Housework never really bothered me… what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life… when you’re a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn’t the fact that you do the laundry.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

I make decisions all day, so it’s nice for a woman like me to go to dinner and have the man take the menu and say, ‚Let me order.‘ Other women would be offended by that, but I’m like, ‚Good. Because I can’t make one more decision today.‘ I want someone to rub my feet without being asked.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church – things like that – I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

Never was it given to mortal man – To lie so boldly as we women can.

In my house I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear… I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, ‚My wife told me to wear this!‘ And I just shake my head.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

I think I have a certain respect for people, you know. And I guess a lot of times I expect that respect to go both ways.

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they’re afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.