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Women Quotes

“I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.”

MenBelieveHeartMatterWomenSecretExistenceVirtueEssenceWelcomeModestySkepticismVeilsDecencySkepticalOld WomanSuperficialityProfundity
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I[urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enactingthat all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”

MenWayBodyWomenNumbersCasesStreetsNeededEqualMen And WomenVoteAmendmentsRepresentativesWomens RightsUnitsBe A ManMen WomenJuryRevoltConstitutional AmendmentsSuffragettes
Author:George Bernard Shaw
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“I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men--on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn't be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.”

IfsMenFeelingsBodyWould BeWomenDecisionMillionsStruggleIssuesBenefitsHundredBillsCourtNineReportsPregnantFifteenCommitteesLegislationSymbolicAppearingMaternity
Author:Letty Cottin Pogrebin
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“The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.”

MenGivingEnoughMotherTurnsFatherParentWomenNaturalCareersMinesTaughtLimitsStandardsEthicsCommitmentResourcesIncreaseGenderDestructiveFemininePacksEarningWagesWork EthicIncentivesNatural ResourcesManlyTaught UsDouble Standard
Author:Letty Cottin Pogrebin
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“Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.”

ThinkingMenHeartHas BeensSometimesSeemsLostStrongWomenForeverCreaturesStrongerAffectionIntellectSavedSuperiorsAppetiteDestinedBad Heart
Book:Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Table Talk (2 v.)
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“More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining notonly in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.”

MenHomeJobsPoliticsWomenSidesResponsibilityMorningMillionsHe ManIndustryTenAchievementTasksImportancePartnersWelfareExecutivesMarchRoutineEvery MorningWagesGuardianStay At Home
Book:The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928
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“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour.”

MenGivingMindCharacterBodyWomenHoursViewsAttentionTaughtShapesPrisonRoundsVariousPursuitOpeningEmploymentTriumphCagesInsignificantConfinedInfancyRoaming
Author:Mary Wollstonecraft
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“Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether relatively to the larger size of his body, in comparison with that of woman, has not, I believe been fully ascertained. In woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of her body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man.”

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Author:Charles Darwin
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“Women love those best (whether men, women, or children) who give them most pain.”

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Book:A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments, maxims, cautions, and reflexions, contained in the histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison: Digested under proper heads, with references to the volume, ...
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“Thank God I'm over the hill. The only heat I have left comes from hot flashes, my promiscuity is confined to the words "one size fits all," and I buy my white cotton unmentionables at Boadicea's Retreat, not Victoria's Secret. None of the things men do to women could possibly happen to me now unless the U.S. is invaded by one of those new Russian republics whose soldiers aren't fussy.”

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Author:Florence King
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“Traditionally in American society, men have been trained for both competition and teamwork through sports, while women have been reared to merge their welfare with that of the family, with fewer opportunities for either independence or other team identifications, and fewer challenges to direct competition. In effect, women have been circumscribed within that unit where the benefit of one is most easily believed to be the benefit of all.”

MenHas BeensOpportunitySportsWomenChallengesTeamEffectsBenefitsDirectIndependenceCompetitionWelfareTeamworkFewerUnitsIdentificationAmerican Society
Author:Mary Catherine Bateson
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“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”

MenWorldWayMayDifferentUseEyeAbleLostWomenDifferencesWifeFrontsMen And WomenMy WifeSpotsDesertDifferent WaysVisualsConvinceHidingCheeseJungleVariationRefrigerators
Author:Edward T. Hall
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“I had some short struggle in my mind whether I should resign my lover or my liberty, but this lasted not long. I found myself as free as air and could not bear the thought of putting myself in any man's power for life only from a present capricious inclination.”

MenShouldMindLongFoundWomenLibertyMarriageStruggleAirBearsLoversSexismInclinationCapriciousMy Lover
Book:The cry: a new dramatic fable : in two volumes
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“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”

KnowsMenRealSometimesFormChoicesBeliefWomenBlackCommunityWhitePracticeDoubtPossibilitySonRacismDaughterMen And WomenSlaveryForgivingLoyaltyConfusionDividedWhite ManBlack WomenOur CommunityOur DaughterDubious
Book:Saving Our Sons
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“Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity.”

MenShouldBelieveReasonFactsEyeStrongSexWomenJusticeLossCareersSeeingPolicyCapacityMalesAverageEqualityFoolishVigorPublic Policy
Author:Thomas Huxley
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“Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather thanachievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.”

MenSeemsWomenAchievementExpectationsBoundsSatisfactionWheelsUnreasonableGreat AchievementAffiliation
Book:Never Say Goodbye: Essays
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“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others--first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one's own interests and desires. Carried to its "perfection," it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”

IfsMenNeedsFirstsChildrenProblemLife IsMotherDesireWomenGoalInterestWifeProduceTaughtPerfectionEnormousSupposed To BeMartyrPrescriptionsLife GoalAttendingSyndromesWives And Mothers
Book:Toward a New Psychology of Women
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“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”

PeopleThinkingMenHas BeensMadeFactsGirlWomenBoysRiskIdentityHe ManDevelopmentActivityMajorsThreatOneselfCharacteristicsServingMasculineIncorporating
Book:Toward a New Psychology of Women
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“As children, women are encouraged to be "little ladies." Little ladies don't scream as vociferously as little boys, and they are chastised more severely for throwing tantrums or showing temper: "high spirits" are expected and therefore tolerated in little boys; docility and resignation are the corresponding traits expected of little girls. Now, we tend to excuse a show of temper by a man where we would not excuse an identical tirade from a woman: women are allowed to fuss and complain, but only a man can bellow in rage.”

MenChildrenLittlesShowsSpiritGirlWomenBoysExcuseExpectedRageComplainingThrowingScreamTemperTraitsIdenticalLittle BoysResignationCorrespondingTantrums
Author:Robin Lakoff
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“Even when couples share more equitably in the work at home, women do two-thirds of the daily jobs at home, like cooking and cleaning up--jobs that fix them into a rigid routine. Most women cook dinner and most men change the oil in the family car. But dinner needs to be prepared every evening around six o'clock, whereas the car oil needs to be changed every six months, any day around that time, any time that day.... Men thus have more control over when they make their contributions than women do.”

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Author:Arlie Russell Hochschild
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“The "female culture" has shifted more rapidly than the "male culture"; the image of the go-get 'em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let's take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men's underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women's feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.”

MenYearsKindImportantFeelingsHomeCareKidsTogetherLastsCultureWomenResponsibilityIdentityChangedFemaleMalesTake CareThirtyEmsTaking ResponsibilityThirty YearsMatchedForging
Author:Arlie Russell Hochschild
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“Most women without children spend much more time than men on housework; with children, they devote more time to both housework andchild care. Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a "leisure gap" between them at home. Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a "second shift" at home.”

MenChildrenHomeCareWomenWorkOfficeMen And WomenGapsMore TimeFactoriesLeisureWorkplaceHousework
Author:Arlie Russell Hochschild
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“The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty.”

MenChristianOrderWomenLibertyUnionsSlaveAbandonCompanionContemplatingConjugal
Book:Studies of Nature, translated from the French, ... Carefully abridged, with a copious index, by L. T. Rede
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“Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.”

MenWorldMayMadeHardLawSocialWomenImpossibleThis WorldComfortTortureHard TimesDelusionCustomsOppressedSuperiorityAssuranceMasculineEgoism
Book:Mencken Chrestomathy
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