Maureen Dowd Quotes

'Time Magazine' declared Hillary Clinton the 'perfect' age to be president because she's a postmenopausal woman who is 'biologically primed' to lead.

I asked, "What do you think the most important advancement was for women in recent years?" And the majority, the item that polled the most, was Hillary Clinton's run for President. Can you believe that? Women saw that as a breakthrough in something very, very important. She didn't win. And I think another thing that her race did was it showed sexism in our society.

I feel like there's the 'Hillary standard' and then there's the standard for everybody else.

We still have so far to go as a country. People don't like to listen to women or take orders from them. I feel that a lot as a woman playing music.

As a woman, I think Margaret Thatcher felt she had to be ten times more prepared than the men.

I'd say it's far more challenging to be female and be a showrunner. People are not surprised to see a black person running this show, but the female aspect is the thing that I get asked about.

When I was a senior, I ran for class president. And I lost. One of my opponents even told me I was "really stupid" if I thought a girl could be elected president.

If women have become innocent victims, if women running around today are unable to protect themselves, if the picture that we're painting, if the caricature we are creating is of women that are helpless waifs who are at risk of predator men throughout the busy day, then we have to somehow involve Hillary Clinton in that recipe in truthful and honest ways. That, when it came to defending and protecting women who alleged that they had been abused or even raped by her husband, those women were nothing but scum who had to be dispatched and just swept out of the way.

I find that as a female boss in the music industry, it's difficult to actually be treated as if you actually are the boss and to have people act on your instructions and take you seriously. Like you call up people who are working for you and say, "I'd like to see such-and-such document," and they tell you that you don't need it. Then you have to spend time convincing them that it doesn't matter whether they think you need it or not, they're supposed to hand it to you.

Two of the great leaders of the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass - had White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal, erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists? Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men].

The effect on men has been very bad, too, of the omission of women's history, because men have been given the impression that they're much more important in the world than they actually are. It has fostered illusions of grandeur in every man that are unwarranted. If you can think as a man that everything great in the world and its civilization was created by men, then naturally you have to look down on women. And naturally, you have to have different aspirations for your sons and for your daughters.

There's a ton of academic literature that shows people are much more critical of female leaders than they are of male leaders. They're much less tolerant of female ambition, much more threatened by female power.

[When asked how it felt to be a female prime minister:] I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative.

I wrote a one-act play - I can't remember the name of it, but it was really about the way women are perceived as leaders. In the play, Catherine the Great would say things like, "You know, John F. Kennedy had extramarital affairs and no one says anything. But I bang one horse and now I'm a horse banger for all eternity? That's it? That's what I am?"

Women all live a double standard, but this is actually sort of a beautifully grotesque parody of it. There's a weird kind of joy that I have in seeing [Hillary Clinton] trounce this essence of male bullshit.

Sanders is to blame for my loss, along with Obama and Biden. They never really supported me because I'm a woman. They're all deplorables, just like every registered Republican in America.

Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen, is that they are burrowing animals.

I think an awful lot of the reasons people put forward for not liking Hillary Clinton play into deep-seated, negative female stereotypes: ambition, secrecy, calculating. I mean, that is Lady Macbeth, a kind of cold woman. I don't think that's Hillary. And I don't think people would judge a man in the same way.

Here they are today, the Democrats; they're making this big deal about how this woman [Hillary Clinton] has overcome all of this discrimination. She has overcome the biggest guns of opposition that have been arrayed against her!

But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.

In a lot of roles, strong women feel like they need to apologize. But men don't need to apologize for being ruthless and women somehow do?

A female Dalai Lama must be very attractive, otherwise not much use.

I think we reserve a special place in our hearts for women who dare to try and be powerful, or occupy a special elevated place in society or when they are 'the bosses'. I think we really don't like it as a society and we have a harsh view of them. We look much harder at them, than the millions of men who aspire to the same positions and I can't figure that out.

There are still very few companies run by women these days. And, clearly, there are many reasons for that, including what many see as the role of both unconscious bias and outright sexism.

I'm finally going to be able to finally criticize [Hillary Clinton] without being accused of being a sexist - that idea. I'm not a fan, I don't like her, but you can't say anything without being accused of being a sexist pig, which is unfair.