Edmund Leach Quotes

In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I'd grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn't expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future.

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance.

The common man thinks that the marriage is like appointing one to do his work. The husband thinks so! The husband’s family thinks so. Every one thinks that a girl is coming to the family to do work. Even the girl’s family trains the girl to do the household work

An African man should not do anything called housework or cooking.

The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous.

Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

To me all men are boy-men. I don't know any man that's actually mature.

Men are domineering in rural Haryana, and that shows in sport, too.

I've never been drawn to the feminist movement. I was brought up to believe that men had little to do with the home or children - except to bring in the money.

In the end, I do think it's insulting to men and women to insist that they fit a certain profile. I never understood that.

Most men act so tough and strong on the outside because on the inside, we are scared, weak, and fragile. Men, not women, are the weaker sex.

The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labeled.

Black men don't like to be called 'boys,' but women accept being called 'girls.'

Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

'I'll be back' always sounded a little girly to me.

Women have taken on traditionally masculine roles and professions, and there is no real equivalent for men. Men are still extremely reluctant, as we all are reluctant to see them, take on traditionally feminine roles or professions. That is just not something that they do easily.

None of my sisters are in the movies, nor are my nieces going to be. That's how Dutt 'sahab,' my dad, brought up the girls in the family, and I am just carrying his thought forward.

If I was a man, I don't know if I'd settle down long before I was 50.

Women are often expected to be more amiable or more pleasing or more submissive than men generally.

Italian girls are famous for being snobby and expecting men to make the first move. In America, if I don't make eye contact, the guys won't come over and talk. American girls just go for it. You men are spoiled.

If I have a look around at the moment I feel great relief because finally others are entering the limelight. Men like Robert Pattinson must now play the Adonis. For me it was always a restraint, a restriction.

The core of my work is dedicated not to pleasing women, but to pleasing men.

A woman simply is, but a man must become.