As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear, the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
—Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian Historian, Political leader
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
—Erica Jong (b.1942) American Novelist, Feminist
Women’s liberation, if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the authoritarian state, and once that withers away Marx will have come true willy-nilly, so let’s get on with it.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.
—Golda Meir (1898–1978) Israeli Head of State
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
—Timothy Leary (1920–96) American Psychologist, Author
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Woman’s Rights” with all its attendant horrors on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
The true Republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
I didn’t fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
The fundamental impulse of the movement is neither masturbatory nor concretely lesbian — although it of course offers warm house to both these possibilities; it is an impulse to maidenhood — to that condition in which a woman might pretend to a false fear or loathing of the penis in order to escape from any responsibility for the pleasure and well-being of the man who possesses it.
—Midge Decter (b.1927) American Journalist, Activist, Author
Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields — discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West — superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
The feminist anti-pornography movement, no less than the feminist movement of a century ago, encourages the assumption that male and female sexuality, and possibly morality, are as unlike as yin and yang.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist