Top 100 Women Of History Quotes
#1. The great men and women of history were not great because of what they earned and owned, but rather for what they gave their lives to accomplish.
John C. Maxwell
#2. You know, women have a history of just being - we've been told all our lives not to say - in the fifties you couldn't say birth or even be pregnant hardly on television - and then gradually things have changed.
Cybill Shepherd
#3. Her interest in natural history was confined to observation of the crows' feet gathering around her eyes.
Nicolas Bentley
#4. The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen.
Ellen Key
#5. The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound ... Throughout history ... there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal.
Corliss Lamont
#6. The history of American women is all about leaving home - crossing
Gail Collins
#7. But really, for me, I tried to find first-person accounts. I tried to read stories from men and women who had survived slavery because it's different when you hear it from their mouths instead of reading it from a history book.
Jurnee Smollett
#8. women had to be controlled and kept from going wild because of their inherent susceptibility to lust; thus men had to exercise aidos, "shame," and sophrosyne, "soundness of mind," to keep women from transgressing the bounds of propriety.
Thomas Van Nortwick
#9. I just want to hear the true voices of women self-expressing - smart ones, stupid ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, good ones, bad ones, fat ones, thin ones, all of it - until the profound silence that has resounded throughout history is filled with a healthy chorus coming from our side of the aisle.
Liz Phair
#10. There is something glorious about this place we call Texas. Hell, I don't know, it must be in the water. Somehow, as overwhelming odds and pressures congregate over Texas like a spring storm, average men and women are transformed into icons of history.
David Thomas Roberts
#11. Historically men have suppressed women quite effectively. They have suppressed women since the beginning of our history.
Frederick Lenz
#12. Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.
Sara Sheridan
#13. Women are practically invisible on the pages of Canadian history textbooks, too often overshadowed by the feats of famous men.
Merna Forster
#14. Their story, as the Delany sisters like to say, is not meant as "black" or "women's" history, but American history. It belongs to all of us. (From the Preface of "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years)
Amy Hill Hearth
#15. I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.
Isabel Allende
#16. The most powerful men of the kingdom have dragged a duchess down and sent her out to be a marvel to the common people of London. They are so deeply afraid of her that they took the risk to dishonor their own. They are so anxious to save themselves that they thought they should throw her aside.
Philippa Gregory
#17. The history of American women is about the fight for freedom, but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders.
Gail Collins
#18. Islamic tradition is full of examples of supporting the autonomy of women and the empowerment of women. Very few people know that in Islamic history there have been well over two thousand women jurists.
Khaled Abou El Fadl
#19. During the conflict that was placed before them, they not only gained the gratitude of many in their own generation but they proved, for the first time on a global scale, the enormous value of a woman's contribution, paving the way for future generations of women to do the same.
Kathryn J. Atwood
#20. History is made by men and women of vision and courage. Tonight freedom is on the march.
Ronald Reagan
#21. The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.
Vladimir Lenin
#22. Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique beginning nor its glorious history, but whatever.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
#23. It's the 21st century. It's untenable to suggest that women had no significance and no interest and that just because they didn't vote they had no relevance to the course of our history.
Kate Williams
#24. The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. The natural history of animals furnishes grounds in support of this theory.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#25. We live in an era of globalization and the era of the woman. Never in the history of the world have women been more in control of their destiny.
Oscar De La Renta
#26. The real mistake of women was to let the memoir, the collective, the history, space of producing history - to let it in the hands of men.
Fatema Mernissi
#27. The history of art is full of women lying around naked for erotic consumption by men.
Siri Hustvedt
#28. It's important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
#29. Love which is only an episode in the life of men, is the entire history of the life of women.
Madame De Stael
#30. An indigenous feminism has been present in every culture in the world and in every period of history since the suppression of women began.
Robin Morgan
#31. Gender equality cannot be achieved by cutting programs that allow girls to get the same chance to compete, learn, and play. The United States has had a solid history of commitment to its female athletes and expanding opportunity for women, and it is imperative that we continue on this path.
Linda Sanchez
#32. There's a long, long history of women suffering abuse, injustice, and not having the same opportunities as men, and I think that's been very detrimental to the human race as a whole.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#33. I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.
