Have not we affections and desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
— Othello
Quotes About Feminism
John Stuart Mill wrote in The Subjection of Women that men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. Swami Vivekananda told women that the days of rising through marriage were gone, and that they would be great without the help of any man. Nelson Mandela tied the cause to a larger struggle, predicting that when women take an active part, no power on earth can stop the achievement of freedom.
Literature has given women some of their sharpest lines. Shakespeare has a speaker demand whether women have not affections and desires, and frailty, as men have. Chaucer wrote the flat refusal: you will not be master of my body and my property. Aristophanes has Lysistrata plan to seize the treasury, ending money and war together. Virginia Woolf held that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Joan of Arc called living without belief a fate more terrible than dying.
Literature has given women some of their sharpest lines. Shakespeare has a speaker demand whether women have not affections and desires, and frailty, as men have. Chaucer wrote the flat refusal: you will not be master of my body and my property. Aristophanes has Lysistrata plan to seize the treasury, ending money and war together. Virginia Woolf held that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Joan of Arc called living without belief a fate more terrible than dying.
Outside the family circle, papa, I'm glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.
— The Importance of Being Earnest
You're the cleverest witch I've ever met Hermione.
— Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
— A Room of One's Own
I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
— Persuasion
But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality. Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?
— As I Please: 1943-1945
What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed.
— Taken at the Flood
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
— Virginibus Puerisque
Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise.
— The Second Sex
Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive
— Medea
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.
— The Communist Manifesto
When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle, no power on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime.
— Long Walk to Freedom
Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don't think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth to their children.
— I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
He says he'd like to kiss the ground you walk on-reminds me, did you wash them yesterday?- and after that you're his skivvy.
— Mother Courage and Her Children
You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
— A Doll's House
you will not be master of my body & my property
— The Canterbury Tales
Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.
— The Revolution and Woman in Iraq
Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.
The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.
I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.
Benazir Bhutto doesn't cease to exist the moment she gets married. I am not giving myself away. I belong to myself and I always shall.
One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.
— Orlando