the recurrent drama of menstrual bleeding must have been unnerving to primitive peoples. In man, the shedding of blood is always associated with injury, disease, or death. Only the female half of humanity was seen to have the magical ability to bleed profusely and still rise phoenix-like each month from the gore.

What is human and the same about the males and females classified as Homo sapiens is much greater than the differences.

Women's chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy.

[Addressing a group of military officers:] Are you a feminist? Oh ... wrong question. I should have asked, 'Are you a father?' When your daughter loses her job to a clearly less-qualified man, you will discover you are a feminist.

The only useful answer to the question 'Who is smarter, a man or a woman?' is, which man and which woman?

We will have equality when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel.

I don't mind . . . the fun and games of being treated like a fragile flower. But as a physiologist working with the unromantic scientific facts of life, I find it hard to delude myself about feminine frailty.