BELLA ABZUG

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

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

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.

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.

When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.

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

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.

I am not a centrist.

All of the men on my staff can type.

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

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.

I'm a politician. I run for office. That's my profession.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

Women are rarely represented at the peace tables. That’s probably why we have so many wars.

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

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

You're not going to have a society that understands its humanity if you don't have more women in government.

Just imagine for a moment what life in this country might have been if women had been properly represented in Congress. Would a Congress where women in all their diversity were represented tolerate the countless laws now on the books that discriminate against women in all phases of their lives?....Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills?

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

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