Float through any social event with M's fast facts. This week Rick Arthur ponders some quotes about women and power, and realises again that 'the weaker sex' is a misnomer.
"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."
- Margaret Thatcher
"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it."
- Roseanne Barr
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
- Timothy Leary
"I'm tough, I'm ambitious and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK."
- Madonna
"I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
"Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealised into powerlessness."
- Erica Jong
"Women are not the weak, frail little flowers that they are advertised. There has never been anything invented yet, including war, that a man would enter into, that a woman wouldn't, too."
- Will Rogers
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
- Alice Walker
"Power is the ability not to have to please."
- Elizabeth Janeway, late US author and critic
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
- Marianne Williamson, spiritual activist and author
"Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion."
- Oprah Winfrey
"Everyone has inside of her a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"
- Anne Frank
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
- Audre Lorde, late Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist
"A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform."
- Diane Mariechild, author of Mother Wit and Inner Dance
"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little."
- Samuel Johnson
"Never underestimate the power of a woman."
- editorial and advertising slogan adopted by the Ladies Home Journal in March 1941
"There is a secret in our culture, And it's not that childbirth is painful, it's that women are strong."
- Laurie Stavoe Harm, US writer on childbirth and motherhood
"Those poor men. They just don't have the inside strength the women do. It's harder for men to feel pain."
- Sarah Felix Burns, Canadian feminist and author
"If there's one thing you should understand, it's that females should never be ruled out by virtue of strength. Some of us have ways to equalize the equation."
- Dee Tenorio, romance novelist
Sources: www.quotegarden.com, www.sapphyr.net, www.quotecounterquote.com, www.goodreads.com, www.wendy.com, www.yourlifeyourway.net, http://womensjourneys.com
The five most powerful women ever
HATSHEPSUT (1508-1458 BC) The fifth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, she was a prolific builder and revitalised her kingdom's trade networks.
QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533-1603) The "Virgin Queen" was the heroine of the Protestant cause and ruled in a golden era that included the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
CATHERINE II (1729-1796) The enlightened despot ruled Russia for 34 years. She catapulted her country into the ranks of the foremost powers of Europe through cunning conquest and diplomacy.
EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI (1835-1908) Charismatic and scheming, she controlled the Qing Dynasty for 47 years. A reluctant reformer, she realised that China had to learn from western powers and import their knowledge and technology.
INDIRA GANDHI (1917-1984) The master politician served as the third prime minister of India for three terms in a row (1966-77) and a fourth (1980-84). She established closer ties with the Soviet Union, and brought to fruition the nuclear weapons vision of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first premier.
