Pronouns Quotes

• If we do not mean that God is male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery, then why should there be any objections to using female imagery and pronouns as well?

  Carol P. Christ

  Mean, Males, Female

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• The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

  John Fowles

  Men, Mask

  JOHN FOWLES (1969). “THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT'S WOMAN”

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• Pronouns are only useful when you combine them with other words. I have a few I can give you, if you're at a loss.

  Mira Grant

  Loss, Giving, Ifs

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• The old languages - at least the ones I know - don't have gender. They don't have gendered pronouns. There's no "he" and "she." A human being is a human being.

  Gloria Steinem

  Language, Gender, Humans

  Source: www.elle.com

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• The heart of religion lies in its personal pronouns.

  Martin Luther

  Art, Lying, Religion

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• The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Thinking, Suffering, Three

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• Once women are not excluded, I don't think any of us will give a damn what pronouns are used. That wasn't the point.

  Holly Near

  Thinking, Umpires, Giving

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• All people in the world - who are not hermits or mutes - speak words. They speak different languages, but they speak words. They say, "How are you" or "I'm not feeling well" all over the world. These common words - these common elements that we have between us - the writer has to take some verbs and nouns and pronouns and adjectives and adverbs and arrange them in a way that sound fresh.

  Maya Angelou

  People, Feelings, Sound

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• A pronoun, too, will aptly reflect the number of its antecedent: "they" does not refer to one person, no matter how many personalities she or he has, or how eager you are to skirt the gender frays.

  Karen Elizabeth Gordon

  Numbers, Personality, Doe

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• Pronouns are the enemy of improv.

  Craig Cackowski

  Enemy

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• Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.

  Conor Oberst

  Song, Inanimate Objects, Matter

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• The social order of things has demanded an emphasis on the differences between gender that do not in my opinion in fact exist. I’m not going to go around putting pronouns on everything. Things are often deeply compromised by the set of assumptions you bring to the world, which is this black or white, this male or female.

  Roni Horn

  Order, White, Differences

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• For many years I used the pronoun 'we.' Now, as in my youth, I go to sleep and wake up alone.

  Nina Berberova

  Sleep, Years, Wake Up

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• I had an unspoken treaty with myself to never lie in my lyrics, so, for a long time, when I wrote love songs, I would use genderless pronouns, like "dear" and "darling" - like some kind of granny!

  Arca

  Song, Lying, Long

  "Arca's Warped Beauty". Interview with Philip Sherburne, pitchfork.com. November 19, 2015.

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• We're trained to see only male or female and to plot people into those categories when they actually don't fit neatly at all. But if we pause, watch and listen closely we'll see the multiplicity of ways in which people are sexed and gendered. There exists a range of personal identifications around woman, man, in-between-we don't even have names or pronouns that reflect that in between place but people certainly live in it.

  Minnie Bruce Pratt

  Men, Names, People

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• What we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation.

  Judith Butler

  Self, Support, Needs

  Source: transadvocate.com

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• As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Science, Past

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• Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is male?

  Carol P. Christ

  Males, Doe, Imagery

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• I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).

  Chelsea Manning

  Names, Use, Mail

  "Chelsea Manning announces gender transition - full statement", www.theguardian.com. August 22, 2010.

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• To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.

  Maya Angelou

  Wall, Mean, Together

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• me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Ego, Three, Cases

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.141, 谷月社

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• You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back.

  Patricia Briggs

  Sleep, Going To Sleep

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• I still use the pronoun she for my publicity materials, and for mainstream media stuff, for two reasons: the first is that I do a lot of work in public schools, and I want those young women and girls to see every kind of she there can be. I want them to see my biceps and my shorn hair and shirt and tie and for some of them to see me as a possibilityI want them to see me living outside of the boxes, because they might be asphyxiating in their own box and need to see there is air out here for them to breathe, that all they have to do is lift the lid a little.

  Rae Spoon

  Girl, School, Hair

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• It is urged that the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government and from penalties for the violation of laws. There is no she or her or hers in the tax laws, and this is equally true of all the criminal laws.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Men, Law, Support

  Quoted in Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1899) Apelles

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• As a feminist, I consider the female pronoun to be an honorific, a term that conveys respect. Respect is due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position.

  Sheila Jeffreys

  Sex, Men, Feminist

  Sheila Jeffreys (2014). “Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism”, p.9, Routledge

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