Quotes about women
page 38

“Women are good listeners, but it’s a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there’s something specific you want him to do.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

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

Time

“You people are right - I am for equal rights for women. I am for that, female jobs such as feeding husband and children be considered as valuable as male jobs.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: blog, 29 September 2008

Children, People

“Women apparently achieve happiness more easily with energetic and virile men, men achieve it more easily with women who are affectionate and willing to be led. Very young women declare that they want to marry men whom they can dominate, but I have never discovered a woman who was truly happy with a man she did not admire for his strength and courage, nor a normal man who was perfectly happy with an Amazon. The fact is that the element of chance in these matters rarely allows a man or a woman to choose a life companion by an act of pure volition, and it is better so; instinct, despite its mistakes, is surer here than intelligence. The question Do I have to fall in love? should not be asked; one must feel the answer to it within oneself. The birth of love, like all other births, is the work of nature.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Love, Life, Men, Feeling

“Straight men need to be emasculated. I'm sorry. They all need to be slapped around. Women have been kept down for too long. Every straight guy should have a man's tongue in his mouth at least once.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

From Sex book

Men, Guy

“On all the matters that touch upon the critical moral issues, Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the evil side. This is a fact. A mere list of the positions he supports is enough to make this plain: abortion as a "right," cloning of human beings, governmental classification of citizens by race, public benefits for sexual partners outside of marriage, disrespect for property rights against environmental extremism, repudiation of the right to bear arms — no more need be said to show that this candidate is wrong where human decency, human rights and human responsibility bear directly on political issues. Last week, we saw Schwarzenegger does not deny habitual crude offenses against young women. Rather, he theatrically, vaguely and impersonally apologizes for them, before a roaring crowd of adoring fans, admitting neither any connection between action and character, nor any need for genuine penance or reformation. The Republicans who vote for Schwarzenegger will owe Bill Clinton an apology for having given the nation the impression that they sincerely believed character to be an issue for those claiming high office.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

" Arnold's corruption of Republican Party http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/columns/03_10_06wnd.htm", WorldNetDaily, October 6, 2003. Miscellaneous

Marriage, Support, Evil, Sincerity

“It must be someone collecting for charity. Respectable women never call the family for any other reason.”

Caryl Brahms (1901–1982) English critic, novelist, and journalist

Ooh! La-La!

Family

“The 'Women' [paintings] had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light – all this silly talk about line, colour and form – because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 45.
1960's

Age, Light, Painting

“It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 4

Feeling

“There is generally, therefore, an inverse ratio between the worship of goddesses and the granting of rights to human women. Nor are the goddesses by and large compassionate; they are generally a pretty bloodthirsty lot. Goddesses are not the solution.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Wendy Doniger, Quoted in The Washington Post. Quoted in Antonio de Nicolas, Krishnan Ramaswamy, and Aditi Banerjee (eds.) (2007), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis Of Hinduism Studies In America (Publisher: Rupa & Co., p. 13), also in Rajiv Malhotra: Wendy's Child Syndrome https://rajivmalhotra.com/library/articles/risa-lila-1-wendys-child-syndrome/, also in Rajiv Malhotra: Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology (2016)

“That if weak women went astray,
Their stars were more in fault than they.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

Hans Carvel (1700).

Star

“Dads in the family are even more important than women in the workplace: The workplace benefits from women, but the family needs dads.”

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

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 114.

Family

“However, I try not to think that way, because not all the women are like Virtanen, Biaudet and Filatov. Rapes will eventually get more frequent. Because, this being the case, more women will be raped anyway, I sincerely hope that the predators who randomly pick their victims would catch the right women meaning green-left liberals and their voters. It is rather them than someone else. For them nothing else works except if they get to taste their own multicultural medicine.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2008), published in the blog Vasarahammer Multiculturalism and Woman http://vasarahammer.blogspot.fr/2008/11/multiculturalism-and-woman-translation.html, October 19, 2008 2005-09

Hope, Way, Thinking, Sincerity

“Women's Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Blood, Bread and Poetry (1986), ch. 1

