Bella Abzug

Bella Savitsky Abzug was a well-known American political figure, a leader of the women's movement, and a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Sourced

• 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.
  • Bella!, introduction (1972)

• 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 a Congress with adequate representation of women have allowed this country to reach the 1970s without a national health care system? Would it have permitted this country to rank fourteenth in infant mortality among the developed nations of the world? Would it have allowed the situation we now have in which thousands of kids grow up without decent care because their working mothers have no place to leave them? Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills? Would it allow fraudulent packaging and cheating of consumers in supermarkets, department stores and other retail outlets? Would it consent to the perverted sense of priorities that has dominated our government for decades, where billions have been appropriated for war while our human needs as a people have been neglected?
  • Bella!, “February 7” section (1972)

Unsourced

• All of the men on my staff can type.

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

• 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.

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

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

• This woman's place is in the House — the House of Representatives.
  • Her campaign slogan in 1970

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