Quotes about women
page 27

Bell Hooks photo

“Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife. She made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated, white women who were compelled by sexist conditioning to remain in the home. … Specific problems and dilemmas of leisure class white housewives were real concerns that merited consideration and change but they were not the pressing political concerns of masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about economic survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. When Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, more than one third of all women were in the work force. Although many women longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and money could actually shape their identities on the model of the feminine mystique.”

p. 1-2 https://books.google.com/books?id=uvIQbop4cdsC&pg=PA1.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory

Amir Taheri photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Peter Akinola photo
Germaine Greer photo
Regina Jonas photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Willa Cather photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Muhammad bin Qasim photo
Henry James photo
David Brooks photo

“Are we really here? Is this really happening? Is this America? Are we a great country talking about trying to straddle the world and create opportunity in this country? It's just mind-boggling. And we have sort of become acculturated, because this campaign has been so ugly. We have become acculturated to sleaze and unhappiness that you just want to shower from every 15 minutes. The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again. But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his — even his misogyny is a childish misogyny. And that’s why I do not think Republicans, standard Republicans, can say, yes, I’m going to vote for this guy because he’s our nominee. He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that… The odd thing about his whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy. And his relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love. And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks, as quoted in "Shields and Brooks on Trump-Cruz wife feud, ISIS terror in Brussels" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-and-brooks-on-trump-cruz-wife-feud-isis-terror-in-brussels/ (25 March 2016), PBS NewsHour
2010s

Manis Friedman photo

“I would like to clarify the answer published in my name in last month’s issue of Moment Magazine. First of all, the opinions published in my name are solely my own, and do not represent the official policy of any Jewish movement or organization. Additionally, my answer, as written, is misleading. It is obvious, I thought, that any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion. Fundamental to the Jewish faith is the concept that every human being was created in the image of G-d, and our sages instruct us to support the non-Jewish poor along with the poor of our own brethren. The sub-question I chose to address instead is: how should we act in time of war, when our neighbors attack us, using their women, children and religious holy places as shields. I attempted to briefly address some of the ethical issues related to forcing the military to withhold fire from certain people and places, at the unbearable cost of widespread bloodshed (on both sides!)—when one’s own family and nation is mercilessly targeted from those very people and places. Furthermore, some of the words I used in my brief comment were irresponsible, and I look forward to further clarifying them in a future issue. I apologize for any misunderstanding my words created.”

Manis Friedman (1946) American rabbi

Clarification of previous statement http://momentmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/a-statement-from-rabbi-friedman/
On the Israeli-Arab conflict

George W. Bush photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Madeleine K. Albright photo

“I'm not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten what high school was like.”

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

Quoted http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1215791,00.html in Time (July 18, 2006)
2000s

Julius Streicher photo

“It's perfectly understandable and proper for one to be anti-Semite, but to exterminate women and children is so extraordinary, it's hard to believe. No defendant here wanted that.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn, June 15, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Susan Sontag photo

“Since it is hardly likely that contemporary critics seriously mean to bar prose narratives that are unrealistic from the domain of literature, one suspects that a special standard is being applied to sexual themes. … There is nothing conclusive in the well-known fact that most men and women fall short of the sexual prowess that people in pornography are represented as enjoying; that the size of organs, number and duration of orgasms, variety and feasibility of sexual powers, and amount of sexual energy all seem grossly exaggerated. Yes, and the spaceships and the teeming planets depicted in science-fiction novels don’t exist either. The fact that the site of narrative is an ideal topos disqualifies neither pornography or science-fiction from being literature. … The materials of the pornographic books that count as literature are, precisely, one of the extreme forms of human consciousness. Undoubtedly, many people would agree that the sexually obsessed consciousness can, in principle, enter into literature as an art form. … But then they usually add a rider to the agreement which effectively nullifies it. They require that the author have the proper “distance” from his obsessions for their rendering to count as literature. Such a standard is sheer hypocrisy, revealing one again that the values commonly applied to pornography are, in the end, those belonging to psychiatry and social affairs rather than to art. (Since Christianity upped that ante and concentrated on sexual behavior as the root of virtue, everything pertaining to sex has been a “special case” in our culture, evoking particularly inconsistent attitudes.) Van Gogh’s paintings retain their status as art even if it seems his manner of painting owed less to a conscious choice of representational means than to his being deranged and actually seeing reality the way he painted it. … What makes a work of pornography part of the history of art rather than of trash is not distance, the superimposition of a consciousness more conformable to that of ordinary reality upon the “deranged consciousness” of the erotically obsessed. Rather, it is the originality, thoroughness, authenticity, and power of that deranged consciousness itself, as incarnated in a work.”

