Quotes about woman
page 15

“If I were a woman I would not be reassured by being told the legislators are apparently not concerned with the health of a woman. They should be.”

David Norris (1944) Irish scholar, independent Senator, and gay and civil rights activist

1 May 2013 http://www.kildarestreet.com/sendebates/?id=2013-05-01a.7&s=speaker%3A210#g16

Health

“The worst thing about all this staining power of the world is the way in which we come to think of it as inevitable. … It is not true. … Social life is lighted up with the lustre of the white, unstained robes of many a pure man or woman who walks through its very midst.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Life, World, Way, Thinking

“When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her guilt away?”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 29, Song, st. 1.

Love, Men, Art

“Here is the real domino theory: Gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

The dangers of an AIDS epidemic. The New York Times, sect. A, p. 31 (December 9, 1993).

Baby

“In 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. In the sweep of a pen, the Supreme Court promised all American women that there would never again be another Jane Roe, beginning distant courts for the basic human right to decide for herself whether to terminate a pernancy. Never again, the Court promised, may the State presume to intrude on a decision so intimate and significant that it may well determine the remainder of a young woman's life.”

Gloria Allred (1941) American civil rights lawyer

Gloria Allred. 1990 Gloria Allred testimony before United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Publication Title: Hearings on the Nomination of David H. Souter to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, September 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19, 1990. Category: Congressional Committee Materials. Collection: Additional Government Publications. Publication name: Supreme Court Nomination Hearings. Date issued: September 13, 1990. Congress. 101st Congress, 2nd Session. www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/pdf/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-5-2-1.pdf, more info at S. Hrg. 101-1263 at www.gpo.gov http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER/GPO-CHRG-SOUTER-2-4-1-5-3

Life, Women, Decision, Distant

“Anyone could see that this woman is living a nightmare. Except that she goes through her daily life wide awake, knowing that she could make a mistake at any moment.”

Núria Añó (1973) Catalan writer novelist

Presage

Life

“Never let a beautiful woman pick your path for you when there is a man in her line of sight. -Adie, Wizard's First Rule”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

Quotes from the Books

Beauty

“The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 405

Dreams, Past

“The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 22

Wisdom, God

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“Sexual harassment legislation feels unfair to men because if they sued over an ethnic joke, or over a woman discussing pornography or asking them out, they’d be laughed out of the company.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 289.

Men, Feeling

“I am an actively heterosexual woman who celebrates however people want to express their sexuality.”

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

On having liberal approach about sex — Evening Standard "Gillian Anderson: Self destruction is my default mode" http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/gillian-anderson-self-destruction-is-my-default-mode-9897489.html/ (December 2, 2014) 2010s

People

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Family, Home, History

“And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
She'll only know the name?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Love
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Happiness, Health, Hope

“Praxagora: Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.”

Aristophanés (-448–-386 BC) Athenian playwright of Old Comedy

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Eccl.+236 Ecclesiazusae, line 236-238 Ecclesiazusae (392 BC)

Money, Understanding

“A small but significant number of angry and historically minded women comprehend the women's revolution in the visionary sense of an end to the catastrophic brotherhood and a return to the former glory and wise equanimity of the matriarchies. We don't know how this will take place exactly, nor the resultant nature of the new social forms, we know that it will take place, and in fact that the process of its development is now irreversibly underway. Of supreme importance in this process is the recovery by modern woman of her mythology as models for theory, consciousness, and action…. The Swiss patrician Jacob Bachofen was one of the first to discover "the female era at the lower seam of history, with its sacerdotal, political, and economic female dominion."”

Jill Johnston book Lesbian Nation

…. The fruits of this research were until recently unavailable except to a few initiates and they now form a cornerstone of the second wave in the feminist revolution....
Lesbian Nation (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1973 (SBN (not ISBN) 671-21433-0)), pp. 248–249.

Women, History, Nature, Sense

“But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting] (1874)
Trial on the charge of illegal voting (1874)

Law, Way, Water, Night

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

““You are a most vexing young woman, you know.” But his face bore a slight, whimsical smile.
“I know,” she replied, feeling her own mouth curve into a matching expression.
He blew out a breath. “As your brother, I could forbid you to go. But you and I both know that, even if I did so, you would do whatever you wish regardless. I suppose I have no choice but to accede to your request.””

David D. Levine (1961) science fiction writer

Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 2, “No Time to Lose” (p. 28)

Smile, Feeling

“Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: A woman was punished because she had kept a cat tied until it died, and (as a punishment of this offence) she was thrown into Hell. She had not provided it with food or drink, and had not freed her so that she could eat the insects of the earth.”

