Quotations: A

These quotations are not intended to constitute advice, an argument, or evidence for or against anything. This section is just a bit of fun! Please don't take it too seriously! That a quote is included here should not be taken to imply that it is endorsed, and it certainly should not be taken to imply that the source of the quote is endorsed.



“Submissive men are much more likely than men with dominating personalities to become impotent as they get older. ... By the end of the 10-year study, 163 men, or 21 percent, reported developing mild or serious erectile dysfunction. Not surprisingly, men with high blood pressure, those who smoked and those who were obese were more likely to develop ED. But even after accounting for those risk factors, men who scored low on scales of dominance were about 60 percent more likely than their assertive counterparts to report erection problems, the researchers found.”
      - Adam Marcus

“A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.”
      - Adlai Stevenson: The Stevenson Wit (1966)

“‘You see, a man doesn't want to feel that a woman cares more for him than he does for her’. His voice grew warm as he went on ‘He doesn't want to feel owned, body and soul. It's the damned possessive attitude! This man is mine – he belongs to me! That's the sort of thing I can't stick – no man could stick! He wants to own his woman; he doesn't want her to own him.’”
      - Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile, Chapter six

“But marriage means more than a lover – I take an old-fashioned view that respect is necessary. Respect – which is not to be confused with admiration. To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious. You would get, as it were, a mental crick in the neck. But respect is a thing that you don't have to think about, that you know thankfully is there. As the old Irish woman said of her husband ‘Himself is a good head to me.’ That, I think, is what a woman needs. She wants to feel that in her man there is integrity, that she can depend on him and respect his judgement, and that when there is a difficult decision to be made it can safely be left in his hands.”
      - Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, Part One, Chapter Five, page 64 of the HarperCollins paperback edition

“The position of women over the years has definitely changed for the worse. We women have behaved like mugs. We have clamoured to be allowed to work as men work. Men. not being fools, have taken kindly to the idea. Why support a wife? What's wrong with a wife supporting herself? She wants to do it. By golly, she can go on doing it!
      It seems sad that having established ourselves so cleverly as ‘the weaker sex’ we should now be broadly on a par with the women of primitive tribes who toil in the fields all day, walk miles to gather camelthorn for fuel, and on trek carry all the pots, pans, household equipment on their heads, while the gorgeous ornamental male sweeps on ahead, unburdened save for one lethal weapon with which to defend his women.
      You've got to hand it to Victorian women: they got their menfolk where they wanted them. They established their frailty, delicacy and sensibility – their constant need of being protected and cherished. Did they lead miserable, servile lives, downtrodden and opressed? Such is not my recollection of them. All my grandmothers' friends seem to me in retrospect singularly resiliant and almost invariably succesful in getting their own way. They were tough, self-willed and remarkably well-read and well-informed.
      Mind you, they admired their men enormously. They genuinely thought men were splendid fellows – dashing, inclined to be wicked, easily led astray. In daily life a woman got her own way whilst paying due lipservice to male superiority, so that her husband should not lose face.
‘Your father knows best, dear,’ was the public formula. The real approach came privately. ‘I'm sure you are quite right in what you said, John, but I wonder if you have considered...’
      In one respect man was parmount. He was the Head of the House. A woman, when she married, accepted as her destiny his place in the world and his way of life. That seems to me sound sense and the foundation of happiness. If you can't face your man's way of life, don't take that job – in other words, don't marry that man. Here, say is a wholesale draper: he is a Roman Catholic: he prefers to live in a suburb: he plays golf and he likes to go for holidays by the seaside. That is what you are marrying. Make up your mind to it and like it. It won't be so difficult.”
      - Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, Part Three, Chapter Two, page 134 of the HarperCollins paperback edition.

“Mon ami, let this be a lesson to you. You are a man. Behave, then, like a man! It is against Nature for a man to grovel. Women and Nature have almost exactly the same reactions! Remember it is better to take the largest plate within reach and fling it at a woman's head than it is to wriggle like a worm whenever she looks at you!”
      - Agatha Christie: Murder in Mesopotamia, chapter XXVII

“Some women ... actually thrill to the threat of physical violence. I've never met one that does, mind you, but they probably do exist. In books. By men.”
       - Alan Ayckbourn: Round and Round the Garden

“Sure, you can be a romantic today if you so choose, but it is a little like being a virgin in a whorehouse. It just doesn't fit with the temper of the times and gets no support in the current atmosphere.”
       - Allan Bloom: Love and Friendship, page 25