“The Pornographic Imagination,” pp. 45-47
Styles of Radical Will (1966)

Camille Paglia photo

“Women's studies is institutionalized sexism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 242

Stanley Baldwin photo
Immortal Technique photo
George W. Bush photo
Mary Eberstadt photo
Swami Shraddhanand photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Gino Severini photo

“.. [a] generous display of scantily clad beauties and a carnavalesque inventiveness.... [the] beautifully masked and under-dressed women, with showers of confetti, multicolored streamers. The atmosphere was one of frenzy..”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Severini described the popular Parisian nightspot 'Bal Tabarin', after which he made his painting 'Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin' https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79419, in 1912
Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 54; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 39

Mitch Fatel photo
John Ray photo
Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
George W. Bush photo

“Taking care of women, is good politics.”

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

2010s, 2014, U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Spousal Program (August 2014)

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Warren Farrell photo
John Green photo

“She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale.
"DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted.
Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts.”

"That's not any better!"
Chip "the Colonel" Martin and Alaska Young, pp. 59-60
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Nigella Lawson photo

“But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "The big issue" by Shane Watson in The Times http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article2941491.ece (2 December 2007)

Eric Hoffer photo
Norman Mailer photo

“I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.”

The Sixth Presidential Paper — A Kennedy Miscellany : An Impolite Interview
The Presidential Papers (1963)

Katie Hopkins photo
Rick Santorum photo
Phyllis Chesler photo
John Marston photo
Marc Jacobs photo

“I'd like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressing for other people, that they're wearing what they like and what suits them. It's not a status thing.”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Clark, Mary (2001). "Index Magazine interview" http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/marc_jacobs.shtml indexmagazine.com (accessed April 19, 2007)
On his perfect customer

Phyllis Schlafly photo

“What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

The Equal Rights Amendment Falters, and Phyllis Schlafly Is the Velvet Fist Behind the Slowdown, People Magazine, 1975-04-28, 2013-06-11 http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20065183,00.html,

Warren Farrell photo

“Men learn to call pain “glory”; women learn to call the police.”

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

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Jim Butcher photo
Junot Díaz photo
Nora Ephron photo

“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure.”

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

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1]

Camille Paglia photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo

“The vehement struggle between the two factions of the professional women. Nevertheless our will prevailed.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

George W. Bush photo
Daniel Patrick Moynihan photo

“During my nine days' stay at Dacca, I visited most of the riot-affected areas of the city and suburbs. … The news of the killing of hundreds of innocent Hindus in trains, on railway lines between Dacca and Narayanganj, and Dacca and Chittagong gave me the rudest shock. … I reached Barisal town and was astounded to know of the happenings in Barisal. In the District town, a number of Hindu houses were burnt and a large number of Hindus killed. I visited almost all riot-affected areas in the District. … At the Madhabpasha Zamindar's house, about 200 people were killed and 40 injured. A place, called Muladi, witnessed a dreadful hell. At Muladi Bandar alone, the number killed would total more than three hundred, as was reported to me by the local Muslims including some officers. I visited Muladi village also, where I found skeletons of dead bodies at some places. I found dogs and vultures eating corpses on he river-side. I got the information there that after the whole-scale killing of all adult males, all the young girls were distributed among the ringleaders of the miscreants. At a place called Kaibartakhali under P. S. Rajapur, 63 persons were killed. Hindu houses within a stone's throw distance from the said thana office were looted, burnt and inmates killed. All Hindu shops of Babuganj Bazar were looted and then burnt and a large number of Hindus were killed. From detailed information received, the conservative estimate of casualties was placed at 2,500 killed in the District of Barisal alone. Total casualties of Dacca and East Bengal riot were estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 10,000 killed. The lamentation of women and children who had lost their all including near and dear ones melted my heart. I only asked myself "What was coming to Pakistan in the name of Islam."”