Anna Julia Cooper
#34. The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy.
Philippa Gregory
#35. The history of the women's movement in America follows a consciousness-amnesia cycle.
Carol Tavris
#36. Denied access to information about important arenas of human life, history, and art, women like Augusta Welland demonstrate well into adulthood a lack of moral insight and sympathetic compassion.
Edith Wharton
#37. The history of fan fiction demonstrates how efficient, and effective, women have been at pooling together to get what they want out of their stories. It's been a largely female-driven world.
Sherwood Smith
#38. Is there something in women that makes us long to be humbled? Or is it something in human beings, that when we are overmastered, we rejoice in our subjection? That would explain a lot of history.
Orson Scott Card
#39. The history of God's people is not a record of God searching for courageous men and women who could handle the task, but God transforming the hearts of cowards and calling them to live courageous lives.
Erwin McManus
#40. The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will love me.
Philippa Gregory
#41. The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human ... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance.
Pope John Paul II
#42. We as women know that there are no disembodied processes; that all history originates in human flesh; that all oppression is inflicted by the body of one against the body of another; that all social change is built on the bone and muscle, and out of the flesh and blood, of human creators.
Andrea Dworkin
#43. It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two.
Major Owens
#44. Like their personal lives, women's history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.
Elizabeth Janeway
#45. I am a Scorpio, and playing the seductress appeals to me. There are a lot of women throughout film history, like Marlene Dietrich or Mae West - those are the women I was always attracted to. The bad girls.
Chloe Sevigny
#46. The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced.
Simone De Beauvoir
#47. You are you because you love the way the world looks through your camera. You are you because of the way you love your friends and family. Not because some scar is on your body. That's a part of your history and what helps form what you believe in. not what defines you.
A.M. Willard
#48. To reclaim our past and insist that it become a part of our human history is the task that lies before us. For the future requires that women, as well as men, shape the world destiny.
Judy Chicago
#49. Most history is a record of the triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who make no nuisance of themselves in the world.
Philip Howard, 20th Earl Of Arundel
#50. Sigh. Here's another fine woman that historians can't believe was real. Of course she was real. Not only is there a splendid Chinese poem called "The Ballad of Mulan", there is also n excellent cartoon by Disney.
Sandi Toksvig
#51. Human history's greatest crime was the traffic in black flesh when the devil white man went into Africa and murdered and kidnapped to bring to the West in chains, in slave ships, millions of black men, women, and children, who were worked and beaten and tortured as slaves.
Malcolm X
#52. At this point of time in history, I don't think that women in any work force that's a male-dominated work force have the same rules to play or live by as men do.
Kari Matchett
#53. Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.
Sara Sheridan
#54. I guess I've played a lot of victims, but that's what a lot of the history of women is about.
Jodie Foster
#55. Suppressed I Rise is for anyone interested in a very personal, human view of the history of World War II. A mother's attempt to protect and raise her two young daughters in hostile NAZI Germany challenges her sensibilities and resourcefulness.
Hank Bracker
#56. The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
Betty Friedan
#57. Christianity has done more to elevate the status of women than any other movement in history.
Stasi Eldredge
#58. I first saw 'The Dinner Party' in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke.
Sue Monk Kidd
#59. I defend the authority of women and explore its meaning for them rather than assume they need to be more accommodating or sensitive.
David Bedrick
#60. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn't know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.
Kathleen Hanna
#61. I understand people, and I think that my life and my history and what I represent can relate to a lot of the women, the independents, the moderate voters.
Mia Love
#62. Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater.
Stacy Schiff
#63. In the history of humanity, women have never been as oppressed as they are right now. Men can make babies with us and then walk away.
Laura Schlessinger
#64. Like an unfinished symphony, her story played on my mind for most of my life. It would rock to the tune of the passage of time, an adagio of high notes, low notes an illusive movements. Then when I least expected it, I happened upon the missing notes in the life of Charlotte Howe Taylor.
Sally Armstrong
#65. What do I want in a good fantasy book? Court politics and social interactions based around houses and cities. Powerful women and devious men. Drama and action with emotional ramifications. Frocks. Kissing. Swords. An intense impression of history in the world-building.
