Quotes about women
page 47

Sinclair Lewis photo
Maddox photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo

“The entire village left the next day in about thirty canoes, leaving us alone with the women and children in the abandoned houses.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Le village entier partit le lendemain dans une trentaine de pirogues, nous laissant seuls avec les femmes et les enfants dans les maisons abandonnées.
Notes in an early work, often cited as an extreme example of androcentrism, even among leading anthropologists, " Contribution à l'étude de l'organisation sociale des Indiens Bororo http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jsa_0037-9174_1936_num_28_2_1942?_Prescripts_Search_tabs1=standard&" (1936) p. 283

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy…. I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

yes - but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom - and the world no more good than we are. One may try one's best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig - as Uncle Vincent calls it - one may be even as good as one likes.
In his letter to Theo, from Nuenen, c. 9 March 1884, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/14/359.htm
1880s, 1884

Jane Austen photo
Jane Austen photo
Helen Keller photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Jussi Halla-aho photo

“Amount of rapes are increasing. Because therefore more and more women will be raped, my earnest wish is that right women will be raped by predators choosing their victims randomly. Green-left-winger reformers and their voters. Rather them than others. Nothing else will work for them, but multiculture that hits their own ankle.”

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

Jussi Halla-aho (2006), published in the blog Scripta [original finnish text] in http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/monikulttuurisuus_ja_nainen.html, December 20, 2006
2005-09

Robert Greene photo
Abdullah Öcalan photo

“Family is not a social institution that should be overthrown. But is should be transformed. The claim of ownership over women and children, handed down from the hierarchy, should be abandoned.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp. 79

Teal Swan photo
Rush Limbaugh photo

“Women still live longer than men because their lives are easier.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

March 1, 2005, on The Rush Limbaugh Show ([Rush Limbaugh now has a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Here are just 20 of the outrageous things he's said, Jason, Silverstein, February 6, 2020, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rush-limbaugh-presidential-medal-of-freedom-state-of-the-union-outrageous-quotes/]; [Rush Limbaugh’s most outrageous moments in 25 years on the radio, August 1, 2013, Morgan, Whitaker, MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/rush-limbaughs-most-outrageous-moments-25]; [Limbaugh: “Women still live longer than men because their lives are easier”, Katie, Barge, March 3, 2005, Media Matters for America, https://www.mediamatters.org/rush-limbaugh/limbaugh-women-still-live-longer-men-because-their-lives-are-easier])
2000s

James P. Gray photo

“[W]e will look back in astonishment that we allowed our former policy to persist for so long, much as we look back now at slavery, or Jim Crow laws, or the days when women were prohibited from voting.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 5

Tracey Thorn photo
Saffron Burrows photo

“…Teenagers today are so fluid and non-binary; they’re fantastically unafraid. My house [growing up] was a bit like that. I’ve loved men and I’ve loved women and I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted. We could talk about everything in the world.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On her upbringing and the next generation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted’” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/19/saffron-burrows-i-was-raised-to-feel-like-i-could-love-who-i-wanted in The Guardian (2020 Feb 19)

Richard Dawkins photo

“This is rural America. We’re rich in self-sustaining nature and neighbors helping neighbors but we don’t have resources, I’ve got a car full of toys we’re taking to a school where 60 kids weren’t going to have Christmas. [...] Now they’re closing the coal-fired plants, and those tradesmen and -women are being thrown out of those highly skilled jobs, and it’s having a terrible impact.”

Robin L. Webb (1960) American politician

About the poverty increase in Carter County, as quoted in Poverty Grew in One-Third of Counties Despite Strong National Economy https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/12/19/poverty-grew-in-one-third-of-counties-despite-strong-national-economy (December 19, 2019) by Tim Henderson, The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Audre Lorde photo
William H. McRaven photo

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

William H. McRaven (1955) United States admiral

McRaven wrote in a February 20 editorial in the Washington Post about the dismissal by the president of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, for having briefed congressional intelligence committee members about emerging evidence of foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-mcraven-if-good-men-like-joe-maguire-cant-speak-the-truth-we-should-be-deeply-afraid/2020/02/21/2068874c-5503-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

William D. Leahy photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Steven Crowder photo
Aisha photo

