Quotes · Skopia

39 quotes

So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

John Stuart Mill

The Subjection of Women · 1869

★ 4.5

Magazine

I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.

Robert Mueller

1957

★ 4.3

Historical literature

Your great glory is not to be inferior to what God has made you, and the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men, whether they are praising you or criticizing you.

Pericles

Thucydides, Funeral Oration, History of the Peloponnesian War · 430 BC

★ 3.7

Letter

Woman's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customers, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1860

★ 3.7

Novel

Women have been called queens a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling.

Louisa May Alcott

1869

★ 3.7

Play

I don't know that women are always rewarded for being charming. I think they are usually punished for it!

Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband · 1895

★ 3.7

Letter

In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.

Abigail Adams

1776

★ 3.6

Letter

Patriotism in the female Sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honours and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Goverment from having held a place of Eminence...Yet all History and every age exhibit Instances of patriotick virtue in the female Sex; which considering our situation equals the most Heroick of yours.

Abigail Adams

Letter to John Adams, June 17, 1782 · 1782

★ 3.6

Essay · Political literature

The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.

John Stuart Mill

The Subjection of Women · 1869

★ 3.6

Speech

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion that has breathed upon this earth, has degraded woman. There is not one that has not always made her subject to man.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1885

★ 3.6

Feminist literature

If God is male, then the male is God.

Mary Daly

Beyond God the Father · 1973

★ 3.6

Poem

From the first dawn of life unto the grave, Poor womankind's in every state a slave.

Sarah Egerton

1703

★ 3.5

Political literature

It is humbling to reflect, that in those countries in which the fondness for the mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess, they are slaves; and that their moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to mere external charms.

Hannah More

1799

★ 3.5

Novel

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!... Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

Maria Edgeworth

1806

★ 3.5

Economic literature

The labour of women in the house, certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1898

★ 3.5

Pamphlet · Political literature

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

1915

★ 3.5

Feminist literature

Men may have had their own very good reasons for bringing women up in servitude, but the soul of a servant is not an attractive thing, and one of the most infuriating aspects of women's constricted upbringing is that it has made them less attractive, even in the eyes of their constrictors, than they should have been. Man has twisted and pruned women out of all recognition and then not liked the results.

Janet Radcliffe Richards

The Sceptical Feminst · 1980

★ 3.5

Essay · Feminist literature

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own · 1929

★ 2.1

Poem

Wife and Servant are the same, But only differ in the name.

Mary Chudleigh

To the Ladies · 1703

★ 2.0

Essay

If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?

Mary Astell

Some Reflections Upon Marriage · 1706

★ 2.0

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