quotations about women
Women are more than freestanding uteruses.
PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY
New Republic, February 8, 2016
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.
JIMMY CARTER
"Losing My Religion for Equality"
A woman's charm is fifty percent illusion.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
A Streetcar Named Desire
It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up, because the women are there, and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men.... I tell you, a woman 'ull bake you a pie every week of her life, and never come to see that the hotter th' oven the shorter the time.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Most women desire someone who makes them laugh and also feel safe, so basically a clown ninja.
ANONYMOUS
I think that women as a group are so powerful. I still don't think we are able to embrace our power well enough yet. We think we live in a man's world and we have to follow their rules, and yet, we're so different, and our rules are so different. I wish that we could come together more as a political force. If women ran the world, I don't believe that there would be war. I really don't.... We understand the bigger picture. We understand our impact on the environment, on the world. We understand the generations that will go after us because we gave birth to them.
KYRA SEDGWICK
Newsweek, October 15, 2007
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
I could not possibly love one woman, having known the holiness of all women.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
attributed, Woman's Day, August 2011
A woman that speaks the truth finds no favor in my eyes, for she disturbs the pretty theories I cherish about her sex.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
[Women] ... is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up.
EDNA FERBER
"Sun Dried"
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
Love for Love
With women the heart argues, not the mind.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Merope
When women take off their corsets and heighten their skirts it always means high inflation and low morals.
JAMES LAVER
attributed, Sûrya India, vol. 12
It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.
ANITA BROOKNER
A Friend from England
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
speech after her arrest for voting in the 1872 presidential election
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.
BERNARD CORNWELL
The Winter King
The ladies usually go for the biggest damn fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the chocolate Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Raising sons who respect women is something that Millennial feminists do by being mindful of their vocabulary. There's no talk of opening that jar of pickles "like a man" or "throwing like a girl." It's not actually super hard to give up ignorant, outdated phrases like these, but the meanings behind them tend to stick if you adopt sayings like these at all. I don't think I've ever heard my husband insinuate that he is stronger than me simply because he's a man in front of our son or otherwise. I guess he just knows better.
CHRISSY BOBIC
"10 Ways Millennial Feminists Are Raising Sons Who Respect Women", Romper, February 9, 2016