Quotes from Bella Abzug

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

I am not a centrist.

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.

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.

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

I've spent a lifetime in challenge. There's no way in which you can create any meaningful change unless you do that.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

We don't want so much to see a female Einstein become an assistant professor. We want a woman schlemiel to get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.

There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing…. But whatever I am—and this ought to be made very clear at the outset—I am a very serious woman.

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

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

Maybe we weren't at the Last Supper, but we're certainly going to be at the next one.

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

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

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

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.

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

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