“Allah's Apostle said, "The superiority of 'Aisha over other women is like the superiority of Tharid to other meals."”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Narrated Anas bin Malik, in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 57, Number 114
About

Margaret Cho photo

“I can't even look at those "women's magazines" anyway. I love fashion, but I look at the pictures of the skinny models, and they're wearing clothes I can't even fit on my fingers.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

And I look at that and I think, if that is what a woman is supposed to look like, then I must not be one.
From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour

Andrea Dworkin photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo

“Many social scientists, including anthropologists, have been interested in the power inherent in gender relations, often described through the idiom of female oppression. It can be argued that men usually tend to exert more power over women than vice versa. In most societies, men generally hold the most important political and religious positions, and very often men control the formal economy. In some societies, it may even be prescribed for women to cover their body and face when they appear in the public sphere, and, paradoxically, these practices sometimes become more common as their societies become more modern. On the other hand, women are often capable of exerting considerable informal power, not least in the domestic sphere. Anthropologists cannot state unequivocally that women are oppressed before they have investigated all aspects of their society, including how the women (and men) themselves perceive their situation. One cannot dismiss the possibility that certain women in western Asia (the Middle East) see the ‘liberated’ western woman as more oppressed – by professional career pressure, demands to look good and other expectations – than themselves.
When studying societies undergoing change, which perhaps most anthropologists do today, it is important to look at the value conflicts and tensions between different interest groups that are particularly central. Often these conflicts are expressed through gender relations.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Raewyn Connell photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Evagrius Ponticus photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Chief Joseph photo
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“In women, if there is a greater arrest of individual growth than in men, the difference begins in the fœtal life; their comparative weight and size at birth are the same as at maturity; and, if the former finish their growth earlier, it must be because relatively they grow more rapidly.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 609
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo
Dana Arnold photo
Dana Arnold photo
Robin Morgan photo

“We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

Actually from 1969 leaflet by The Feminists, "Women: Do You Know the Facts About Marriage?". Its text was reprinted in the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful edited by Robin Morgan.
Misattributed

Donald J. Trump photo

“Contemporary slang reflects this animal state: children are "mice," "rabbits," "kittens," women are called "chicks," in England "birds," "hens," "dumb clucks," "silly geese," "old mares," "bitches."”

Similar terminology is used about males as a defamation of character, or more broadly only about pressed males males: stud, wold, cat, stag, jack - and then it is used much more rarely, and often with a specifically sexual connotation.

Chapter Four
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Sigmund Freud photo

“Women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Alledgedly written in 'The Psychical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes', but Freud neither says this nor argues this exact sentiment. Possible originates from Donna Stewart https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/pn.36.14.0009
Misattributed

“I want to make films that are about visual pleasure for women. Not worry about whether they are in fashion, whether they are politically correct.”

Anna Biller (1965) film director

Under the Influence: Anna Biller on DONKEY SKIN - 14 Feb 2017, at 4 Min 02 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD9MrwcE7o8
From interview with The Criterion Collection

Zoya Akhtar photo

“Women are not exempt from patriarchy, they are also products of it. So, they also come in with that system of 'am I right' or 'am I wrong.'”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti - FC Post Mortem 15 Jun 2015, at 10 Min 25 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4DGmAXNPt4
From interview with Film Companion

Ounsi el-Hajj photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Goldie Hawn photo

“Women were my obvious focus…because it is not always easy having power and being female…That’s the way it was. It wasn’t that all men were terrible or that the situation was unbearable. It was a cultural problem.”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.

On playing female characters during the 1980s who were women caught in a macho world in “Goldie Hawn: ‘I was born with a high set point for happiness’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/13/goldie-hawn-i-was-born-with-a-high-set-point-for-happiness in The Guardian (2020 Apr 13)

Bangalore Nagarathnamma photo

“Perhaps the concept of shame applies to only women but not men. Maybe because she was a ‘prostitute’ she was able to write crude depictions of sex without shame. In that case, it surely must not suit the supposed learned men to depict conjugal pleasures in the same way?”