History, Study, Freedom

“(Man in bar) How come only ugly women are for the equal rights amendment? (Sylvia) How come the guys who ask that question always have bad breath?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 25

Guy, Question

“[Describing the bazar held in Delhi near the Red Fort, Francois Bernier (seventeenth century) says that] “Hither, likewise, the astrologers resort, both Mahometan and Gentile. These wise doctors remain seated in the sun, on a dusty piece of carpet, handling some old mathematical instruments, and having open before them a large book which represents the sign of the Zodiac. In this way they attract the attention of the passenger… by whom they are considered as so many infallible oracles. They tell a poor person his fortune for a payssa… Silly women, wrapping themselves in a white cloth from head to foot, flock to the astrologers, whisper to them all the transaction of their lives, and disclose every secret with no more reserve than is practised by a penitent in the presence of her confessor. The ignorant and infatuated people really believe that the stars have an influence (on their lives) which the astrologers can control.””

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

People, Secret, Books, Way

“All sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels… Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners”. Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves. Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names. There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed. In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. “About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.” Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah writes: “At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India….. Ibn Battutah’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. “On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.” This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors. The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith. In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580., Battutah)

Men, Marriage, War, People

“The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes—to me a beatitude—is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women—or men—can suffer is to be bereft of their past.”

Shirley Abbott (1934)

Source: Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1983), p. 210

Men, History, Suffering, Past

“The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes. As in the case of the Negro, women themselves have often been brought to believe in their inferiority of endowment.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 1077. Appendix 5

History, Intelligence, Study, Personality

“During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women. And how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past.”

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

2012 Democratic National Convention

Past, Future

“Two bit manchild I was
Born for nothin' mostly
Good time with sometime women.
Nothin' ain't ever hold me.
You can't change me none.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Two-Bit Manchild
Song lyrics, Velvet Gloves and Spit (1968)

Change, Time

“Bring tea for the Tillerman,
Steak for the sun,
Wine for the women who made the rain come,
Seagulls sing your hearts away
‘Cause while the sinners sin, the children play”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Tea For The Tillerman
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Children, Wine, Singing, Sun

“And when, as on that day, nine of the greatest masked spirits in the clan came out together it was a terrifying spectacle.
Okonkwo's wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo. And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if they thought these things they kept them to themselves. The egwugwu with the springy walk was one of the dead fathers of the clan.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 10 (p. 85)

Men, Dead

“There are huge differences in the way male and female actors are perceived. Women have to be a certain size, in order to get good roles. The only successful, larger-than-average female actor I can think of is Kathy Bates. And once women reach a certain age, they can only expect one or two good roles per year, whereas male actors can continue working regularly well into their forties. Then there are the types of roles available to women. We're constantly depicted as sidekicks, ingenues, and hangers-on, rarely as independent and capable individuals. And the enormous, huge discrepancies in pay…. the amounts that some male actors make are astronomically obscene. Women in Hollywood are constantly shown that there's a difference between them and men, and that that's okay. But it's not okay.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On inequality in Hollywood — reported in Lynne Melcombe, BC Woman "Supernatural SuXXess" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/94_95/95bcwoman.shtml (October, 1995) 1990s

Men, Age, Way, Thinking

“The absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include what, stoning people for adultery, death for apostasy, punishment for breaking the Sabbath. These are all things which are religiously based absolute moralities. I don’t think I want an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed and based upon, I’d almost say, intelligent design [pun intended]. Can we not design our society, which has the sort of morality, the sort of society that we want to live in – if you actually look at the moralities that are accepted among modern people, among 21st century people, we don’t believe in slavery anymore. We believe in equality of women. We believe in being gentle. We believe in being kind to animals. These are all things which are entirely recent. They have very little basis in Biblical or Quranic scripture. They are things that have developed over historical time through a consensus of reasoning, of sober discussion, argument, legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These do not come from religion. To the extent that you can find the good bits in religious scriptures, you have to cherry pick. You search your way through the Bible or the Quran and you find the occasional verse that is an acceptable profession of morality and you say, ‘Look at that. That’s religion,’ and you leave out all the horrible bits and you say, ‘Oh, we don’t believe that anymore. We’ve grown out of that.’ Well, of course we’ve grown out it. We’ve grown out of it because of secular moral philosophy and rational discussion.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins-George Pell Q&A (2012)