Jogendra Nath Mandal (1904–1968) Pakistani politician

Excerpted from the resignation letter of J. N. Mandal, Minister for Law and Labour, Government of Pakistan, October 8, 1950. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal https://biblio.wiki/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Peut-être veulent-elles [les femmes] un peu d'hypocrisie?
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
Arshile Gorky photo

“About a hundred and ninety-four feet away from our house [Gorky was born in Armenia] on the road to the spring, my father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit. There was a ground constantly in shade where grew incalculable amounts of wild carrots, and porcupines had made their nests. There was a blue rock half buried in the black earth with a few patches of moss placed here and there like fallen clouds. But from where came all the shadows in constant battle like the lancers of w:Paolo Ucello's painting? This garden was identified as the Garden of Wish Fulfilment and often I had seen my mother and other village women opening their bosoms and taking out their soft breasts in their hands to rub them on the rock. Above this all stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun, the rain, the cold, and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree. I myself don't know why this tree was holy but I had witnessed many people, whoever did pass by, that would tear voluntarily a strip of their clothes and attach this to the tree. Thus through many years of the same ac, like a veritable parade of banners under the pressure of wind all these personal inscriptions of signatures, very softly to my innocent ear used to give echo to the sh-h—h-sh—h of silver leaves of the poplars.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: posthumous, Astract Expressionist Painting in America, p. 124, (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 22,23

“I feel that no amount of women's participation can be said to be enough.”

Sangeeta Niranjan Fijian businesswoman

Interview with the Fiji Times, 18 September 2005

“Some have considered such photographs as evidence that Eakins, if not homosexual or bisexual, was at least homoerotic. But the artist would undoubtedly have done the same thing with his women students if such a thing had been possible.”

Gordon Hendricks (1917–1980) American historian

Gordon Hendricks: "The Life And Work Of Thomas Eakins", Grossman Publishers : New York 1974, ISBN 0-670-42795-0, p. 160
The photographs were studies for Eakins' painting Swimming, Hendricks was the first to connect Eakins with homosexuality.

Ellen Willis photo
Ashraf Pahlavi photo
Herrick Johnson photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Pat Condell photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Patrice O'Neal photo

“The Raelian Movement is an atheistic religion that perfectly merges science and spirituality, and it includes many female priests. Men and women must rise above their previous cultural conditioning and look to the future with a new awareness encompassing beauty and femininity.”

Raël (1946) Author of Raëlism and founder and current leader of the Raëlian Movement

Spanish Raelian Movement supports Zapatero's female majority cabinet http://raelianews.org/news.php?extend.278, Raelianews.org (May 14, 2008).

Gustave Courbet photo

“Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself—like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.”

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American author and playwright

"How to Talk to a Man"
The Snake Has All the Lines (1960)

Leonard Wibberley photo

“I think women should make a habit of canceling the wars.”

Leonard Wibberley (1915–1983) Irish-American author

Source: The Mouse that Roared, p. 145.

