Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Even though my mom was talented and had a college degree, she lived in the era when the conventional wisdom in Dallas was that my dad worked, she was supposed to stay home and take care of the kids, and that was that. There really weren't other opportunities for her, and most of them were volunteer opportunities.

... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

Since a woman must wear chains, I would have the pleasure of hearing 'em rattle a little.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.

To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.

Growing up in Texas, you were either pretty or smart. Smart didn't get you very far, because there weren't too many job opportunities for women. I wondered why you couldn't be both.

My passion is writing, but it is also a fight because I still see home as a woman's duty.

In Swat, there are two jobs a woman's going to do: a teacher or a doctor. If not, then become a housewife.

I think society, in general, is hard on women, period.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

Women aren't supposed to want stuff. They're not supposed to have high emotions.

I love my sons, I love my husband, and I love my country. But in kingdoms of men, there are few - if any - choices for women. Or the choices are such that there is no greater pain than having to choose.

Unfortunately, being a woman in society means that sometimes you have to sort of quell what is instinctually broad and magnificent and magical about you.

When my mother was young, only two professions were open to women ; teaching and nursing. She chose nursing, but the teaching profession was full of talented women like her, confined there in part because they had few career options.

I don't believe that we - and this holds true for both genders - have as many choices as we seem to like to think.

[Rose from "Fences"] couldn't just jump out there. Not just because of economic reasons but because how she was looked at in society at the time. There were a lot of factors that made you stay I guess.

Biology is destiny only for girls.

A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.

There's still this underlying image of women that they should fulfil a certain role. It's no accident that a lot of men who are a bit misogynistic tend to say things like 'get back to the kitchen' or 'why aren't you at home looking after the kids'.

Woman dwell always in the palace of unpalatable truth and never by any chance is there a magic talisman to save them from their destiny. Speech is their ultimate need. We men exist for them only in so far as we can be described.

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it.