gender inequality Quotes

“Well, but I cannot speak with a woman,” objected Wang Lung mildly. He could make nothing of the situation in which he found himself, and he was still staring about him. “Well, and why not?” retorted the woman with anger.”

“It would have been beneath him to notice her. Instead he feigned great interest in the clouds and he cried, “That cloud which hangs upon the left horn of the new moon speaks of rain. It will come not later than tomorrow night.”

“My promise was the price I had to pay for being born. That’s all you need to know.”

“History shows us we need labels to help define our place. For hundreds of years, people have categorized others as less so they could feel like more. Color, gender, class, religion, physical handicaps, sexual orientation, and pedigree are just a few ways in which one group is divided from another. ”

“And besides – he’s so proud of being a man – it’d be so painful and humiliating for him to know that he owed anything to me. It’d completely wreck our relationship.”

“Bought, did you say? All these things? Has my little spendthrift been wasting money again?”

“When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he thought about everything, so that I never had any opinions but his. And if I did have any of my own, I kept them quiet, because he wouldn’t have liked them. He called me his little doll, and he played with me just the way I played with my dolls.”

“I believe that I am first and foremost a human being, like you – or anyway, that I must try to become one. I know most people think as you do, Torvald, and I know there’s something of the sort to be found in books. But I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say and what’s written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.”

″‘For woman is yin,’ she cried sadly, ‘the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.‘”

“We black men have failed to protect our women since the time of slavery. We stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves.”

“‘I don’t think any man is my equal. Women are far superior, and don’t you forget it.’”

“Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance [...] But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten, and flung about the room.”

“...the more of us who understand the game and see through the lie and forge ahead in support of every other woman’s right to a passionate response to life, the more we will hasten the end of our jail term.”

“Chacko was Mammachi’s only son. Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.”

“She’d become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.”

“Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th’ austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. ”

“Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man.”

“I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society.”

“I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and their powers of digestion destroyed.”

“Sense will always preponderate; and if women be not, in general, brought more on a level with men, some superiour women, like the Greek courtezans, will assemble the men of abilities around them, and draw from their families many citizens, who would have stayed at home had their wives more sense.”

“This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

“Then, masking the pain in our hearts, we’d put on a smile and ask you, ‘How did the Assembly go today? Any decision about a rider to the peace treaty?’ And my husband would say, ‘What’s that to you? Shut up!’ And I’d shut up.”

Lysistrata: “Well, what did you expect? Did you think you were going up against a bunch of slave girls? Or did you think women lack gall?” Magistrate: “Oh yes, they’ve got plenty of that, provided there’s a wine bar nearby.”

Magistrate: “If you hadn’t shut up you’d have got a beating!” Lysistrata: “Well, that’s why I did shut up—then. But later on we began to hear about even worse decisions you’d made, and then we would ask, ‘Husband, how come you’re handling this so stupidly?’ And right away he’d glare at me and tell me to get back to my sewing if I didn’t want major damage to my head: ‘War shall be the business of menfolk,’ unquote.”

“After that we women decided to lose no more time, and to band together to save Greece. What was the point of waiting any longer? So, if you’re ready to listen in your turn as we give you good advice, and to shut up as we had to, we can put you on the right track.”

“The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders.”

Calonice: “And you, Lysistrata. What’s bothering you? Don’t frown, child. Knitted brows don’t become you.” Lysistrata: “But my heart’s on fire, Calonice, and I’m terribly annoyed about us women. You know, according to the men we’re capable of any sort of mischief—” Calonice: “And so we surely are!” Lysistrata: “But when they’re told to meet us here to discuss a matter of no trifling importance, they sleep in and don’t show up.”

“How could he be right, you sorry fool, when we were forbidden to offer advice even when your policy was wrong?”

“That’s quite a different story. When a man comes home he can quickly find a girl to marry, even if he’s a graybeard. But a woman’s prime is brief; if she doesn’t seize it, no one wants to marry her, and she sits at home looking for good omens.”

“If any man among us gives these women even the tiniest handhold, there’s no limit to what their nimble hands will do. Why, they’ll even be building frigates and launching naval attacks, cruising against us like Artemisia.”

″‘Go round cringing like a dog, Matt,’ he said, ‘and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they’ll treat you like a man.’ That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you’re a girl?”

“My eyes latch on to one line again: “I said no so many times, dear”...and then I gasp out loud, because I have said no a few times myself, dear, and I finally understand why Grace was so upset: She was carrying a baby—Chester Gillette’s baby. That’s why she had to give up her position and go home. That’s why she was so desperate for him to come and take her away. Before her belly got big and the whole world found out.”

“That she should be reading at all- a young girl like her- it’s against nature. And in that book! It looks like witchcraft to me.”

“You’ll be all right... You’re a boy. And you’re her son.”

“She was determined that her efforts to help him would be successful. Then Mistress Elke and all the others like her would see. They’d see that girl or not- young or not- she was a healer.”

“The household prayed for the duke, who so wanted an heir, and a few remembered to pray for the duchess, who had grown thin and frail even as her belly had grown round and wide.”

It is all very well for the man: he can go his ways as if nothing had happened, having had his moment of pleasure, but the girl has to bear the brunt.