacity of king (c.1200-1210) included Gwalior, parts of Bundelkhand, Ajmer, Ranthambhor, Anhilwara, as well a parts of U. P. and Malwa. In Nahrwala alone 50,000 persons were killed during Aibak’s campaign.8 No wonder, he earned the nickname of killer of lacs.9 Bakhtiyar Khalji marched through Bihar into Bengal and massacred people in both the regions. During his expedition to Gwalior Iltutmish (1210-36) massacred 700 persons besides those killed in the battle on both sides. His attacks on Malwa (Vidisha and Ujjain) were met with stiff resistance and were accompanied by great loss of life. He is also credited with killing 12,000 Khokhars (Gakkhars) during Aibak’s reign.10 The successors of Iltutmish (Raziyah, Bahram, etc.) too fought and killed zealously. During the reigns of Nasiruddin and Balban (1246-86) warfare for consolidation and expansion of Turkish dominions went on apace. Trailokyavarman, who ruled over Southern U. P., Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand, and is called “Dalaki va Malaki” by Persian chroniclers, was defeated after great slaughter (1248). In 1251, Gwalior, Chanderi, Narwar and Malwa were attacked. The Raja of Malwa alone had 5,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry and would have been defeated only after great loss of life. The inhabitants of Kaithal were given such severe punishment (1254) that they ‘might not forget (the lesson) for the rest of their lives.’ In 1256 Ulugh Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Sirmur, and ‘so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described.’ Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and ‘many of its valiant fighting men were sent to hell.’ In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) ‘numberless Hindus perished under the merciless swords of the soldiers of Islam.’ In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sword in Hariyana.”

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Aron Ra photo
Dylan Moran photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

David Morrison photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is no character in women’s faces before the age of thirty.”

Rien n'est-il si discret qu'un jeune visage, parce que rien n'est plus immobile. La figure d'une jeune femme a le calme, le poli, la fraîcheur de la surface d'un lac. La physionomie des femmes ne commence qu'à trente ans.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. VI: The Old Age of a Guilty Mother

Amir Taheri photo
Terence photo
Pramod Muthalik photo

“Since they are women, stooping to the level of gifting undergarments will defame them only.”

Pramod Muthalik (1963) Indian politician

On the Pink Chaddi Campaign, as quoted in " Mutalik rubbishes pink chaddi campaign http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hubballi/Mutalik-rubbishes-pink-chaddi-campaign/articleshow/4107231.cms", The Times of India (9 February 2009)

Dinah Craik photo
Herbert Hoover photo
Warren Farrell photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo
Marsha Blackburn photo
Roger Ebert photo

“Reader, I must confess that while attending the sneak preview with its overwhelmingly female audience, I was gob-smacked by the delightful cleavage on display. Do women wear their lowest-cut frocks for each other?”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sex-and-the-city-2-2010 of Sex and the City 2 (25 May 2010)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Daniel Tosh photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Kathleen Turner photo

“Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks. Most men think it's looks, most women know otherwise.”

Kathleen Turner (1954) American actress

As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 241
Also quoted in The Observer London UK newspaper (28 December 1986)

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“In my experience all women deserve someone better.”

Source: Drenai series, The Swords of Night and Day, Ch. 10

William Faulkner photo

“…women are not interested in truth or romance but only in facts whether they are true or not, just so they fit all the other facts.”

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 17; also in this chapter Gavin Stevens reflects — twice — that men are "interested in facts too".
The Town (1957)

Jean-François Millet photo

“I remember being awakened one morning by voices in the room where I slept. There was a whizzing sound which made itself heard between the voices now and then. It was the sound of spinning-wheels, and the voices were those of women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room danced in a ray of sunshine which shone through the high narrow window that lighted the room..”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote, c. 1870; as cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 12
taken from Millet's youth-memories, he wrote down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sensier]
1870 - 1875

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt photo

“Today in a land where all women inherit civic responsibility, where professions and business are open to all comers without distinction of sex, leadership through direct influence is woman’s unchallenged heritage.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Speech delivered in 1922 to the American Association of College Women, in [Western Journal of Education, https://books.google.com/books?id=3XovAQAAMAAJ, 3 July 2018, 1922, Harr Wagner Publishing Company, 8]

Edgar Degas photo

“.. women… …their way of observing, combining, sensing the way they dress. They compare a thousand of more visible things with one another than a man does.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 53
quotes, undated

André Maurois photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
George Eliot photo
Bell Hooks photo
P. W. Botha photo

“No more mine-laying. No more murder. No more abduction of women and children. No more attacks on headmen. No more raids across the border. So long as these conditions do not exist there will be no withdrawal [from South-West Africa] of South African troops.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As Prime Minister to the House of Assembly, 8 March 1979, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 65

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Association with women is the basic element of good manners.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Der umgang mit frauen ist das element guter sitten.
Maxim 31, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
Variant translative: Intercourse with women is the element of good manners.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Warren Farrell photo

“Monotheism came to this country for the first time as the war-cry of Islamic invaders who marched in with the Quran in one hand and the sword in the other. It proclaimed that there was no God but Allah and that Muhammad was the Prophet of Allah. It claimed that Allah had completed his Revelation in the Quran and that Muslims who possessed that Book were the Chosen People. It invoked a theology which called upon the believers to convert or kill the infidels, particularly the idolaters, capture their women and children and sell them into slavery and concubinage all over the world, slaughter their sages and saints and priests, break or at least desecrate their idols, destroy or convert into mosques their places of worship, plunder their properties, occupy their lands, and heap humiliations on such of them as cannot be converted or killed either due to their capacity for fighting back or the need of the conquerors for slave labour. The enormities which the votaries of Islamic Monotheism practised on a vast scale and for a long time vis-a-vis Hindu religion, culture and society, were unheard of by Hindus in the whole of their hoary history. Muslim theologians, sufis and historians who witnessed or read or heard of these doings hailed the doers as soldiers of Allah and heroes of Islam. They thanked Allah and the Prophet who had declared a permanent war on the infidels and bestowed their progeny and properties on the believers. They quoted chapter and verse from the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet in order to prove that what was being done to Hindus was fully in keeping with the highest teachings of Islam.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Henry Adams photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“My ears may have been playing a trick on me, but I thought I heard the gentleman a moment ago say something quote unquote about homos in the military. Was I right in hearing that expression? Was the gentleman referring to the thousands and thousands of gay people who have put their lives on the line in countless wars defending this country? Was that the groups of people that the gentleman was referring to? You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line. I think they are owed an apology.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking to Representative Duke Cunningham on the floor of the House of Representatives, 11 May 1995, from Watch Bernie Sanders Demolish A Republican Over ‘Homos In The Military’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-duke-cunningham-homophobia_us_56cb75eee4b041136f17dc9f by Zach Carter, The Huffington Post (22 February 2016)
1990s

Peter Sloterdijk photo
Karl Kraus photo

“I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

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

Thomas R. Marshall photo
William Moulton Marston photo

“The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development and equality of women in all fields of human activity.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

"Noted Psychologist Revealed as Author of Best-Selling "Wonder Woman,' Children's Comic," press release, typescript [June 1942], WW Letters, Smithsonian

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo

“Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: ‘women not equal to men’" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/24/turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan-women-not-equal-men, The Guardian (November 24, 2014)