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

Bella Abzug

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.
BELLA ABZUG

Age Race Women
I always had a decent sense of outrage.
BELLA ABZUG

Always Decent Outrage Sense
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Justice Memorable Struggle
This woman’s place is in the House – the House of Representatives.
BELLA ABZUG

House Representatives
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Believe Career Government
We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.
BELLA ABZUG

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

Done Feminism World
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Decide Impatient Profane Things Thoe Uppity
The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.
BELLA ABZUG

Littles Made Men
Never go back, never apologize, and never forget we’re half the human race.
BELLA ABZUG

Apologizing Half Race
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Legs Movement Stronger
Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.
BELLA ABZUG

Equality Heartless Strong Women
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Class Country White
If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century – and the economy – around.
BELLA ABZUG

Country Government Reality
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Individuality Promise Suffering
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Coffee Identity Meeting Someone
All the men on my staff can type.
BELLA ABZUG

Men Staff Type
We need laws that protect everyone – men and women, straights and gays, regardless of sexual perversion…ah, persuasion.
BELLA ABZUG

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

Hats Lawyer Way
I prefer the word ‘homemaker’ because ‘housewife’ always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.
BELLA ABZUG

Funny Wife Women
The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.
BELLA ABZUG

Jobs Memorable Women
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
BELLA ABZUG

Challenges Dollars Years
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.
BELLA ABZUG

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

Business Country Real
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Men Sainthood Views
Nixon impeached himself. He gave us Ford as his revenge.
BELLA ABZUG

Impeached Revenge Vehicle
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.
BELLA ABZUG

Men Mother Names

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

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

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