WOMEN

See also: Suffragettes; Women’s ministry; Women’s rights

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.

Thomas Aquinas

A female is a kind of mutilated male.

Aristotle

Females are imperfect males, accidently produced by the father’s inadequacy or by the malign influence of a moist south wind.

Aristotle

I know I have a body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.

Queen Elizabeth I of England

Nothing could be more anti-Biblical than letting women vote.

Editorial, Harper’s Magazine, November 1853

A woman is inferior to man in every way.

Josephus

To promote a Woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion, or empire above any Realm, nation or Citie, is repugnant to Nature.

John Knox

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes.” They will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”

Clare Boothe Luce

Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.

Martin Luther

Woman was God’s second mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Each time that a man prolongs converse with a woman he causes evil to himself, and desists from the law, and in the end inherits Gehinnom.

Rabbinic saying

Women are the real architects of society.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

I asked them why one reads in the synagogue service every week the words “I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a woman.”

“It is not meant in an unfriendly spirit, and it is not intended to degrade or humiliate women.”

“But it does, nevertheless. Suppose the service read, ‘I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a jackass.’ Could that be twisted in any way into a compliment to the jackass?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of the [forbidden] tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.

Tertullian

The best compliment men can give a woman is that she thinks like a man. I say she does not; she thinks like a woman.

Margaret Thatcher

Women, we need you to give us back our faith in humanity.

Desmond Tutu