Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

— Aristophanes

Lysistrata: Oh, Calorie, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly... Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word! Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming. Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.

— Aristophanes

Lysistrata: To seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.

— Aristophanes

MAGISTRATE Don't men grow old?Lysistrata like women. When a man comes home Though he's gray as grief he can always get a girl. There's no second spring for a woman. None. She can't recall it, nobody wants her, however She squanders her time on the promise of oracles, It's no use...

— Aristophanes

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil! Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tongue. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business.

— Aristophanes

Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray? Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves Magistrate: You do? Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses? Magistrate: But that is not the same thing. Lysistrata: How so – not the same thing? Magistrate: It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War. Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!

— Aristophanes

Open your mind before your mouth

— Aristophanes

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

— Aristophanes

There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.

— Aristophanes

These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them.

— Aristophanes