“Quoting: "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Context: "Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives — let us admit it — a certain weight to the opinions expressed.) So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Thom Merrilin
(15 October 1991)

Ann Richards Discusses Texas, Politics and Humor on Larry King Live http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/23/lkl.00.html, CNN, January 23 2001
2001

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

Como los ignorantes no se conocen, tampoco buscan lo que les falta. Serían sabios algunos si no creyessen que lo son.
Maxim 176 (p. 100)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)