Sommers Quotes & Sayings

I love all of mythology and rules pertaining to all of the monsters, but I like to go the extra step. — Stephen Sommers

What is the role of intellectuals in Europe? There's this debate in which all speakers do not appear to me to even be intellectuals. Why is Martin Sommers an intellectual? It is a political journalist who writes mediocre pieces. If that is sufficient to call yourself a 'European intellectual then the question of the debate has already become rhetorical. — Martijn Benders

The best scary movies have great humor in them and a great story. — Stephen Sommers

You have to be literate in today's world. We're not going to get away with not teaching boys to read. — Christina Hoff Sommers

We must have moral education in the schools, anti-bullying programs, but this does not mean programs to feminize boys. — Christina Hoff Sommers

We are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world. — Christina Hoff Sommers

This book explains how it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children. We have turned against boys and forgotten a simple truth: the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal males are responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys' aggressive tendencies must be mitigated and channeled toward constructive ends. Boys need (and crave) discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. But being a boy is not a social disease. — Christina Hoff Sommers

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

It's good to raise awareness that men and boys are struggling, at least many of them are. But why say men are finished? It's too harsh, too sweeping, and it happens to not be true. — Christina Hoff Sommers

When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and "discover themselves." The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire. — Christina Hoff Sommers

American feminism is currently dominated by a group of wome n wh o seek to persuad e the public that American wome n are not the free creatures we thin k w e are. Th e leaders an d theorists of the women's movemen t believe that ou r society is best described as a patriarchy, a "male hegemony," a "sex/gender system" in whic h the dominan t gender works to keep wome n cowering an d submissive. The feminists wh o hold this divisive view of ou r social an d political reality believe we are in a gender war, an d they are eager to disseminate stories of atrocity that are designed to alert wome n to their plight. Th e "gender feminists" (as I shall call them) believe that all ou r institutions, from the state to the family to the grade schools, perpetuate male dominance . Believing that wome n are virtually under siege, gende r feminists naturally seek recruits to their side of the gender war. They seek support . They seek vindication. They seek ammunition. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I'm concerned that boys have become politically incorrect, that we are a society in the process of turning against its male children. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Truth is on the side of compassion. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I'm seventeen. Seems like I only blinked and here I am. I'm speeding like a rocket toward death. I'm spiraling toward the end of now and the start of infinity. It's a countdown. But to what? Can't gift wrap eternity. — Jackie Lea Sommers

Boy's natural play is rough and tumble play, it's the universal play of little boys. And it's very different from aggression. And we are a society that's failing to understand the distinction. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Now you ask a group of young women on the college campus, 'How many of you are feminists?' Very few will raise their hands, because young women don't want to be associated with it anymore because they know it means male-bashing, it means being a victim, and it means being bitter and angry. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I think the rules will change and I think more and more young women are going to decide that having a family and taking care of a home is not a bad choice, but how do we subsidize it - not necessarily European-style socialism. It'll have to be a new more creative, dynamic and local solution. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I don't care about probabilities. If something were one-in-a-million, I would wonder if the one had found me. It's the uncertainty that's torture. — Jackie Lea Sommers

Perhaps in the pursuit of happiness, men and women take somewhat different paths. And, isn't it more than a little patronizing to suggest that most ... women are not free? They're not self-determining human beings? — Christina Hoff Sommers

Toy companies aren't interested in ideology, they want to sell toys. If they would sell a toy that both boys and girls would buy, it doubles profits. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Why aren't boys more engaged in school? According to Sommers, schools today tend to be run by women for girls. Classrooms can be hostile environments for boys. They like action, competition and adventure stories. Those are not in favor. Games like tag and dodge-ball are out; tug of war has become tug of peace, and male heroes have been replaced by Girl Power. — Helen Smith

Support Imagination. Read a book. — Robbi Sommers Bryant

In reality, American girls are among the most outspoken, ambitious, successful girls in the history of the human race. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Any child may go through periods during which they become less outspoken with their parents or teachers. But girls, like boys, live in many different worlds - they have their friends and their classroom and their parents - and within these different domains, they may have different levels of expressiveness. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I never want to write something until I know every scene in the movie. I don't want someone hiring me and then me not being able to write it. Which is always a fear. So I like to figure it out, know all the characters, and know almost every scene in the movie before I start writing. — Stephen Sommers