Bangalore Nagarathnamma (1878–1952) Indian singer

as a sarcastic retort to criticism of the original work and her 1910 edition containing sexual/erotic passages, believed to being unsuitable for women

Firstpost Article - An early 20th century tale of censorship - 22 Mar 2020 https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200415202057/https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html

the wording of the quote is different in the sources provided(probably due to translation), but the tonality and meaning are similar.
About Radhika Santawanam (Appeasing Radhika)

“When I was starting in the game industry, it wasn't uncommon to be the only woman on the entire team...I always felt welcome and I never felt awkward. In my years at Nintendo, I have come to discover that when there are women in a variety of roles on the project, you get a wider [range] of ideas.”

Aya Kyogoku (1981) Video game director

March 19, 2014 Animal Crossing: New Leaf director says team diversity, communication core to its success https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526678/animal-crossing-new-leaf-diversity-aya-kyogoku

Immanuel Kant photo
Habib Bourguiba photo
Habib Bourguiba photo
William Cobbett photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Women shouldn’t be in combat, said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. Neither should men, in my opinion.”

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 223)

Marianne Williamson photo
Germaine Greer photo
Joanna Trollope photo

“I wanted to write a novel about the sandwich generation: parents falling to pieces at one end of your life and children being quite demanding at the other. You, the woman, are probably working full-time, but society, which is really very old-fashioned, still expects women to do all the caring.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On her novel Mum & Dad in “Joanna Trollope on families, fiction and feminism: ‘Society still expects women to do all the caring’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/02/joanna-trollope-on-families-fiction-and-feminism-society-still-expects-women-to-do-all-the-caring in The Guardian (2020 Mar 2)

Elif Shafak photo

“I have met lots of women who have grown up in Turkey who cannot bring themselves to swear in Turkish. But in English they use the F-word all the time. Writing is like that for me.”

Elif Shafak (1971) Turkish writer

On comparing writing to the freedoms that Turkish women have found in another language in “Elif Shafak: ‘I thought the British were calm about politics. Not any longer’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/16/elif-shalak-i-thought-the-british-were-calm-about-politics-booker-prize-shortlist in The Guardian (2019 Sep 16)

Elif Shafak photo

“Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…”

Elif Shafak (1971) Turkish writer

On having a female character wear a veil out of protest in “Elif Shafak: ‘When women are divided it is the male status quo that benefits’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/05/elif-shafak-turkey-three-daughters-of-eve-interview in The Guardian (2017 Feb 5)

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“If it can be shown that the majority of women will probably be Liberal, or that they will divide equally, I should say that the balance is, very slightly, in favour of giving them votes.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (26 April 1891), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 235

Haifaa al-Mansour photo
Abdullah Öcalan photo

“Without an analysis of women's status in the hierarchical system and the conditions under which she was enslaved, neither the state nor the class-based system that it rests upon can be understood.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, p. 69

Eliphas Levi photo

“Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic."”

But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate.

Quoted in Isis Unveiled, by H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. II, Chapter III (1877)
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856)

Mel Gibson photo
Prince photo
Pat Condell photo

“‘Trans’ women are not women. They are men with mental problems.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

Twitter.com (5 March 2019) https://twitter.com/patcondell/status/1102999636573249536
2019

Pat Condell photo

“the rest of us shouldn’t be compelled to participate in the fantasy and pretend that men can become women and women can become men. They can’t.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

Twitter.com (7 July 2018) https://twitter.com/patcondell/status/1015501970969366530
2018

Asghar Ali Engineer photo

“Women had internalized their subjugation of men as the latter were the breadwinners. Since then women have become quite conscious of their new status.”

Asghar Ali Engineer (1939–2013) Indian activist

Engineer, Asghar Ali. The rights of Women in Islam. 2nd ed. Elgin, IL: New Dawn Press Group, 2004, 190.

N. K. Jemisin photo

“We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction, occasionally young white women fiction, and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal.”

N. K. Jemisin (1972) American writer

Interviews
Source: On how she once perceived fiction in “NK Jemisin: 'It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you're white'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/02/nk-jemisin-its-easier-to-get-a-book-set-in-black-africa-published-if-youre-white in The Guardian (2020 May 2)

Natalie Wynn photo

“Seriously though, some of the feminist advice given to women is borderline psychopathic. You know, like, “Never take ‘no’ for an answer! Always take what you want!””