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

Narrated in Saheeh Muslim, Book 026, Number 5570
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Food, Cats, Hell

“The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Song of the Broad-Axe
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Maybe it will take a woman to clean up the House.”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

Interview with Barbara Walters (December 13, 2006)
2000s

Housing

“It's an exciting time to be a woman. When I was a kid the "power of women" or "women power" was a phrase that seemed to carry on it a call of action. I dream of what could be in the future. The women that I grew up around they they seem to feel their power but they also seem to shy away from the full expression of it, or they expressed in unthreatening ways that were not disruptive. When I was a young women in Hollywood if you were a woman focused on building your career you were labeled "ambitious", and it was a bad word. So I was decidedly not. And adopted a kind of an, 'Ooh, how did this happen to me?'”

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

approach. I believed that wanting my success was somehow a bad thing.

Women, Dreams, Way, Feeling

“Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. I, ch. 7.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

Angels, Thinking

“The ridicule is pressure to consider ourselves less important than someone even more precious: A baby is more precious than a mother; a woman is more precious than a man.”

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

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

Baby

“There was a wood,
Habitation of foxes and fleshy burrows,
Where I learnt to uncast my childhood, and not alone,
I learnt, not alone. There were four hands, four eyes,
A third mouth of the dark to kiss. Two people
And a third not either: and both double, yet different.
I entered with myself. I left with a woman.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Experience"
The Still Centre (1939)

People, Kiss, Childhood

“On the maturation of a woman* "She is a woman now, and not an idle girl, not a domestic ornament or a sexual convenience anymore."”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), VI - The Reformation (1957), p.g. 14

Girl

“We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, the site of our biologic origins. Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 11

Fate, Time

“If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Life, Children, Way, Communication

“The spiritual nature of woman is as little considered as the principles of her historical development. Not only is violence being done to the spirit by a biological misinterpretation and by today's economic trends, but also by the materialistic and fundamental point of view of opposing groups.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Nature

“And in a flash I understood the meaning of sex. It is a craving for the mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies. Every time a man and a woman slake their thirst in the strange waters of the other's identity, they glimpse the immensity of their freedom.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The God of the Labyrinth (1970), p. 252

Sex, Freedom, Water, Time

“Once a woman declared that she was desperately in love with him, and he took her to bed with him. "How shall I enter that item in your expense ledger?" asked his accountant later, on learning that she had got 4,000 gold pieces out of him; and Vespasian replied, "Just put it down to 'passion for Vespasian'."”
Expugnatus autem a quadam, quasi amore suo deperiret, cum perductae pro concubitu sestertia quadringenta donasset, admonente dispensatore, quem ad modum summam rationibus vellet inferri, "Vespasiano," inquit, "adamato".

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, Ch. 22

Love, Learning, Passion

“Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

5 September 1748
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Women, Beauty, Understanding, Thinking

“Nothing is more unfathomable than a woman's superficiality.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“Whoever of ye Whigs thinks I am to be Hecktor'd or frighted into a Complyance tho I am a woman, are mightely mistaken in me. I thank God I have a Soul above that, & am too much conserned for my reputation to do any thing to forfeit it.”

Anne of Great Britain (1665–1714) queen of England, queen of Scotland and queen of Ireland (1702–07); queen of Great Britain (1707–14)

Letter to Lord Godolphin (12 September 1707), from Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (Yale University Press, 2001), p. 250.

God, Soul, Thinking

“So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Second: Maiden No More, ch. XIV
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

God, Beer, Suicide, Light

““You're such a liar.”
“But I’m a beautiful liar, don’t you think?” She flashed her best smile at her friend.
“I don’t understand what men see in women anyway,” her friend answered. “Hexes or no hexes, as long as a woman has her clothes on a man can’t see what he’s interested in anyhow.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 10.

Women, Men, Smile, Beauty

“The Amir al-Mu'minin, Abu Hafs 'Umar ibn al-Khattab said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "Actions only go by intentions. Everyone gets what they intend. Anyone, therefore, who emigrates to Allah and His Messenger, his emigration is indeed to Allah and His Messenger. But anyone who emigrates to gain something of this world or to marry a woman, his emigration is to that to which he emigrated."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 1
Sunni Hadith

World, Peace

“Yes, a woman makes a fine weapon in capable hands…slim and supple as a sword blade…and a blade to which no man’s armor is completely proof.”

