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.

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.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

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

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

Woman was God’s second mistake.

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

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Hillary Clinton will always be there for you. And just remember – there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.

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

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

They say somebody’s ‚street smart.‘ I feel like, if I got intelligence, it’s just a country smart.

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.

The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

I think that feminists have definitely underestimated the role that women have had historically. I think I would be insecure if I were to be a man; there’s so much pressure on you.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

If we do not lift up women and families, everyone will fall short.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

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

We need women who are devoted to shepherding God’s children along the covenant path toward exaltation; women who know how to receive personal revelation, who understand the power and peace of the temple endowment; women who know how to call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen children and families; women who teach fearlessly.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

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

There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.

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?

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

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.

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

Look, the American people are smart.

I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

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

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.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer – or maybe president.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

If he invited you out, he’s got to pay.

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

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

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

Feminism… I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‚Free to be You and Me.‘

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

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

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

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

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.