Unequal Relationships Quotes

Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.

Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love.

Love between a man and a woman is inevitably complicated, corrupted, and obstructed by an unequal balance of power.

Love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

My relationships were never equitable. My husbands were always older than me, and they made the rules, they ran the show, and I followed them.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

Whenever domination is present, love is lacking.

The great put the little on the hooke.

Successful men don't date up. They are intimidated by wealthy women unless they are blue bloods. Successful men want to always take care of their women, and that means financially.

I've always gone out with men who wanted a cook all the time.

The thing I am most interested in is power relations - it is so easy in a relationship like that [of an artist and a gallery manager], to imagine that the other person is living a perfect life.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

I only want to debate people who are more powerful than I am.

...love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.

People don't want to treat their nannies subserviently. They don't want to act like bosses. And so nobody quite knows how to behave, and everyone is slightly pretending that the mother and nanny are 'equal' - when that's not the case. And pretending you are equal can make things complicated, even dangerous.

You see a woman, 22 years old, going out with a guy over 60 - and it's kind of natural. But if it happens in the opposite direction everyone says, 'What is going on there?'

You can't love someone unless you are in an equal position with them. A lot of women have to cling to men out of fear or insecurity, and that's not love - basically that's why women hate men.

I came from a family where joining a union was the expected thing to do. I've always believed that the relationship between an employer and an individual worker is fundamentally unequal.

Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

There are always a few people you do a lot for, and a few who do a lot for you, but they're not the same people.

Two powerful people can't be friends.

There's a lot that needs to be fixed in dating for men and women in the U.S. - there's a lot of pressure on women to do things they may not want to do. And if you start out unequal, you are not going to end up with equality.

It is a common fate -- a woman's lot -- To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole.