A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. Coco Chanel
Better to be strong than pretty and useless. Lilith Saintcrow, Strange Angels
A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. D H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain. Audrey Hepburn
You can now see the Female Eunuch the world over ... spreading herself whenever blue jeans and Coca-Cola may go. Wherever you see nail varnish, lipstick, brassieres, and high heels, the Eunuch has set up her camp. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, foreword to 21st anniversary edition 1970
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them. ibid.
Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the carcasses of a subhumanly ugly mate? ibid.
I didn’t fight to get women out from behind the vacuum cleaner to get them on to the board of Hoover. Germaine Greer, Guardian 27th October 1986
This terrible grab-bag of loathing women. Germaine Greer, cited Kirsty Wark, Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes, BBC 2014
Women’s Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s the men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no-one’s likely to do anything about that. Golda Meir cited Newsweek 23rd October 1972
It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. Simone de Beauvoir, 1908-86, French novelist & feminist, The Second Sex, 1949
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition ... The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. ibid.
Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking. Polly Toynbee, Guardian 19th January 1987
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room, 1977
There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. Camille Paglia, International Herald Tribune 26th April 1991
The problem that has no name. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 1963, re American women not allowed to grow to full potential
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. ibid.
Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children. Betty Friedan, The Second Stage, 1987
There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. Madeleine Albright
I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it’s necessary. Madeleine Albright
Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means. Henny Youngman
Don’t laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Nothing on this planet can compare with a woman’s love – it is kind and compassionate, patient and nurturing, generous and sweet and unconditional. Pure. If you are her man, she will walk on water and through a mountain for you, too, no matter how you’ve acted out, no matter what crazy thing you’ve done, no matter the time or demand. Steve Harvey
In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you. Dorothy Parker
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body. Margaret Sanger
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. Margaret Sanger, atheist & socialist & founder of Voluntary Parenthood League 1914 & first birth control clinic New York City
Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated. Saddam Hussein, The Revolution and Woman in Iraq
An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms. Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
There are some who want to get married and others who don’t. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead. Greta Garbo
Women have no wilderness in them
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread. Louise Bogan, Women
Women have been left out of history not because of the evil conspiracies of men in general or male historians in particular, but because we have considered history only in male-centered terms. We have missed women and their activities, because we have asked questions of history which are inappropriate to women. To rectify this, and to light up areas of historical darkness we must, for a time, focus on a woman-centered inquiry, considering the possibility of the existence of a female culture within the general culture shared by men and women. History must include an account of the female experience over time and should include the development of feminist consciousness as an essential aspect of women’s past. This is the primary task of women’s history. The central question it raises is: What would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of women and ordered by values they define? Gerda Lerner, The Challenge of Women’s History
If society will not admit of woman’s free development, then society must be remoulded. Elizabeth Blackwell
If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it. Harriet Beecher Stowe
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She’s young, white, and skinny. She’s a cheerleader, a babysitter; she’s accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She’s never a woman of color. She’s never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She’s never disabled. ‘Virgin’ is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best. Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women