Death, People, Religion, Way

“It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”

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

(1981)

People, Sense

“If a man have three or four children, he has just three or four times as much interest in having the Corn Laws abolished as the man who has none. Your children will grow up to be men and women. It may be that your heads will be laid in the grave before they come to manhood or womanhood; but they will grow up, and want employment at honest trades—want houses and furniture, food and clothing, and all the necessaries and comforts of life. They will be honest and industrious as yourselves. But the difficulties which surround you will be increased tenfold by the time they have arrived at your age. Trade will then have become still more crippled; the supply of food still more diminished; the taxation of the country still further increased. The great lords, and some other people, will have become still more powerful, unless the freemen and electors of Durham and of other places stand to their guns, and resolve that, whatever may come of Queen, or Lords, or Commons, or Church, or anybody—great and powerful, and noble though they be—the working classes will stand by the working classes; and will no longer lay themselves down in the dust to be trampled upon by the iron heel of monopoly, and have their very lives squeezed out of them by evils such as I have described.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 113-114.
1840s

Life, Men, Children, People

“I would suggest that just as women who make it in the world of business need male business mentors, perhaps men who make it in the world of emotions will need female emotional mentors.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 317.

Men, World, Business

“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That's not a war on them, that's a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government then so be it!”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican National Committee winter meeting, , quoted in * 2014-01-23
Fox's Huckabee: Democrats Tell Women They Can't Control Their Libidos
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/23/foxs-huckabee-democrats-tell-women-they-cant-co/197717

Life, War, Education, Intelligence

“Take back the night? How can women take back the night when they've never had it?”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

From a conversation with Alice Echols, quoted by Echols in "Ellen Willis, 1941-2006" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/ellen_willis, The Nation (10 November 2006)

Night

“Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

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

Love, Hate

“The suburban housewife — she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife — freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother … had found true feminine fulfilment.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 1 "The Problem That Has No Name"

World, Dreams, Science, Envy

“If consumer society is to continue to exist in the manner to which it has become accustomed, it is essential that this latent power be appropriated, tamed and made docile. The ways in which contemporary capitalism undermines women's bodies, from advertising to pornography to the structure of gendered labour and domestic conflict, are not private troubles with no bearing upon the wider world. They are necessary fetters in a superstructure of oppression that has become so fundamental to the experience of femininity that it is effectively invisible. This superstructure is vital to the very survival of the patriarchal capitalist machine. If women on earth woke up tomorrow feeling truly positive and powerful in their own bodies, the economies of the globe would collapse overnight.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Introduction
Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010)

World, Way, Feeling

“Dark women cannot be heroines in Bollywood.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

TNN. "‘Dark women cannot be heroines in Bollywood’" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/news/Nikita-Gokhale-Subhash-Ghai-Nude-Kanchi-Smita-Patil-Dark-Ravi-Jadhav/articleshow/37388188.cms.Timesofindia. Jan 13, 2017.

“Women's greater social desirability and beauty power afford opportunities for creating both measurable and invisible income. While the opportunities are available to almost all women and some men, they are available in abundance to the genetic celebrity … a woman so beautiful that men do more than look and talk--they follow her.”

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

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 191.

Men, Beauty

“An important body of evidence that suggests the irrelevance of enemy atrocities to U. S. intervention in Vietnam may be found in official Washington responses to a broader spectrum of foreign atrocities. Official estimates of deliberate NLF killings in South Vietnam for the nine-year period 1958-1966 are on the order of 12,000, and the Defense Department estimates 19,578 enemy killings of civilians in South Vietnam from 1964 through September 1969. Yet in 1966 between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in Indonesia without even provoking any official U. S. protest, let alone an invasion to prevent mass murder.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 13-14.

