Quotes about women
page 31

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“Let's talk about football and women. … Gerhard, why don't you start?”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

At the Brussels summit, turning to the four-times-married German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, at the end of Italy's EU presidency, in December 2003, as quoted in "In quotes: Berlusconi in his own words" at BBC News (2 May 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3041288.stm
2003

Chuck Klosterman photo
Hester Thrale photo

“Women bear Crosses better than Men do, but bear Surprizes – worse.”

Hester Thrale (1741–1821) Welsh author and salon-holder

Letter to Sir James Fellowes, November 6, 1817; The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784-1821 (2002) vol. 6, p. 130.

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Warren Farrell photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Camille Paglia photo
Michelle Obama photo
Lauren Southern photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Jackson Browne photo

“Well I'm running down the road
Tryin' to loosen my load,
I've got seven women on my mind,
Four that wanna own me,
Two that wanna stone me,
One says she's a friend of mine.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

Take It Easy (co-written with Glenn Frey, 1971-1972), from For Everyman; previously recorded on The Eagles' album Eagles (1972)

Herbert Morrison photo

“The bridge was not of such great importance or social significance, but it was symbolical that Labour was capable of decision, that the machinery of democratic public administration would work if the men and women in charge were determined that it should work.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

The Times, 10 December 1934.
Explaining his decision to personally begin the dismantling of the old Waterloo Bridge; the government had refused to allow the council to build a replacement so Morrison and his allies forced the issue by breaking up the existing bridge.

Camille Paglia photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Joyce Carol Oates photo
Jennifer Beals photo

“[Speaking about women’s friendships] If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody.”

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

Interview in Stumped Magazine (February 2002) http://stumpedmagazine.com/interviews/jennifer-beals-transcript.html.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“There are two ways of avoiding the snare of woman; one is to shun all women and the other to love all beings.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

Jerry Coyne photo

“To Parker Bright, Hannah Black, and other critics of this painting, I say this:
I completely reject your criticism. If only artists of the proper ethnicity can depict violence inflicted on their group, then only writers of the proper ethnicity can write about the same issues, and so on with all the arts. And what goes for ethnicity or race goes for gender: men cannot write about suffering inflicted on women, nor women about suffering inflicted on men. Gays cannot write about straight people and vice versa.
The fact is that we are all human, and we are all capable of sharing, as well as depicting, the pain and suffering of others. I will not allow you to fracture art and literature the way you have fractured politics. Yes, horrible injustices have been visited on minority groups, on women, on gays, and on other marginalized people, but to allow that injustice to be conveyed only by “properly ethnic or gendered artists” is to deny us our common humanity and deprive us of emotional solidarity. No group, whatever its pigmentation or chromosomal constitution, has the exclusive right to create art or literature about their own subgroup. To deny others that right is to censor them.
To those who say this painting has caused them “unnecessary hurt” because it is by a white artist about black pain, I say, “Your own pain about this artwork is gratuitous; I do not take it seriously. It’s the cry of a coddled child who simply wants attention.””

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Insane political correctness: snowflakes urge destruction of Emmett Till painting https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/insane-political-correctness-snowflakes-urge-destruction-of-emmett-till-painting/" April 4, 2017

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Stephen Miller photo
Kancha Ilaiah photo
Warren Farrell photo

“When men in relationships have more money, we say they have the power. When women in relationships have more money, we say they are being used.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 218.

Henry Adams photo

“The Church had known more about women than science will ever know, and the historian who studied the sources of Christianity felt sometimes convinced that the Church had been made by the woman chiefly as her protest against man.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

In the first part of this quote, Adams alludes to the figure of the Virgin, the subject of Chapters V–XIII of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Margaret Mead photo
John Buchan photo
Aga Khan III photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
They will, they will not; fools that on them trust.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Femina è cosa garrula e fallace:
Vuole e disvuole; è folle uom che sen fida.
Canto XIX, stanza 84 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Amit Shah photo

“But I think [the] Uttar Pradesh electorate was fed up of this caste-based politics as the state has hardly seen any development, [the] [law-and-order] situation has deteriorated, investment, employment, women’s safety, rural and agriculture development, these areas hardly saw any development.”