Tansy Rayner Roberts
#66. The White Queen in many ways it is representative of the sort of drama that I'm talking about. The books by Philippa Gregory were best sellers and they specifically told the story of history from the point of view of women.
Colin Callender
#67. Sit peacefully in a church and think of church history: witchburning perhaps, or child abuse, genocide, the amassing of disgusting wealth, the repression of women, inquisitions, castrating child choir singers, the denial of Santa Claus and the support of fascists in power.
Kaz Cooke
#68. A parcel
taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will
is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who.
Philippa Gregory
#69. When we love all parts of ourselves, when we bless all of ourselves, when we honor all of our history and all of our insecurities, doubts, worries, and fears, we become the women that we always wanted to be.
Debbie Ford
#70. At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#71. The clear lesson of New England's history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so.
Wallace Stegner
#72. We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none. This is a belief that each American regardless of background has equal standing in the public forum, all of us. Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive, rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come.
Barbara Jordan
#73. For the khan, we will take their cities, their women, and their lands. This is the great raid, the farthest strike in the history of the nation of Genghis. We will not be stopped.
Conn Iggulden
#74. It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
Steven Pinker
#75. Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.
Susan Sontag
#76. History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.
Tansy Rayner Roberts
#78. I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'
Alice Walker
#79. The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.
Queen Elizabeth II
#80. The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.
Emma Goldman
#81. The pride taken by the Italians in their gifted women is among the most important facts in the history of their Renaissance.
Walter Shaw Sparrow
#82. I don't think that women being seen as inferior is a prejudice based on male hatred of women. When you look at history, it's a prejudice based on simple fact.
Caitlin Moran
#83. Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.
Philippa Gregory
#84. My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.
Camille Paglia
#85. The early years of statistical development were dominated by men. Many women were working in the field, but they were almost all employed in doing the detailed calculations needed for statistical analysis, and were indeed called "computers".
David Salsburg
#86. Playboy has a long history of high-quality interviews along with the objectification of women, and so I think she does have a point there. I don't think that the words are necessarily nullified. It's just that that context is something you ought to be suspicious of.
Cornel West
#87. The woman's march of today have deep roots and shoud be respected. Our country must find unification and not division, with men as well as women of all parties rallying around their cause!" Captain Hank Bracker, author of "The Exciting Story of Cuba.
Hank Bracker
#88. Women are also property in our bible; adultery is a property crime in the Old Testament, not a sex crime.
Bill Maher
#89. The twenty-first-century successful black woman is brilliant and tenacious and not afraid to flex her intellectual, spiritual, or financial muscles. She has accomplished, earned, and owned more than black women of any other generation in American history.
Sophia Nelson
#90. Human history is full of great men, great women, individuals, with the will for power - all of them with governesses like her.
Daniel Nayeri
#91. Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in ... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.
Jane Austen
#92. It begins with skepticism.147 The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible. One therefore ought to seek good reasons for believing something.
Steven Pinker
#93. The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.
James McGreevey
#94. The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.
Henry Adams
#95. Hip to the fact that well-behaved women rarely make history, Diane [Wilson] has already inspired a new movement of totally uncontrollable, irresistible and unreasonable women!
Medea Benjamin
#96. And in the act of making things, just by living their daily lives, they also make history.
Knitting is clothing made in spare moments, or round the fire, whenever women gathered together ... It's something to celebrate-clothes made in love and service, something women have always done.
Anne Bartlett
#97. We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.
Anais Nin
#98. It's all very romantic," Gabriel said, and then frowned. "Or it would be, if my brother could get a word out without sounding like a choking frog. I fear he will not go down in history as one of the world's greatest wooers of women.
Cassandra Clare
#99. If you look back in history of the women who are most memorable and most stylish, they were never the followers of fashion. They were the ones who were unique in their style, breakers of the rules. They were authentic, genuine, original. They were not following the trends.
Nina Garcia
#100. Only a handful of men and women leave an imprint on the conscience of a nation and on the history that they helped shape.
Barack Obama