Men, Children

“The Spice Girls are easier to tell apart than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that is small consolation: What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names? They occupy Spice World as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs. During a rehearsal scene, their director tells them, with such truth that we may be hearing a secret message from the screenwriter, "That was absolutely perfect — without being actually any good." Spice World is obviously intended as a ripoff of A Hard Day's Night which gave The Beatles to the movies… the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented — while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spice-world-1998 of Spice World (23 January 1998) Reviews, Half-star reviews

Truth, Secret, Age, World

“Any man in the company of two women is outnumbered four to one however amiable they may be.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

“I'm sure one reason that so many Greek myths deal with terrifying, powerful women — Medea, Electra, the Erinyes, the Bacchae, — is that at some point in the misty past, women held a power that was terrifying — terrifying not because they were women whom men felt threatened by, but because they wielded that power in terrifying rituals that almost certainly involved human sacrifice.
This would not be a popular platform on which to base a feminist agenda.”

Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer

Apocalypse Descending (2002)

Men, Past

“The fact that Pinhead is a character that audiences want to watch, that women find sexy, that people have tattooed on their own bodies, I think, is perfectly extraordinary, and I'm incredibly pleased about it. I don't think an analysis of what he does in the movies ever completely illuminates the charm that the guy has.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

"A Living 'Hellraiser'", The Daily Bruin, Thursday, May 7, 1992

People, Guy, Thinking, Tattoo

“I have no wish to argue, Father. Yet it must be said that the monks exist here in peace and security only because of the swords of the defenders. I do not belittle your views — I wish all men shared them. But they do not. … if all men and women lived as you and I, there would be no children, and no humanity. What then would be the Will of the Source?”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 2

Men, Children, Peace

“None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Referring to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, in "Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values" in The Chicago Tribune (4 October 2006) http://www.truthout.org/article/garrison-keillor-congresss-shameful-retreat-from-american-values

Men, Law, Idea

“After 200 years, the constitutional protection of the right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is virtually gone. Today’s current terminology describing rights reflects this sad change. It is commonplace for politicians and those desiring special privileges to refer to: black rights, Hispanic rights, handicap rights, employee rights, student rights, minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, student rights, Asian-American rights, Jewish rights, AIDS victims’ rights, poverty rights, homeless rights, etc. Unless all the terms are dropped & we recognize that only an individual has rights, the solution to the mess in which we find ourselves will not be found. The longer we lack of definition of rights, the worse the economic and social problems will be.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Freedom Under Siege https://web.archive.org/web/20111229190300/http://www.buzzfeed.com/ccbaxter/22-facts-that-dont-jibe-with-ron-paul-being-a-rac-41xp (1987). 1980s

Life, Children, Sadness, Problem

“As the French say, there are three sexes, — men, women, and clergymen.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Men, Sex

“If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds. In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Radio WFAB Syracuse, , transcripted in "The Meaning of Radio Birth Control", April 1924, p. 111
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Love, Men, Children, Home

“Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem much for them to be.”

Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884–1969) English writer

A Family and a Fortune (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, [1939] 1949) p. 54.

People, Housing

“Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853), Ch. 21

“We definitely wanna increase the number of women. But just increasing the number of women isn’t necessarily going to– improve the– the fact that content on Wikipedia itself is skewed.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.

“Robert Hughes (Labour MP for Aberdeen North): With regard to the Prime Minister's desire for a classless society and social mobility, will he explain why there are no women in his Cabinet, or is the only woman in his Cabinet the back-seat driver?
John Major: In recent years, in all aspects of life in this country, women have been taking a higher profile: in the law, in commerce, in the civil service, in industry and in politics - and that will continue. As those women would wish it to be, they will reach the top on merit - oh yes, and if the hon. Gentleman is patient, he will find women aplenty in top positions in my Government. Indeed, if he had waited awhile, perhaps even to the end of today, he would not have asked that question.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard, 6ser, vol 181 col 1015 (29 November 1990) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1990-11-29/Orals-2.html The phrase 'Oh yes' was a remark said several times at the first Prime Minister's Question Time in which Major answered questions. 1990s, 1990

Life, Law, Question, Waiting

“Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Men, World

“For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

The Three Fishers http://www.bartleby.com/246/572.html (1851), st. 1.

Men

“Islam must take the initiative of recognizing motherhood as a social function. Harems must be abolished. No one has the right to refer to Islam as a reason to keep women disenfranchised: abuse of this kind must be brought to an end. Such attitudes do not represent a Western feminism, which has displayed a tendency to impose the measures, whims and mastery of a depraved element among the female sex. Neither is this equality in the European sense. It is an underlining of the equal value of men and women, together with the underlining of the differences between them, which should be preserved.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Source: The Islamic Declaration (1970), p. 47.

Men, Sex, Sense

“Police officers are the best of us. Men and women, white, African-American, Asian, Latino, Hispanic – they put their lives on the line every single day.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Vice presidential debate (October 4, 2016)
Vice presidential debate (October 4, 2016)

Men

“For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Freethinker's Text Book: Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its ... http://books.google.co.in/books?id=9Ja-JNYYySYC&pg=PT262

Evil

“O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have right over you. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.”

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

Final sermon

People, Clothes

“Is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Written in 1852, as quoted in ch. 87.
The Female Experience (1977)

Men, Dead

“Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.”

George Bernard Shaw book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, Chapter 82 http://books.google.com/books?id=ys13gZliXFAC (1928) 1920s

Life, Death, Men, Fear

“That was all he ever really wanted from women; a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered fondly.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1993)

Smile, Kiss, Dance

“Growing up, I looked up to real women. I didn't go in for hero worship and I still don't. Everybody has feet of clay.”

Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress

Benjamin Morrison (January 14, 1997) "Visiting Warriors - Xena and Hercules Flex Their Muscles at NATPE", The Times-Picayune, p. F1.

“There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Men, Feeling

“Women do not know how to be women exactly; men constantly fail to be men.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 8, "Law"

Men

“For a number of years there has been a righteous discontent, a burning zeal to go forward in His name among the Baptist women of our churches and it will be the dynamic force in the religious campaign at the opening of the 20th century.”

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) American activist

How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping September 1900 National Baptist Convention.
Speech given at 1900 National Baptist Convention, Richmond Virginia.

“When the women of the country come in and sit with you, though there may be but very few in the next few years, I pledge you that you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

Address to the Senate, November 21, 1922

Country

“The puritanic potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of "decency". The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"The Family and Feminism".
The Art of Being Ruled (1926)

Religion, Science

“Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women—foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 23 (p. 141)

Men, Law, Nature

“We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer. Many of the principles of radical Islam are incompatible with Western values and institutions. Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti- American. I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, Jewish people are targets of persecution and intimation by radical Islamic preachers of hate and violence. This is not just a national security issue. It's a quality of life issue. If we want to protect the quality of life for all Americans — women and children, gay and straight, Jews and Christians and all people then we need to tell the truth about radical Islam and we need to do it now. We need to tell the truth also about how radical Islam is coming to our shores. And it's coming.”

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

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

Life, Hate, Children, People

“You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.”

Stephen King book The Stand

The Stand (1978)

Men, God, People, Age

“When women raise their voices to be heard over the noise, they sound hysterical,” she says. “It’s a sexist world. If you lose control over your lower register, you’re going to be seen as a nut.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

The Walrus interview (2012)

World

“Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 3

Men, World, Thinking, Time

“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which labourers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labour before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Out of the Dark (1913), To a Woman-Suffragist

Life, Men, Children, People

“The so-called bourgeoisie doesn't provide any substance for my art. The character [of the models] there is too faint and without any spirit. It doesn't represent a race in an artistic sense. So there is no other choice for me [than folk women].”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner, in het Nederlands:) De zogenaamde burgerij levert geen stof voor mijn kunst. Het karakter [van de modellen] dáár is te flauw en geesteloos. Het vertegenwoordigt in artistieken zin geen ras. Mij rest dus geen andere keuze [dan volksvrouwen].
Quote of Breitner; as cited by B. van Garrel, in his article 'Het getekende bestaan van G.H. Breitner', Dutch newspaper Haagse Post, 23 June 1973, jrg. 60, nr. 25
The young saleswoman of hats, nl:Geesje Kwak was Breitner's model for several years
undated quotes