My death..I mean..will it be quick,and with dignity? How will i know when the end is coming?"
"When you vomit blood,sir," Tao Chi'en said sadly.
That happened three weeks later,in the middle of Pacific,in the privacy of the captain's cabin. As soon as he could stand , the old seaman cleaned up the traces of his vomit, rinsed out his mouth , changed his bloody shirt, lighted his pipe, and went to the bow of his ship , where he stood and looked for the last time at the stars winking in a sky of black velvet. Several sailors saw him and waited at a distance, caps in hands. When he had smoked the last of his tobacco, Captain John Sommers put his legs over the rail and noiselessly dropped into the sea.
-Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende. — Isabel Allende

Girls are more academically powerful. They make the grades, they run the student activities, they are the valedictorians. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I wanted to make a small movie about a guy and a girl on the beach, but then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if a werewolf was there? — Stephen Sommers

I went in right up front and said, This can't be about some guy in bandages. I didn't even want to do a horror movie. I took the concept and made a romantic adventure film. I like action heroes who don't take themselves too seriously. I wanted to make everyone take the mummy seriously, but it couldn't just be a guy in bandages. But the main thing was to build in surprises. That's one of the great things you can do with special effects. — Stephen Sommers

In many schools, teachers have been told, falsely, that there is an "opportunity zone" in which a child's gender identification is malleable. They have used this zone to try to stamp out boyhood: banning same-sex play groups and birthday parties, forcing children to do gender-atypical activities, suspending boys who run during recess or play cops and robbers. In her book the War Against Boys, the philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers rightly calls this agenda "meddlesome, abusive and quite beyond what educators in a free society are mandated to do(172). — Steven Pinker

But what is hard to understand is why the math and science gap launched a massive movement on behalf of girls, and yet a much larger gap in reading, writing, and school engagement created no comparable effort for boys. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Captain John Sommers joined his brother and sister in the library, Do you remember Jacob Todd?
-The cad who defrauded us with that yarn about missions in Tierra del Fuego? asked Jeremy Sommers.
-The same ... He changed his name. Now he calls himself Jacob Freemont, and he's a newspaperman in San Francisco.
-Egad! So it is true that in the United States any scoundrel may begin a new life?
-Jacob Todd paid for his offense several times over. I think it is splendid that there is a country where a man can have a second chance. — Isabel Allende

There are a lot of homely women in women's studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches
they're just mad at the beautiful girls. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it. — Mitt Romney

Harvard produces leaders. People with Harvard degrees go on to become administrators in high-level positions in state educational departments and in public schools around the country. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Here are young women with more opportunities, more liberties than almost any women in history and at that moment we tell them they're short-changed silenced victims of a patriarchy? It's defeatist and demoralising. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I think if you're going to kill somebody, kill them! Don't stand around talking about it! — Stephen Sommers

I think the fallacy is to think that Women's Liberation meant that men and women would become interchangeable. That has not happened, and most men and women would not want it to happen. — Christina Hoff Sommers

I think it's ill-advised to attribute pathologies to healthy people. It doesn't help normal, healthy, thriving children to be viewed as pitiable and fragile. — Christina Hoff Sommers

A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness. — Christina Hoff Sommers

That is the corrosive paradox of gender feminism's misandrist stance: no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes. — Christina Hoff Sommers

Christina Hoff Sommers quotes one professor's compliant about "students who have been trained to take a 'feminist perspective'": "For them reason itself is patriarchal, linear, and oppressive." In other words, Women's Studies agrees with the Victorians that women are the less intellectual sex; the difference is that in the view of Women's Studies this doesn't make them inferior but superior. — Bruce Bawer

I don't think anyone will deny that girls are academically superior as a group. — Christina Hoff Sommers

...incompetence is context specific. — Sam Sommers