Bella Abzug Quotes

Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over. -

I am not a centrist.

As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo.

Congress is a middle-aged, middle-class, white male power structure ... no wonder it's been so totally unresponsive to the needs of this country.

We have done almost everything in pairs since Noah, except govern. And the world has suffered for it.

We need laws that protect everyone - men and women, straights and gays, regardless of sexual perversion ... ah, persuasion.

In Britain the government has to come down in front of Parliament every day to explain its actions, but here the President never answers directly to Congress.

They used to give us a day-it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.

Our struggle was political, ideological and economic, and we felt we couldn't make something of ourselves unless we bettered society. We saw the two together.

All of the men on my staff can type.

Never go back, never apologize, and never forget we're half the human race.

They are a very extensive minority who have suffered discrimination and who have the same right to participation in the promise and fruits of society as every other individual.

Women will not simply be mainstreamed into the polluted stream. Women are changing the stream, making it clean and green and safe for all - every gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, age, and ability.

We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didn't craft them. They didn't let us.

The women's movement, not only here in the U.S., but worldwide, is bigger and stronger than ever before and in places where it has never been. It has arms. It has legs. And most importantly, it has heads.

Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments.

We are affirming human rights for all women and girls, acknowledging the full range of diversity that exists, and detailing actions to prevent violence.

Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.

I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political power structure.

Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously.

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.

Maybe we weren't at the Last Supper, but we're certainly going to be at the next one.

She (a woman politician) will be challenging a system that is still wedded to militarism and that saves billions of dollars a year by underpaying women and using them as a reserve cheap labor supply

I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am
and this ought to be made very clear
I am a very serious woman.

The test of whether or not you can hold a job should not be in the arrangement of your chromosomes