Bella Abzug quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Women will not simply be mainstreamed into the polluted stream. Women are changing the stream, making it clean and green and safe for all - every gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, age, and ability.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

the women's movement, not only here in the U.S., but worldwide, is bigger and stronger than ever before and in places where it has never been. It has arms. It has legs. And most importantly, it has heads.

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

They used to give us a day-it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.

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.

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

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

Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams.

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

All of the men on my staff can type.

I am not a centrist.

I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am -- and this ought to be made very clear -- I am a very serious woman.

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

In the face of so much pain, I remain an incurable optimist. I am fueled by the passion of the women I have been privileged to meet and work with, buoyed by their hope for peace, justice, and democracy.

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.

All the men on my staff can type.

I always had a decent sense of outrage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.

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.

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.