Henrik Ibsen Quotes

It is better to be a male for one day than a female for ten

Man's constant need to disparage woman, to humble her, to deny her equal rights, and to belittle her achievements — all are expressions of his innate envy and fear.

Both the Army and the Navy are closed to our sex. Nor, again, are we allowed to be members of the Stock Exchange. Thus we cannot use either the pressure of force or the pressure of money. We cannot preach sermons or negotiate treaties. Then again, although it is true that we can write articles or send letters to the press, the control of the press … is entirely in the hands of your sex …

For more than six thousand years the history of woman has been one of hopeless sadness. She moved only to the clank of chains, and her vain desire for better and higher things could not find expression, for woman was by force of circumstances inarticulate. Detraction of one sex and exaltation of the other became a habit of mind expressed in law, in religion, in literature as well as in the ordinary activities of everyday life.

It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.

We're not sexists, we're chauvinists -- we're male chauvinist pigs, and we're happy to be because we think that's what men were destined to be. We think that's what women want.

There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves.

Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement — are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant.

Women played no part in Athenian high culture. They could not vote, attend the theatre, or walk in the stoa talking philosophy. But the male orientation of Greek culture was inseparable of its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.

I remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It became glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men.

Whenever you see a successful woman, look out for three men who are going out of their way to try to block her.

I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

But sometimes the women writers will pitch something and I'll hear it, but the men will keep talking.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

It is rather ironic that society denies women certain rights under the pretext that they are emotional beings, and may become irrational when under pressure, while resorting to the emotions argument as an excuse for men's behaviour in honour crimes.

Forever behind a woman is the mediaeval English common law which places upon her the stigma of inferiority and bondage

What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favor of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favor of men should be recalled.

Quebec women are treated like sows.

Land belongs to the men folk.

Women have to stand up to tremendous discriminatory practices, whether inherited traditions, whether imposed norms, male perceptions of power and control. The women always have to go through that and cannot take any privilege for granted.

I don’t have any respect to men who send women out to do their fighting for them.

It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim... Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'..

The progress of man has never been impeded by preconceived ideas regarding his abilities, his proper interests, and his appropriate activities. Woman has always been so hampered.

You—the outside world—will be told that it is our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, and Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.