If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn’t any.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Let it be our delight to find our society in the circle of which Jesus is the center, and let us make those our friends who are the friends of Jesus.

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

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

Brad was a huge surprise to me. I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom with Mad.

Really showing love requires more than just words.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

When you find a guy who is powerful, a big father figure, you latch onto him immediately.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

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

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‚democratic‘ right to vote.

I’m drawn to bad romances.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Know your worth! People always act like they’re doing more for you than you’re doing for them.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

They do not love that do not show their love.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.