This is like rapist advice.
ContraPoints, Feminism Did Not Destroy Atheism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfH9QaEcqY (2016), Pop Feminism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3glomsCM5mU (2016)

Celia Cruz photo

“Women are afraid to sing salsa…I don't know why; maybe they think it's for men. I am not a composer, or a soneo, a singer and a poet, which is very difficult. But I think everybody can sing everything.”

Celia Cruz (1925–2003) Cuban singer (1925-2003)

On the gender stereotypes surrounding salsa singers in “CELIA CRUZ: AT THE TOP OF SALSA” https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/19/arts/celia-cruz-at-the-top-of-salsa.html in New York Times (1985 Nov 19).

William Faulkner photo
Maria Weston Chapman photo

“Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong: The women have leaped from "their spheres" And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along,And are setting the world by the ears!”

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) American abolitionist

From "The Times That Try Men's Souls", as quoted in [Squire, Belle, The Woman Movement in America: A Short Account of the Struggle for Equal Rights, https://books.google.com/books?id=SnOIAAAAMAAJ, 1911, A. C. McClurg & Company, 71-2]

Francis Bacon photo

“Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband wise; which she will never do, if she find him jealous.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Marriage and Single Life

Arun Shourie photo
John Wyndham photo
Shelley Lubben photo

“I would like to dedicate this book to the hundreds of women and men who died in the porn industry from AIDS, suicide, homicide and drug related deaths. Your voices will be heard now.”

Shelley Lubben (1968–2019) author, singer, motivational speaker, and former pornographic actress

Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn: The Greatest Illusion on Earth (2010), Dedication

Lou Dobbs photo
Don Bluth photo

“I think the destiny of all men is to be kings, the destiny of all women is to be queens. In some fashion or another, that’s the destiny that we call it family but it’s supposed to be that.”

Don Bluth (1937) American animator

DRAGON’S LAIR: An interview with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman https://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/dragons-lair-an-interview-with-don-bluth-and-gary-goldman-122447/ (December 18, 2015)

Alice Meynell photo

“It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

Source: A Time in Rome (1960), Ch. IV, p. 132

Jimmy Carter photo

“I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do — and I have done it — and God forgives me for it."”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Interview in Playboy magazine (1976), while a candidate for President.
Pre-Presidency

Donald J. Trump photo

“We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!”

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

Via tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1313984510749544450 October 7, 2020
2020s, 2020, October

Henry James photo

“[T]here are women who are for all your "times of life."”

They're the most wonderful sort.
Book V, ch. III.
The Ambassadors (1903)

“There’s already an attitude among perpetrators that you can’t rape or harass the willing. Society views trans women as sexual deviants, and many believe that we "ask for it" or "bring it on ourselves."”

Ashlee Marie Preston American media personality, producer, and activist

As trans women we’re expected to function as sexual objects and an aide in satisfying the cis-hetero male libido. We’re demonized and criminalized as perverts out to trick and deceive cis hetero men; therefore anything that happens to us, we ‘had coming.
As quoted in [Bendix, Trish, Why it matters that transgender women are speaking out about Jeffrey Tambor — and that people are listening, https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/matters-transgender-women-speaking-jeffrey-tambor-people-listening-163706277.html, 29 January 2019, Yahoo! Lifestyle, November 21, 2017]

Warren Farrell photo

“There is almost no difference in the percentage of men versus women experiencing depression.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 278

Warren Farrell photo

“Women who have the option of being economically self-sustaining will increasingly want your son to also have emotional and relationship intelligence.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 82

Warren Farrell photo

“The women who were best able to grow spiritually and psychologically had married men who were the least able to grow.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 71

Warren Farrell photo
J.B. Priestley photo
Lila Downs photo

“I also come from a matriarchal family. My grandmother was left alone, not by choice. And then my mother as well. We lost my father when I was 16; he died. I was an adolescent figuring out that you’re not really worth much when you’re all women…”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On how her village shunned Downs’ solely female household in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Womanhood

Lila Downs photo

“My mother would really make me notice the world of women, and in Latin America they have a kind of magic in that they make society function in every kind of intimate way, as well as in the bigger picture.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On the lessons that Downs’ mother instilled in her in “Lila Downs Reminds Us of the Strength Women Bring to Latin America and its History” https://sheshredsmag.com/lila-downs-14/ in She Shreds (2018 May 3)
Womanhood