John Legend

If you’re someone who genuinely believes that women don’t deserve or aren’t as much as men, you’re like the plague. On the big history chart, you’re the plague … it’s just pointless and deadly.

I guess that maybe breasts are the most important part of the body when you think about it, I mean without them employers just wouldn’t know who to give the smaller paychecks to.

I think the golden rule for men should be: If you’re a man, don’t say anything to a woman on the street that you wouldn’t want a man saying to you in prison.

You can’t whisper magical thoughts in your daughter’s ear and go into a workplace where you tolerate [this] existence. If you are tolerating that, that’s the workplace that will be waiting for your little girl, and you have sold her a bill of goods.

Girls should never be afraid to be smart.

You can’t deny women their basic rights and pretend it’s about your ‘religious freedom’. If you don’t like birth control, don’t use it. Religious freedom doesn’t mean that you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the later. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.

Strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful.

[on her mother] she’s a very smart, independent woman who was kind of coming into her own in the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s

We think – or maybe we’re shown – that the only way to express ourselves is through that very sexy energy. I think there’s more than that which shows our power. For me, I sometimes feel the most sexy when I’m totally covered head to toe.

I just love bossy women. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It mans somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.

Today, be the basass girl you were too lazy to be yesterday.

If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is women.

It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than one film.

Number one, I have great respect for women. I was the one that really broke the glass ceiling on behalf of women, more than anybody in the construction industry.