quotations about women
To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles -- desire, possession, love, dream, adventure -- worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us -- giving, conquering, uniting -- will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Second Sex
They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The wings of high-flying women are still being clipped by sexist stereotypes.
CAROLINE CRIADO-PEREZ
The Guardian, February 10, 2016
The spirit of Eve is strong in all her daughters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Rose in Bloom
The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
introduction, History of Woman Suffrage
Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
If thou makest a statement concerning women, lo, she shall immediately try to disprove it straightway. She goeth by contraries.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me -- and that I've made of myself -- as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.
MARILYN MONROE
attributed, Marilyn, 1962
Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Philip
A woman, like a cross-eyed man, looks one way, but goes another--hence her mysteriousness.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A woman has but eight roles open to her: ingénue, mother, witch, detective, nun, whore, queen, and corpse.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, Was It Good for You Too?
Women have more fun because there's more things forbidden to them.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Woman is like a diamond with many facets: the imagination of man, the light which produces from them innumerable permutations and combinations of color. The character of woman is comparatively simple, but man imagines much and attributes it to her.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
To know a mature woman is to know more than her body. It is to know her dreams and her secrets. It is to know that a dance is a fight, and a fight is a dance, and that passion and compassion beat in the same breast.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
There are few virtuous women who are not tired of their part.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Never mix your women.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Men do foolish things thoughtlessly, knowing not why; but no woman doeth aught without a reason.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
In a society that is becoming desensitized, robotic and in some cases debilitatingly prescriptive. Women are faking orgasms more -- maybe to just get it all over with.
PAMELA ANDERSON
blog post, Pamela Anderson Foundation, March 30, 2017