Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different.
—Kate Millet (1934–2017) American Feminist, Writer, Sculptor
Men naturally resent it when women take greater liberties in dress than men are allowed.
—Michael Korda (b.1933) English-born Writer, Novelist
The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover—but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness.
—Kate Millet (1934–2017) American Feminist, Writer, Sculptor
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse—as a luxury befitting a young man.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (1783–1842) French Writer
I have always been principally interested in men for sex. I’ve always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I’d fall in love with a woman. Damn.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very good but a diamond and a sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.
—Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American Aviator
She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when talking about girls; she wasn’t a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a sneaky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.
—Margaret Atwood (b.1939) Canadian Writer, Poet, Critic
When a woman is very, very bad, she is awful, but when a man is correspondingly good, he is weird.
—Minna Antrim (1861–1950) American Writer, Epigrammist
The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.
—Henry Adams (1838–1918) American Historian, Man of Letters
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
—Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88) American Science Fiction Writer
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
Were there no women, men might live like gods.
—Thomas Dekker
For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.
—Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Poet, Literary Critic
I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Courtship—A man pursuing a woman until she catches him.
—Unknown
The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
A man’s idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady’s idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) American Author, Writer, Humorist