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.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Girls shouldn’t worry about being the equal of men in the business world.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

It is not women’s liberation, it is women’s and men’s liberation.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let’s face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what’s sexy. And men define what’s feminine. It’s ridiculous.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

I have never cared especially for outdoor sports and have no desire to excel at tennis, swimming, or golf. I’ll leave those things to the men.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

I’m for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension… would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

Naturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody’s interested in somebody who’s just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing – there is no latest thing. It’s all rubbish.

I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

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.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male – or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you’ll see what I mean.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowing more than they do.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

Woman was God’s second mistake.

I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

I’m very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.