Women and men - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

This close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force.Where population is balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State: where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - of an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears.We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete.

- H. G.Wells, The Time Machine: An Invention (1895)

These women, whose essential distinction of Motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call ''femininity.'' This led me very promptly to the conviction that those ''feminine charms'' we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity - developed to please us because they had to please us - and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)

We were now well used to seeing women not as females, but as people; people of all sorts, doing every kind of work.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)

Fatigue makes women talk more and men talk less.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Between Planets (1951)

After male domination had almost wrecked the world, the women established the Matriarchy for the survival of the race. Men are wicked, quarrelsome, dirty, untrustworthy and savage. Only a few picked specimens can be tolerated.

- Alfred Coppel, ''Defender of the Faith'' (1952)

The Earth Powers are strong and strange in womankind.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Long Remembering'' (1957)

There was no explaining the chemistry which joined men and women, locked them in embraces of hate and mutual suffering sometimes for ninety years on end.

- Philip K. Dick, The Crack in Space (1965)

Women are amazing creatures - sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

If we find a child with an aptitude for music we give him a scholarship to Julliard. If they found a child whose aptitudes were for being a woman, they made him one.

- Frederik Pohl, ''Day Million'' (1966)

Strange how a man can love a woman and yet at the same time pray for her to fall under a train.

- Bob Shaw, ''Light of Other Days'' (1966)

Being a man or a woman is, in a large measure, just an act, a certain culturally determined role that may have very little to do with how we really are inside.

- Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Ganymede Takeover (1967)

''Must you be right, at a time like this?'' he demanded. ''It is unbecoming in a woman.''

- Suzette Haden Elgin, ''For the Sake of Grace'' (1969)

The most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

I said, ''Yes, here you are,'' and smiled (feeling like a fool), and wondered seriously if male Earth people's minds worked so very differently from female Earth people's minds, but that couldn't be so or the race would have died out long ago.

- Joanna Russ, ''When It Changed'' (1972)

''Why do you want to be a shark?'' She ran her nails delicately along the cords of his neck. ''I want to kill people, eat them.'' ''Any people?'' ''Just men.''

- Edward Bryant, ''Shark'' (1973)

I don't hate men. That would be as silly as - as hating the weather.

- James Tiptree, Jr., ''TheWomen Men Don't See'' (1973)

Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world.When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like that smoke.We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see.

- James Tiptree, Jr., ''TheWomen Men Don't See'' (1973)

What women do is survive.We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.

- James Tiptree, Jr., ''TheWomen Men Don't See'' (1973)

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the trouble with women, too.

- Joanna Russ, ''Existence'' (1975)

Where men are weak and dangerous is in their vanity. A woman has a center, is a center. But a man isn't, he's a reaching out. So he reaches out and grabs things and piles them up around him and says, I'm this, I'm that, this is me, that's me, I'll prove that I am me! And he can wreck a lot of things, trying to prove it.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Eye of the Heron'' (1978)

Any intelligent being is a man. That's what his people believe. Isn't that a fine concept? It binds us together instead of separating us into alien and human.

- Lee Killough, ''Bкte et Noir'' (1980)

Men are not such bad folk when one stops expecting them to be gods.

- Joanna Russ, ''Souls'' (1982)

God created men to test the souls of women.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)

Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat WhoWalks throughWalls (1985)

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

Flynn planted her with the tomatoes in the greenhouse on the first day of spring. The instructions on the package were similar to the instructions on any seed envelope. VegetableWife: prefers sandy soil, sunny conditions. Plant two inches deep after all danger of frost has passed.When seedling is two feet tall, transplant.Water frequently.

- Pat Murphy, ''His VegetableWife'' (1986)

Few males have a firm grip on reality; I can't see that it matters.

- Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail beyond the Sunset (1987)

You'll understand when you come there at last, Achilles . . . Hades isWomen's Country.

- Sheri S. Tepper, The Gate toWomen's Country (1988)

''The universe is shaped by the struggle between two great forces. [. . .] Male and female. Minute by minute, the balance tips one way or the other. Not just here. In every universe. There are places,'' the woman leaned forward, ''where men are not allowed to gather and drink. Places where football is absolutely illegal.''

- Karen Joy Fowler, ''Game Night at the Fox and Goose'' (1989)

Males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

''A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell.'' She held up her long, bent, wet fingers as if holding a walnut. ''It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is. It's all him and nothing else, inside. [. . .] A woman's a different thing entirely.Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen, mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark.''

- Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)

They're all strange, men are. I guess if I understood them I wouldn't find them so interesting.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Ether, OR'' (1995)

A woman is a worse hindrance to a man than anything else, even the Government. [. . .] What's wrong with women is that you can't count on them. They are not fully civilized.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Ether, OR'' (1995)

Women send signals but men speak English.

- Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic (1998)

A man should never know a woman's secret life; men cannot stand so much reality.

- Kalamu ya Salaam, ''Can YouWear My Eyes'' (2000)

Carl often bragged that Chaos Theory was his moral and aesthetic code. What this actually meant was that he couldn't be bothered to clean up after himself.

- Ellen Steiber, ''The Cats of San Marino'' (2000)

If a man speaks in the heart of a forest and no woman is there to hear them, is he still wrong?

- Glen Cook, Angry Lead Skies (2002)