Art, Sense

“The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Impressions and Comments http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8ells10.txt (1914)

Men

“We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)

Training, Country

“While single women may not have a man they can count on or call at four in the night, they do have the knowledge that when a man comes to see them he wants to be with them. And while he may come less often, he will really be there when he does.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Knowledge, Night

“Rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society. Yet feminism, which has waged a crusade for rape to be taken more seriously, has put young women in danger by hiding the truth about sex from them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 49

Truth, Sex

“This has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us. I do not understand what the far right stands to gain by continuing with these myths.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Blog posting (16 July 2011) http://janefonda.com/qvc-cancelled-my-appearance/

Love, Men, Understanding, Fight

“I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.
But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us.
But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting.
For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts…”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html

Children, Family, Way, Laughter

“In high school in the early Sixties, I dreamed of intellectual work by women that would match the highest male standards and set men on their ear. A lot of women have done a lot of academic work since then, but most of them fall short of that standard.”

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. 206

Men, School, Dreams

“At the request of the Catholic Church, a three-day sex orgy to be held near Rio de Janeiro was cancelled last Friday. So instead I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment. Organizers of the orgy were expecting 1500 men, and 8 women.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/01/01aupdate.phtml

Men, Sex

“You can urinate when you're big & hard, but it's a little difficult. The Lord made it difficult so we wouldn't urinate inside you women!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Uncircumcision! To be, or not to be?

“No one deserves brutality because of what they are, their condition of birth, including being born female; and the women in this book are not asking for it— instead they are risking as much as any man risks to live, to love.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 4

Love, Books, Birth

“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter from Johnson to John Taylor, 18 August 1763. The Yale Book of Quotations edited by Fred R. Shapiro, pg 400.

Law, Nature

“You know, my Dear, I never meddle in matters of Death; I always leave those Affairs to you. Women indeed are bitter bad Judges in these cases, for they are so partial to the Brave that they think every Man handsome who is going to the Camp or the Gallows.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. iv
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Death, Thinking

“Male mastery in marriage is a social illusion, nurtured by women exhorting their creations to play and walk. At the emotional heart of every marriage is a pietà of mother and son.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 53

Marriage, Heart

“Now I’m up at the front and Tall Bloke, Long Suit, is still Sieg-Heiling; women are still jiggling and beseeching. There is an unspoken acknowledgment that I am an interloper, that I am unlike everybody else there, neither Eritreanh or Ethiopian, and that there is a risk, therefore, that I am there to mock or judge or disrupt, and I’m capable of all those things.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

“Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in The Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations (1993) by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan Paul Siegel, p. 424; also in Ataturk: First President and Founder of the Turkish Republic (2002) by Yüksel Atillasoy, p. 15

World

“For women not to fear rape because we can successfully defend ourselves against it is not anachronistic but revolutionary. For women to be considered as potential warriors (in every sense of the word, including its physical representation) is not anachronistic but revolutionary. If realized, it might imply a radical change in modern life. ...

What would it mean for a woman to be a warrior today? How could modern women control the means of production and reproduction?”

Phyllis Chesler (1940) Psychotherapist, college professor, and author

Women and Madness (2005), p. 340 (emphasis in original), and see Women and Madness (1972), pp. 290–291 (similar text).
Women and Madness (1972, 2005)

Life, Fear, Sense, Change

“I cannot think of a system of law that dehumanizes & degrades women more than Islamic Law.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

7 News Sydney, (April 4, 2017)

Law, Thinking

“It is a waste of money to pay priests to frighten our children, and paralyze the intellect of women.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Money, Children

“The responsibility for the creation of new scientific knowledge — and for most of its application — rests on that small body of men and women who understand the fundamental laws of nature and are skilled in the techniques of scientific research. We shall have rapid or slow advance on any scientific frontier depending on the number of highly qualified and trained scientists exploring it.”

