If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818) American First Lady
God had given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
There are always women who will take men on their own terms. If I were a man I wouldn’t bother to change while there are women like that around.
—Ann Oakley (b.1944) English Sociologist, Writer, Feminist
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.
—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
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.
—Delphine de Girardin (1804–55) French Novelist, Author
A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Women serve but to keep a man from better company.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
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
Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the male. He is her food supply.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American Feminist, Writer
Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
—George Meredith (1828–1909) British Novelist, Poet, Critic
A man chases a woman until she catches him.
—U.S. Proverb
The suffering of either sex—of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult—this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
It’s the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actor, TV Personality
It’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t much matter what else you have.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
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
So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
In the battle of the sexes, woman gains her greatest victory by surrendering.
—Unknown
Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.
—Gail Sheehy (1936–2020) American Writer, Journalist
The real thinking of woman is pre-eminently practical and applied. It is something we describe as sound common sense, and is usually directed to what is close at hand and personal. In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgment, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing. Where a man takes up objective problems, a woman contents herself with solving riddles; where he battles for knowledge and understanding, she contents herself with faith or superstition, or else she makes assumptions.
—Emma Jung (1882–1955) Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author
The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Think what cowards men would be if they had to bear children. Women are altogether a superior species.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?
—James Thurber
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
—Robert Ranke Graves (1895–1985) English Poet, Novelist, Critic, Classical Scholar
Woman cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appear something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
Woman does not forget she needs the fecundator, she does not forget that everything that is born of her is planted in her.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Women speak two languages – one of which is verbal.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–90) British Biographer, Poet, Playwright, Novelist
Let us leave the beautiful women to men with no imagination.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Woman was God’s second mistake.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author