Lin Carter (1930–1988) American fantasy writer, editor, critic

Source: Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), Chapter 9, “Slaves of Chan” (p. 86)

“There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something.”

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

"Name the poison" (22 June 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=sEsWO4xep44 2011

Women, Men, People, Religion

“Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam, to feel and be felt by— " then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there are no angles either, not a trace of one. Can it be that I have so misbehaved to a perfect Circle?" "I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle," replied the Voice, "and a more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately, I am many Circles in one."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 15. Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland

Feeling, Sense, Perfection

“And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

Rudyard Kipling The Betrothed

The Betrothed, Stanza 25.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)
Variant: And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

“If the child was helpless, was the grown up person, man or woman, in a much better position?”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IV, "Laissez - Faire", p. 46.

Personality

“(At Foozie’s birthday party on Friday, April 6, 1997) I got to the celebration early and pretty soon some friends pulled me into a back area and said “Perform something!” and there was this wig and dress lying there. I told them “Well, I don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t dress like a woman…” While they were trying to talk me into it another friend ran in and yelled “Do something and I mean fast! There are over four hundred people out there! You’d better hurry up Foozie!” I was dumbfounded, four hundred people!? So, I thought why not and replied, “That’s Miss Foozie to you!””

Miss Foozie (1960) drag queen

and that’s how it all started. [ Terry Oldes http://www.terryoldes.com/, A Barrel Full of Monkeys – OR – More Baggage Than Ann Miller Brought On the Love Boat, 2008-03-28, 2007-08-14, Starbooks Press http://www.starbookspress.com/, Sarasota, Florida, Foozie, http://www.missfoozie.com/terryoldes.htm] [ Terry Oldes http://www.terryoldes.com/, Miss Foozie, http://www.missfoozie.com/terryoldes.htm, "Foozie" by Terry Oldes, MISS FOOZIE http://www.missfoozie.com/, 2009-03-30]

People, Lying, Birthday

“Evolution does not lead to Utopia. It leads to a land in which what is best for a man may be worst for another man, or what is best for a woman may be worst for a man.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 6

“By god, D. H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage?”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Chapter 20.

God, Marriage

“Thus far woman has struggled through life with bandaged eyes, accepting the dogma of her weakness and inability to take care of herself not only physically but intellectually. She has held out a trembling hand and received gratefully the proffered aid. She has foregone her right to study, to know the laws and purposes of government to which she is subject. But there is now awakened in her a consciousness that she is defrauded of her legitimate Rights and that she never can fulfill her mission until she is placed in that position to which she feels herself called by the divinity within. Hitherto she has surrendered her person and her individuality to man, but she can no longer do this and not feel that she is outraging her nature and her God.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Written in 1857, as quoted in ch. 87.
The Female Experience (1977)

Life, God, Law, Feeling

“No honest man or woman in Germany feels responsible for these things. Good Germans took Nazism as a new religion. These people are shocked by the revelations which have shown that Nazism was not idealism, but a means to the performance of criminal acts…
In war a German feels bound to join the ranks without question. Three of my sons were called up. I could not hold back. I wrote from the concentration camp to Admiral Raeder, C. in C. of the Navy, asking to be allowed to return to the submarine service or to do any other service in the Navy. I heard nothing for several months, and then a reply came, not from Raeder but from Keitel, head of the Wehrmacht. He thanked me, but regretted I could not be employed on active service.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Replying to questions on the atrocities of the concentration camps, at a press conference in Naples, Italy, and confirming that he actually had written a widely publicized letter from such a camp, early in the war, to be permitted to serve in the military (5 June 1945)

War, People, Religion, Feeling

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

Life, Women, Men, Family

“It is a rare man who notices a handsome woman.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 22

“I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"Miracles" (1942), p. 25
God in the Dock (1970)

Life, Soul, Thinking, Personality

“Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

BBC (1979); reported in John Blundell, Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady (2008), page 193.
First term as Prime Minister

Home, Understanding, Problem, Country

“The apple blossoms' shower of pearl,
The pear tree’s rosier hue,
As beautiful as woman's blush,
As evanescent too.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Tree

“It is thought pretty to say that "Women have no passion." If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“O woman, born first to believe us;
Yea, also born first to forget;
Born first to betray and deceive us,
Yet first to repent and regret!

O first then in all that is human,
Lo! first where the Nazarene trod,
O woman! O beautiful woman!
Be then first in the kingdom of God!”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

The Danites: and Other Choice Selections from the Writings of Joaquin Miller (1877), p. 52.