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator

Summary
Science - The Endless Frontier (1945)

Men, Law, Understanding, Nature

“Every girl asked me, "What makes you god's gift to women?" Some answers:
13 inches. Who ever thought it could be too big?
I have 20 million dollars and terminal cancer.
I like to listen.
I'm a convicted sex offender.
Have you seen this face? Look at how hot I am!
I like to cut up hookers.
Bend over and I'll show you.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Tucker Max Stories

God, Sex, Girl

“When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Young British Soldier, Stanza 13.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

“Muslim historians, in India and abroad, have written hundreds of accounts in which the progress of Islamic armies across the cradle of Hindu culture is narrated, stage by stage and period by period. A pronounced feature of these Muslim histories is a description-in smaller or greater detail but always with considerable pride-of how the Hindus were slaughtered en masse or converted by force, how hundreds of thousands of Hindu men and women and children were captured as booty and sold into slavery, how Hindu temples and monasteries were razed to the ground or burnt down, and how images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses were destroyed or desecrated. Commandments of Allah (Quran) and precedents set by the Prophet (Sunnah) are frequently cited by the authors in support of what the swordsmen and demolition squads of Islam did with extraordinary zeal, not only in the midst of war but also, and more thoroughly, after Islamic rule had been firmly established.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Men, God, War, Children

“It is nothing special to see women, it is a matter of being accustomed, it does not excite the fantasies of a man.”

Regina Jonas (1902–1944) rabbi

Can a Woman Be a Rabbi According to Halachic Sources?

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, — comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman. … Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 327-328 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=344&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Men, Law, Music, Sex

“That is adultery where woman submits herself sexually to man, without desire on her part, for the sake of "keeping him virtuous," "keeping him at home," the women say. (Well, if a man did not love me and respect himself enough to be "virtuous" without prostituting me, — he might go, and welcome. He has no virtue to keep.) And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want, and for whom, as is the rule rather than the exception, they cannot properly provide. It is worse than any other human oppression; it is fairly God-like! To the sexual tyrant there is no parallel upon earth; one must go to the skies to find a fiend who thrusts life upon his children only to starve and curse and outcast and damn them!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Sex Slavery (1890)

Love, Life, God, Marriage

“Georgie Pringle: The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Pringle, "the class comic", has been asked to choose the bible reading for a secondary school class. He has a reputation for knowing "all the dirty bits in the bible off by heart," according to Nigel Barton's narration. The quote is from Ezekiel, chapter 23, verses 1-3.
Stand up, Nigel Barton (1965)

Youth, Daughters

“It is important that America not just stand tall against terrorists, but America must also stand for economic opportunity and democratic freedoms. America must stand for human rights. America must stand for the rights of women. America must stand for environmental protection and energy conservation.
The Administration in which I served looked at the challenges we faced in the world and said we wished to tackle these "With others, if possible; alone, if we must." This Administration sometimes seems inclined to stand that on its head, so that the message is: "With others, if we must; by ourselves, if possible."”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, Our Larger Tasks (2002)

World, Freedom

“Judaism is the No. 1 propagator of violence…. the Torah itself states that when you enter a certain country, you must offer peace, and if they agree, all their residents are your slaves. In other countries, you should not offer peace or conversion. You must destroy them all, do not leave a living soul. In the first country you must slay all males and leave only the women, but in the second country, you must not leave… you must uproot them. This is in Judaism, in the Torah.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Qaradhawi: American Culture And Judaism Spread Violence In The World http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/96.htm May 2004. Violence in Judaism

Peace, Soul, Country

“Men put roadblocks in front of women as a way of hiding their inefficiencies.”

Bernadette Lahai (1960) Sierra Leonean politician

30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone), Anna Cady, 2018-06-18 https://vimeo.com/43595116,

Men, Way

“In the formulas of 'personnel experts', men and women are to be shaped into the 'well rounded, acceptable, effective personality.' Just like small proprietors, they cannot higgle over prices, which are fixed, or 'judge the market' and accordingly buy wisely.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Men, Personality

Quotes about women page 38

Quotes about women
page 38