Amit Shah (1964) Indian politician

"Exclusive Amit Shah Interview: People are waiting to vote for Modi," 2013, "Sunday Interview: We had 450 video raths with GPS and I’d get feedback on my mobile, says Amit Shah", 2014

Warren Farrell photo
Rand Paul photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“Penang is a paradise, and east coast Kelantan has beautiful Malay women who walk proudly ahead of their husbands and scorn Koranic purdah….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Camille Paglia photo

“Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 53

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
James Macpherson photo
Lin Yutang photo
Kancha Ilaiah photo

“If the God believed by a person doesn’t have democratic values, where will this person get those democratic values from? In fact, shouldn’t they explain why they create such Gods who are violent, undemocratic and anti-women?”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

Quoted in Scroll.in (13 March 2016) http://scroll.in/article/731416/case-filed-against-social-scientist-kancha-ilaiah-for-asking-is-god-a-democrat.

Daniel Defoe photo
Assata Shakur photo
Sandra Fluke photo

“Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared are Catholic women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for access to the healthcare we need.”

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

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Paul Newman photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo

“I think that it’s a very smart decision actually to have women that are capable and intelligent because it appeals to women. You know, so it’s not only a film for fifteen-year-old boys. It’s a film that can relate to a lot of people on a lot of levels. A lot of my girlfriends like it because of the romance or like Scarlett is in the trailer and it is appealing. 'Ooh who is she?”

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

and it doesn’t look gratuitous. It looks like there are interesting women in the movie.
Of her role in Iron Man 2; Teen Hollywood http://www.teenhollywood.com/2010/05/03/interview-gwyneth-and-scarlett-iron-mans-ladies (3 May 2010)

Taslima Nasrin photo

“Religion is against women's rights and women's freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions.”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

" Taslima Nasrin: A Writer On Trial http://atheistfoundation.org.au/article/taslima-nasrin-a-writer-on-trial/", Interview with Kerry O'Brien on "Lateline", ABC TV (1995).

Fran Lebowitz photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Women’s vulnerability confessing their desire to see men as a success object is matched by men’s confession of compulsiveness of sexual desire for women.”

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

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

Davey Havok photo
Warren Farrell photo
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan photo

“Whenever I had an opportunity to address the people in different parts of our province, I told them clearly that indeed, I was of the opinion that India should not be divided because today in India we have witnessed the result. Thousands and thousands of young and old, children, men, and women were massacred and ruined. But now that the division is an accomplished fact, the dispute is over. " I delivered many speeches against the division of India, but the question is: has anybody listened to me? You may hold any opinion about me, but I am not a man of destruction but of construction. If you study my life, you will find that I devoted it to the welfare of our country. We have proclaimed that if the Government of Pakistan would work for our people and our country the Khudai Khidmatgars would be with them. I repeat that I am not for the destruction of Pakistan. In destruction lies no good. "Neither Hindus nor Muslims, nor the Frontier, not Punjab, Bengal or Sindh stands to gain from it. There is advantage only in construction. I want to tell you categorically I will not support anybody in destruction. If any constructive programme is before you, if you want to do something constructive for our people, not in theory, but in practice, I declare before this House that I and my people are at your service…”

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) Indian independence activist

February 1948
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: A True Servant of Humanity by Girdhari Lal Puri pp -188 ? 190

Viktor Brack photo

“Dear Reichsführer, among 10's of millions of Jews in Europe, there are, I figure, at least 2-3 millions of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labor problem presents us with, I hold the view that those 2-3 millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can however only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate. About a year ago I reported to you that agents of mine have completed the experiments necessary for this purpose. I would like to recall these facts once more. Sterilization, as normally performed on persons with hereditary diseases is here out of the question, because it takes too long and is too expensive. Castration by X-ray however is not only relatively cheap, but can also be performed on many thousands in the shortest time. I think that at this time it is already irrelevant whether the people in question become aware of having been castrated after some weeks or months, once they feel the effects. Should you, Reichsführer, decide to choose this way in the interest of the preservation of labor, then Reichsleiter Bouhler would be prepared to place all physicians and other personnel needed for this work at your disposal. Likewise he requested me to inform you that then I would have to order the apparatus so urgently needed with the greatest speed. Heil Hitler! Yours, Viktor Brack.”