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
James Frazer photo
Trinny Woodall photo

“We absolutely love women, we are passionate about what we do and we get great results. Women see that our rules are manageable and make a real difference. I don't think we are being bossy, no one is forced to follow the rules.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

As quoted in "Mistresses of the makeover" by Cathrin Schaer in New Zealand Herald http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=182&objectid=10493332&pnum=2 (25 February 2008)

Joseph Arch photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“Firuz Shah Tughlaq organised an industry out of catching slaves. Shams-i-Siraj Afif writes in his Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi: “The Sultan commanded his great fief-holders and officers to capture slaves whenever they were at war (that is, suppressing Hindu rebellions), and to pick out and send the best for the service of the court. The chiefs and officers naturally exerted themselves in procuring more and more slaves and a great number of them were thus collected. When they were found to be in excess, the Sultan sent them to important cities… It has been estimated that in the city and in the various fiefs, there were 1,80,000 slaves… The Sultan created a separate department with a number of officers for administering the affairs of these slaves.”. Firuz Shah beat all previous records in his treatment of the Hindus… He records another instance in which Hindus who had built new temples were butchered before the gate of his palace, and their books, images, and vessels of Worship were publicly burnt. According to him “this was a warning to all men that no zimmi could follow such wicked practices in a Musulman country”. Afif reports yet another case in which a Brahmin of Delhi was accused of “publicly performing idol-worship in his house and perverting Mohammedan women leading them to become infidels”. The Brahmin “was tied hand and foot and cast into a burning pile of faggots.””

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

The historian who witnessed this scene himself expresses his satisfaction by saying, “Behold the Sultan’s strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees.”
Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231

Horace Walpole photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Ludacris photo

“Comin' to Shady Park is like a freak show, there's some respectable women, and there some freak hoes”

Ludacris (1977) American rapper and actor

Block Lockdown
Word of Mouf, 2001

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Nasreddin photo
Jimmy Kimmel photo

“We're going to give men what they really want to see on TV. Monkeys, midgets, beer drinking and women jumping on trampolines.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On the start of The Man Show — reported in Walt Belcher (June 13, 1999) "Wise guys Corolla, Kimmel revel in new 'Man Show'", The Tampa Tribune, p. 4.

Bell Hooks photo

“Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.”

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

Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3

Tracey Ullman photo
George Eliot photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo

“There are great many Rembrandts here [in Paris]. Even if they are yellow with varnish, I can still learn so much from them, the wrinkled intricacy of things, life itself. There is a little thing here by him.... It is of a women in bed, nude. But the way it's painted, the way the cushions are painted, their shapes, with all those details of lacework, the whole thing is bewitching.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her husband Otto Modersohn, from Boulevard Raspail 203, Paris, 18 February 1903; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 297
1900 - 1905

Henry Adams photo
Colette Dowling photo
Fiona Apple photo

“Interviewer: I read a post on the Internet from a young girl who had been victimized by someone and her position was like, "I can talk about this now because Fiona Apple can talk about what happened to her." Do you look at yourself as a role model for women and girls who've had this experience?
Fiona: That's the only reason I ever brought the whole rape thing up. It's a terrible thing, but it happens to so many people. I mean, 80 percent of the people I've told have said right back to me, "That happened to me too." It's so common, and so ridiculous that it's a hard thing to talk about. It angers me so much because something like that happens to you and you carry it around for the rest of your life. No matter how much therapy you go through, no matter how much healing you go through, it's part of you. I just feel that it's such a tragedy that so many people have to bear the extra burden of having to keep it secret from everyone else. As if it's too icky a subject to burden other people with and everyone's going to think you're a victim forever. Then you've labeled yourself a victim, and you've been taken advantage of, and you're ruined, and you're soiled, and you're not pure, you know.If I'm in a position where people are looking up to me in any way, then it's absolutely my responsibility to be open and honest about this, because if I'm not, what does that say to people? It doesn't change a person -- well, it does change a person but it doesn't take anything away from you. It can only strengthen you. It has made me so angry in the past. Like I wanted to say it to somebody. I really wanted somebody to connect with, somebody to understand me, somebody to comfort me. But I felt like I couldn't say anything about because it was taboo to talk about.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Nuvo, "Fiona Apple: The NUVO Interview" April [1997]

Joshua Jackson photo
John W. Gardner photo

“We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Quoted in "Self Renewal" (1964).

Robin Morgan photo