“In family questions, inasmuch as men were understood to be so strongly motivated by property, an older wisdom tried to attach concern for the family to that motive: the man was allowed and encouraged to regard his family as his property, so he would care for the former as he would instinctively care for the latter... When wives and children come to the husband and father and say, ‘We are not your property; we are ends in ourselves and demand to be treated as such,’ the anonymous observer cannot help being impressed. But the difficulty comes when wives and children further demand that the man continue to care for them as before... The father will almost inevitably constrict his quest for property, cease being a father and become a mere man again... The hope is to have a happy city made up entirely of unhappy men...
      I am not arguing here that the old family arrangements were good or that we should or could go back to them. I am only insisting that we not cloud our vision to such an extent that we believe that there are viable substitutes for them just because we want or need them. The peculiar attachment of mothers for their children existed, and in some degree still exists, whether it was the product of nature or nurture. That fathers should have exactly the same kind of attachment is much less evident. We can insist on it, but if nature does not cooperate, all our efforts will have been in vain. Biology forces women to take maternity leaves. Law can enjoin men to take paternity leaves, but it cannot make them have the desired sentiments.”
      - Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind page 130

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don't mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don't mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling – all that I am capable of doing – but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.”
      - Anaïs Nin: Incest

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like
a woman.”
      - Anaïs Nin [Where did she write this? If anyone can provide the full reference for this quotation, I'd appreciate it.]

“It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before ... to test your limits ... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
      - Anaïs Nin [Where did she write this? If anyone can provide the full reference for this quotation, I'd appreciate it.]

“Getting fucked and being owned are inseparably the same.”
      - Andrea Dworkin: Intercourse (1987)

“If men have a right to rape women in marriage – even an implicit right, because juries will not convict - yes, then men do own women.”
      - Andrea Dworkin: Life and Death

“[I]n these politically-correct times where most women would not dare to admit openly – even to their close female friends – that they enjoy being dominated – heterosexual women who do enjoy being dominated are intimidated into silence.”
      - Angry Harry: Intercourse

“Feminist analysis begins with the principle that objective reality is a myth.”
      - Ann Scales, feminist legal scholar, in the Yale Law School Review, c. 1990

““Consent” [is] the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage in specific sexual contact or conduct... Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact/conduct in any given interaction, regardless of who initiates it. Asking, “Do you want to have sex with me?” is not enough. The request for consent must be specific to each act.”
      - Antioch College Date Rape Code, 1993

“Man is active, full of movement, creative in politics, business and culture. The male shapes and moulds society and the world. Woman, on the other hand, is passive. She stays at home, as is her nature. She is matter waiting to be formed by the active male principle. Of course the active elements are always higher on any scale, and more divine. Man consequently plays a major part in reproduction; the woman is merely the passive incubator of his seed.”
       - Aristotle: The Politics, Book I

“The male is by nature superior and the female inferior; one rules and the other is ruled.”
       - Aristotle: The Politics, Book I

“Men's courage is shown in commanding and women's in obeying.”
       - Aristotle: The Politics, Book I

“The male is naturally more fitted to command than the female (except where there is a miscarriage of nature).”
       - Aristotle: The Politics, Book I

“A married woman's as old as her husband makes her feel.”
       - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, 1855-1934

“Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.”
       - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero: In Love, 1855-1934

“ The ideal man has the strength, endurance, and temperance of fine steel. […] A man of steel is a masculine man. He is aggressive, determined, decisive, and independent. He learns efficiency in the affairs of a man's world, demanding quotas of himself in reaching an objective. He is competent in a task, fearless and courageous in the face of difficulty, and master of a situation. The velvet qualities include a man's gentleness, his tenderness, kindness, generosity, and patience… He is chivalrous, attentive and respectful to the gentler sex and has an ability to love with tenderness. He has, in addition, an enthusiastic and youthful attitude of optimism which defies the press of years. [...] Both the steel and velvet are necessary to produce a great character. There has never been a truly great man on the earth who was not a possessor of both.”
       - Aubrey Andelin: Chapter 1, Man of Steel and Velvet

“When a man has both Steel and Velvet qualities, It brings him peace, happiness and fulfillment”
       - Aubrey Andelin: Man of Steel and Velvet, Chapter 2

“A woman loves only her master.”
       - Aubrey Andelin: Man of Steel and Velvet

“Une femme n'aime que son maître.”
       - French translation of the above quote by Aubrey Andelin: Man of Steel and Velvet

“Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.”
      - Ayn Rand: in an interview in Playboy in the 1960s

“[S]ex is one of the most important aspects of a man's life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find as a human being. ... And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important.”
      - Ayn Rand: in an interview in Playboy in the 1960s

“For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience, or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgements. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.”
      - Ayn Rand: The Objectivist, December 1968

“[A] properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother – or leader.”
      - Ayn Rand: The Objectivist, December 1968

“[Sex is] an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire.”
      - Ayn Rand's character, Francisco D' Aconia: Atlas Shrugged

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