God, Beauty, Forgetting

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…. people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail…. We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy…. there is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits…. A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=505&invol=833 (29 June 1992) (joint opinion coauthored with Justices Souter and O’Connor).

Life, People, Exercises, Universe

“It's no fun being a broody Iranian woman. Every time I said to people "My body clock is ticking," they would hit the ground!”

Shappi Khorsandi (1973) Iranian born comedian

Live at the Apollo (Series 4 Episode 2, December 2008)

People, Time

“He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), Marrying the Hangman

Life, Death, History, Freedom

“When Ms Düsap heard that I was also about to embark on a literary career, Mrs. Düsap warned me that a crown of thorns rather than a crown of laurels awaited women on this road. In this world of ours it is not tolerated when a woman does well and claims a place for herself. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary for a woman to be far above average and she added: A man can be a merely average writer but a woman, never!”

Zabel Yesayan (1878–1943) Armenian writer

"Pagavan E : Zabel Yesayan'ın Barış Çağrısını Duyabilmek"] ["Enough! : Being Able to Hear Zabel Yesayan's Call for Peace"] by Melissa Bilal, in Kültür ve Siyasette Feminist Yaklaşımlar [Feminist Approaches in Culture and Politics], Issue 7 (March 2009)

Women, World

“Why has it [the Church] never done what it was sent to do? Others …will say it has done so. Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charities to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? It has done all that, and vastly more.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 147

Life, Marriage, War, Children

“When a woman reproaches a man, but at the same time acts affectionately towards him, she should be made love to in every way. A woman, who meets a man in lonely places, and puts up with the touch of his foot, but pretends, on account of indecision of her mind, not to be aware of it, should be conquered by patience and by continued efforts.”

Vātsyāyana book Kama Sutra

Source: Kama Sutra, p. 96

Love, Way, Effort, Time

“There is, and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the Black.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

“I made, for a London television company a programme called 26 Bathrooms … which was about the ways in which people behaved in their bathrooms. It was about where people put the soap on one level, or the colour of the bathroom curtains, the acoustics, about whether you sang in the bath, and it was structured very simply on the alphabet. We had a man and a woman who arrived one by bus, one by bike, to come and demonstrate for me, in front of the camera, how a jacuzzi operated. I asked both of them to take their clothes off because obviously you don't get into a bath with your clothes on. They hesitate, but eventually their dressing gowns came off and they got into the bath. They had never met one another before. Six weeks later I got an invitation from these people that I had brought together so peculiarly in this jacuzzi -- they were planning to get married! I understand that now they have three children.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

Children, People, Way, Understanding

“No one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig?… Dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it.”

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

A speech given at Manchester UK (18 October 1897)

Animals, Parting

“The reason Wilde did his best work after turning homosexual is that women simply reinforced his own feminine sentimentality. … Heterosexuality inhibited his imagination because woman is physically and psychologically internal.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 571

Women, Imagination

“Man for his glory
To ancestry flies;
But Woman's bright story
Is told in her eyes.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Desmond's Song, st. 4 Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

“How do you stand this? I don't care who you are; man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Jew, gentile, it doesn't make any difference - how do you stand this? I can't. I can not…I can't handle this- You wanna know how I deal with this? When I finish these topics, or these letters, or these diaries, or these reports, and the show's over, I have to blank my mind - literally. Can you do that? I can, I have learned how to do that. I blank it out. I don't know where Israel is, I don't know what Palestinian means, I don't know what burned and mutilated children have to do with anything - it means nothing, it goes away. I must draw a dark black curtain in my consciousness. I can not deal with this, how do you? I have children, I've had children, I have grand-children, I have a four-and-a-half year-old… This is not right! This is not right…”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

Mike cuts feed to music early
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mWemE3fcVXo
On the conflict in Gaza

Children, Music, Learning, Drawing

“There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

"On Women" (1772), as translated in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

“War is to man what motherhood is to a woman. From a philosophical and doctrinal viewpoint, I do not believe in perpetual peace.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech to the Chamber of Deputies (28 April 1939), quoted in The Military Quotation Book (2002) by James Charlton, p. 2
1930s

War, Peace

“Man, woman and child, the people of Shadowcatch were privy to the one true secret of the universe: there is always a darker shadow lurking beyond the one whose face you can see.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 35 (p. 108)

