Women Quotes
This is a large page and a mixed one. Feminist theory, nineteenth-century verse, comedy and plain contempt sit side by side, and the source line is how you tell them apart. Warren Farrell has the most entries, then Shakespeare, Camille Paglia and Mignon McLaughlin.
Some of the best-sourced entries are the plainest. Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique (1963): “The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women.” Shulamith Firestone, in The Dialectic of Sex (1970), argued that women and love are underpinnings, and that examining them threatens the whole structure of a culture. Dorothy Parker, in Enough Rope (1926), observed that men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
Two statements that are regularly credited to Catharine MacKinnon are flagged here as misattributed. If you are checking one of them, the notes on its page are the place to start.
Got myself a cryin', talkin', sleepin', walkin', livin' doll.
It is proverbial that from a hungry tiger and an affectionate woman there is no escape.
The female's defects—greed, hate, and delusion and other defilements—are greater than the male's.
And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify
A woman, so she's good, what does it signify?
It's so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.
Woman is the promise that cannot be kept; but it is precisely in this that my mercy consists.
An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and who has no hair under her arms.
It takes a brave, courageous, determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself.
A woman can look both moral and exciting—if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.