Bella Abzug Quotes

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

I prefer the word 'homemaker' because 'housewife' always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.

I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.

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

If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century - and the economy - around.

All the men on my staff can type.

Abortion doesn't belong in the political arena. It's a private right, like many other rights concerning the family.

The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.

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

I am not elevating women to sainthood, nor am I suggesting that all women share the same views, or that all women are good and all men bad.

I am not being facetious when I say that the real enemies in this country are the Pentagon and its pals in big business.

I always had a decent sense of outrage.

Nixon impeached himself. He gave us Ford as his revenge.

This woman's place is in the House - the House of Representatives.

When I was a young lawyer, working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously.

I've spent a lifetime in challenge. There's no way in which you can create any meaningful change unless you do that.

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.