People, Secret, Universe

“She (Hillary Clinton) lacks judgment, she lacks temperament and I'm the one that used unfit many, many months ago. And now they've turned it around, use it on me, unfit? I'm unfit? That's — that's a first. But she lacks the temperament and the moral character to lead this country, its very simple. She really does. She's a dangerous person who doesn't tell the truth which has been proven very loudly. I've never seen a — I don't think we've ever had greater proof of that, of anybody. And she has disregarded the lives of Americans — you see what's happening — with what she has done with her server? And you know why she did that. So, I just look at this, and I said that if she gets elected, she will cause the destruction of this country from within. Remember that. … She is disdainful of the rules set for everyone else and she hasn't changed a bit. This is — that was the good thing. I couldn't say the bad things. It was too much. Nobody would even — nobody would even believe it. You've got to see this book. Nobody would believe because it's so terrible, so terrible. And she comes across like this woman — nice, easy — but she's not. And — and she's — listen — she's not a leader, not a leader. And she is a liar.”

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

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Truth, Books, Thinking, Change

“I've been a television writer for a dozen years, and I've been fortunate to put words in the mouths of some great female characters. They've been working women, mostly, and I like to think they've become role models for a generation of girls trying to figure out their futures.
But let's be honest: TV isn't going to change anyone's perceptions of working women in the real world just by promoting fictional females to ever-higher positions of authority. And I'm not doing my job if I put a woman's career before her character.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Women, World, Girl, Thinking

“Lor’, but women’s rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost,
And I reckon it’s just through a woman the last man on earth’ll be lost.”

George Robert Sims (1847–1922) English journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist

Dagonet Ballads. Moll Jarvis o’ Morley.

Women

“I thought you could write something about me that men can't – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn't it?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, New York 1925; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 224
1920s

Men, Color, Feeling, Idea

“While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

The Rights of Woman, st. 1 (1792)

Fate, Children

“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”

John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore

Pt. I.
The Aran Islands (1907)

Death, Pain, War, People

“When a woman appears to express fear, we cannot assure her without at least releasing her from responsibility; when we interpret the same emotion in a man as anger, we want to blame him and be certain he acknowledges responsibility. We want to find her guiltless; we want to find him guilty.”

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

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 22.

Fear, Appearance, Anger

“Every man's life (and … every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal … love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy.”

Eleanor Farjeon book Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Love, Life

“The finest woman in nature should not detain me an hour from you; but you must sometimes suffer the rivalship of the wisest men.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

17 September 1712
Letters to His Wife (1707-1712)

Men, Nature, Suffering

“A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"The Broken Heart".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Life, World, Soul, History

“I want to work. It is an obsession. I am gnawed at the heart by an excruciating desire to manipulate color... I see figures, with an incredible intensity, pass before my eyes. Let us analyze this – if it is possible to toss it. Why do you no longer work? Why work again? Faith has left me – the habit of putting myself into the background, has done the rest. Am I a true artist? Yes, yes, yes. Am I a woman? Alas. Yes, yes, yes. Are the two [very probably Jawlensky & Marinanne] able to work as a pair? No, no, no. Who will take up the desires -?... The work of my life, this talent [Jawlensky] that I protect with all my interest, with all my affection, it must be alone in the dwelling. Reason says, calm yourself. But the great passion in me, and my call to work, destroys all the calm acquisitions of my life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Life, Faith, Color, Passion

“As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side through all His manifestations of Himself, there were the two aspects: "He showed Himself froward " (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of 'yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a Divine deliverer.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 68.

Love, Faith, Quotes, Christ

“I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to be understood and asserted.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 3 (July 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

“The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.”

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

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8 ("dragqueen", "dragqueens", & hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Men

“I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother I was oppressed and broken-hearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity — because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath.
It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed — who cannot speak for themselves.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

On Uncle Tom's Cabin in a letter to Lord Denman (20 January 1853).

Lovers, Heart, Country

“With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt.””

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

St. 1.
1840s, The Song of the Shirt (1843)

Hunger

“I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Forgiveness: Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

Marlene Dietrich's ABC https://books.google.com/books?id=u7x5UYHMs0IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:Marlene+intitle:Dietrich%27s+intitle:abc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv7qiV8cPfAhWinuAKHcZLAWQQ6AEIKjAA#v=snippet&q=forgiveness&f=false (1962)

“I hate to tell this to the woman, they're behind the fact, they're a little behind the fact. They haven't figured out that women may be in certain ways much better than men. But I don't want to say that because I will get myself in trouble with men. But they haven't figured this out yet but that's OK.”

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

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

Women, Men, Hate, Way