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Timeless quotes on women: Difference between revisions
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{{Quote|"Man, created by Nature to rule, was endowed with a soul equal to the task. His body is strong, his mind vigorous, and his heart resolute; his understanding is fitted for the most sublime speculations, and his person for the most hardy and important exercises ... If there are a few degenerate creatures, who answer not this character, they are such only as by conversing with womankind, putting on their foibles, and affecting to be like them, degrade themselves of manhood, commence intellectual eunuchs, and, though they are, deserve no more to be reputed of the same sex with us.|''ibid''}} | {{Quote|"Man, created by Nature to rule, was endowed with a soul equal to the task. His body is strong, his mind vigorous, and his heart resolute; his understanding is fitted for the most sublime speculations, and his person for the most hardy and important exercises ... If there are a few degenerate creatures, who answer not this character, they are such only as by conversing with womankind, putting on their foibles, and affecting to be like them, degrade themselves of manhood, commence intellectual eunuchs, and, though they are, deserve no more to be reputed of the same sex with us.|''ibid''}} | ||
{{Quote|"Let women then give up their claim to an equality with the men, and be content with the humble station which Nature has allotted them. And since neither their capacity for head nor their dispositions of heart can lift them to emulate, let them apply their little talents at least to imitate us: That pleased with the pretty mimics of ourselves, we may venture to place them in our bosoms without fear of cherishing a viper there."|''ibid''}} | {{Quote|"Let women then give up their claim to an equality with the men, and be content with the humble station which Nature has allotted them. And since neither their capacity for head nor their dispositions of heart can lift them to emulate, let them apply their little talents at least to imitate us: That pleased with the pretty mimics of ourselves, we may venture to place them in our bosoms without fear of cherishing a viper there."|''ibid''}} | ||
== | ==1762-1814: Johann Gottlieb Fichte== | ||
{{Quote|" | {{Quote|"The female sex stands one step lower in the arrangement of nature than the male sex; the female sex is the object of a power of the male sex, and no other arrangement was possible if both sexes were to be connected. But at the same time both sexes, as moral beings, ought to be equal. To make this possible, a new faculty, utterly wanting in the male sex, had to be given to the female sex. This faculty is the form in which the sexual impulse appears to woman (i.e. passive and indirect ''Ed.''), whereas to man it appears in its true form. [...] Man may court, but not woman. [...] If some women claim that they should have the same right to court as men, we would answer: 'No one disputes you that right, why then, do you not make use of it?'".|Fichte, JG 1889, ''The Science of Rights'', trans. AE Kroeger, Trübner & Co., London, pp. 396-397.}} | ||
{{Quote|" | {{Quote|"The man in whom there still lingers generosity, and the woman in whom there still dwells modesty, are open to the utmost degree of culture; but both are on the sure path to all vices when the one becomes mean and the other shameless, as indeed experience invariably shows it to be the case."|''ibid'', p. 405.}} | ||
{{Quote|" | {{Quote|"Polygamy presupposes that women are not rational beings like men, but merely willess and lawless means to gratify man. Such is, indeed, the doctrine of the religious legislation which tolerates polygamy. This religion has—probably without being clearly conscious of the grounds—drawn one sided conclusions from the destination of woman to remain passive. Polyandry is utterly against nature, and hence very rare. If it were not a condition of utter brutishness, and if it could presuppose any thing, it would have to presuppose that there is no reason and no dignity of reason."|''ibid, p. 407.}} | ||
{{Quote|"Women are not habituated, and can not be habituated, to look upon the form as means, because they could be accustomed to do so only by making use of the form. Hence they look upon it as an end in itself, as something noble | |||
and excellent in itself. This is the reason why really learned women—I do not speak of those who reason purely through their common sense, for these are very estimable—are usually pedantic."|''ibid'', p. 448.}} | |||
{{Quote|"Woman, therefore, is especially practical, and not at all speculative in her womanly nature. She can not and shall not go beyond the limit of her feeling."|''ibid'', p. 449.}} | |||
==1769–1821: Napoleon Bonaparte== | ==1769–1821: Napoleon Bonaparte== | ||
{{Quote|"We treat women too well, and in this way have spoiled everything. We have done every wrong by raising them to our level. Truly the Oriental nations have more mind and sense than we in declaring the wife to be the actual property of the husband. In fact nature has made woman our slave ... Woman is given to man that she may bear children ... consequently she is his property."}} | {{Quote|"We treat women too well, and in this way have spoiled everything. We have done every wrong by raising them to our level. Truly the Oriental nations have more mind and sense than we in declaring the wife to be the actual property of the husband. In fact nature has made woman our slave ... Woman is given to man that she may bear children ... consequently she is his property."}} | ||
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{{Quote|"Women ... are capable of committing the worst atrocities. . If war broke out between men and women, it would be quite a different business from the struggles we have seen between nobles and the people, or whites and blacks".}} | {{Quote|"Women ... are capable of committing the worst atrocities. . If war broke out between men and women, it would be quite a different business from the struggles we have seen between nobles and the people, or whites and blacks".}} | ||
{{Quote|"Nothing is more imperious ... than weakness when it knows it is backed by strength; look at women".}} | {{Quote|"Nothing is more imperious ... than weakness when it knows it is backed by strength; look at women".}} | ||
==1770-1831: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel== | |||
{{Quote|"Women are capable of education, but they are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty such as the more advanced sciences, philosophy, and certain forms of artistic production. Women may have happy ideas, taste, and elegance, but they cannot attain to the ideal.|''Elements of the Philosophy of Right''}} | |||
{{Quote|"The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants. Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because their development is more placid and the principle that underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions.|''Elements of the Philosophy of Right''}} | |||
{{Quote|"While singular individuality is thus mingled into the woman’s relationship, her ethical life is not pure. However, insofar as she is ethical, singular individuality is a matter of indifference, and the wife dispenses with the moment of cognizing herself as this self in an other."|''Phenomenology of Spirit''}} | |||
==1772-1801: Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis)== | ==1772-1801: Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis)== | ||
{{Quote|"Man must control his nature and secure right and mastery for the individual in himself – mastery of the will is proper to him. Woman must obey nature – constrain her individuality – her sensation must determine her will. [...] She must have a subordinated will, he must have a subordinated sensation. (He simplifies the universal, she universalizes the singular.) He and she both serve reason—He is the ideal of content—She is the soul of form."|Novalis 2003, ''Fichte Studies'', trans. J Kneller, Cambridge University Press, NY, pp. 157-158}} | {{Quote|"Man must control his nature and secure right and mastery for the individual in himself – mastery of the will is proper to him. Woman must obey nature – constrain her individuality – her sensation must determine her will. [...] She must have a subordinated will, he must have a subordinated sensation. (He simplifies the universal, she universalizes the singular.) He and she both serve reason—He is the ideal of content—She is the soul of form."|Novalis 2003, ''Fichte Studies'', trans. J Kneller, Cambridge University Press, NY, pp. 157-158}} | ||