Viktor Brack (1904–1948) SS officer

Letter written to Heinrich Himmler (23 June 1942).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Elinor Glyn photo

“He had that nameless charm, with a strong magnetism which can only be called "It", and cats – as well as women – always knew when he came into the room.”

Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) British novelist and scriptwriter

It, and Other Stories (1927), ch. 1, p. 10.

John Gay photo

“I must have women—there is nothing unbends the mind like them.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Macheath, Act II, sc. iii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Kofi Annan photo

“Muslims shared many of the deep-seated characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon elite—an intuitive resentment of culture, an amicable contempt for women, a proclivity for riding about on horses, a pleasure in discipline, and a covert homophilia.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

from … "a book about India", quoted in an article by Roger Sandall http://www.rogersandall.com/nihilism-in-the-middle-east/
Attributed

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

“I think women have demonstrated in leadership positions that they're capable of handling very difficult situations.”

RoseMarie Panio (1941) politician

The Journal News (2007) http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:zcK-Qu47mLwJ:www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D2007701220356+%22linda+cooper%22+biography+yorktown&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

Donald J. Trump photo

“Clinton wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country. They enslave women, and they murder gays. I don't want them in our country.”

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

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

Lee Kuan Yew photo
Germaine Greer photo
Rachel Riley photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
William Moulton Marston photo

“The social value of freeing women from a harem-enclosed existence to a life of activity can be questioned only by those advocates of a "man's world" who wish to perpetuate its butchers and savage jungle law.”

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

As quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
Attributed

William Westmoreland photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Men are not only women's unpaid bodyguards, they actually pay to be a woman's bodyguard.”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 230.

Margaret Sanger photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Maria Mitchell photo
Camille Paglia photo

“Men, gay or straight, can get beauty and lewdness into one image. Women are forever softening, censoring, politicizing.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 65

Betty Friedan photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Ann Coulter photo
Lou Reed photo
John Rupert Firth photo
Trinny Woodall photo

“If you ask any of the women we've worked with, some of them would say it's a very tough journey, but I don't think any of them would say we'd been patronising.”

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

As quoted in "God's gift to women" by Barbara Ellen in The Guardian http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2168350,00.html (16 September 2007)

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Dylan Moran photo
Smita Nair Jain photo

“Being one of the few women in the leadership team, I am often surrounded by men, but I have never found that to be uncomfortable.”

Smita Nair Jain (1969) Indian Author, screenwriter and playback singer

Source: Women corporate leaders enlighten IIM-Raipur, Sify, 2018-07-23 http://www.sify.com/finance/women-corporate-leaders-enlighten-iim-raipur-news-default-oi2ikzdhagaaf.html,

Michael Badnarik photo
Mike Tyson photo

“My father was a pimp before he became a deacon or something. These people know how to handle women. I'm the worst guy in the world with women. They run circles around me.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm
On his family

Camille Paglia photo

“Women's studies needed a syllabus and so invented a canon overnight. It puffed up clunky, mundane contemporary women authors into Oz-like, skywriting dirigibles. Our best women students are being force-fed an appalling diet of cant, drivel and malarkey.”

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. 243

Charles A. Beard photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“High above the lake a bomber flies.
From the rowing boats
Children look up, women, an old man. From a distance
They appear like young starlings, their beaks
Wide open for food.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"This Summer's Sky" [Der Himmel dieses Sommers], (1953), trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 444
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Carroll Baker photo
Adolf Hitler photo