Latest Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I want to drink life to the dregs, to enlarge myself to the absolute limits of my being - and to strive for a society in which everyone -regardless of race, creed, color and especially religious conviction - has the same exhilarating raison d'être, and the same opportunity to fulfill it.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Religious, Opportunity, Race

• This crusade to separate church and state is only one expression of my raison d'être. I'm an atheist, but I'm also an anarchist, and a feminist, and an integrationist.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Expression, Feminist

• Long ago, when I was a very young girl, I said that I wanted to go everywhere, see everything, taste everything. hear everything, touch everything, try everything before I died. There isn't anything you can name that a woman can do that I haven't done. I don't intend to stand by and be a spectator. I want to be right in there in the midst of it, right up to my nose - totally involved in the community, in the world, in the stream of history, in the human image.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Girl, Long Ago, Names

• My life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way by starting the school-prayer case. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see -no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Prayer, School, Sacrifice

• Engineers have a very limited education and background, I think you need to move into the broader humanities in order to become a total person.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Moving, Thinking, Order

• I want a strong man, but a gentle one. And, most unlikely of all, but most essential, I want a man with a capacity for love - to give it generously and accept it joyously. I also want somebody who, when I say, "Let's call it quits," won't hang on; who'll say, "All right, it was fun while it lasted. So long and good luck."

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Strong, Fun, Good Luck

• I want a big man physically as well as intellectually. l want a man with the thigh muscles to give me a good frolic in the sack, the kind who'll tear hell out of a thick steak, and yet who can go to the ballet with me and discuss Hegelian dialectic and know what the hell he's talking about.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Men, Talking, Giving

• There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised. One of these is eating. Nobody's going to license me to do this. Another one is bodily disposals. I will defecate and urinate when I damn well please and as the spirit -and the physical necessity -moves me. And my sex life is peculiarly my own. I will engage in sexual activity with a consenting male any time and any place I damn well please.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Moving, Males

• I just want a man -a real, two-balled masculine guy -and there aren't many of them around, believe me. But I do want somebody my own age, and somebody who has brains enough to keep me interested and to earn enough money to support me in the style to which I've become accustomed.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Real, Believe, Men

• If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. I don't feel that I can sit in judgment on them, or that society can sit in judgment on them. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Should Have, Long, Want

• I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Libertarian, Motto, Libertine

• By the time it's considered socially acceptable to start screwing, most of us are sexually constipated, and this is often an incurable condition. I think young people should be able to have their first sexual love affair whenever they feel like it. In the case of most girls, this would be around 13 or 14; with most boys, around 15 or 16.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Girl, Thinking, Boys

• Kids should be taught about sex, sex hygiene and contraceptive methods starting in the sixth grade, and whenever they want to try it, they should be allowed to go at it without supervision or restriction -in their parents' bedroom, on the grass in a park, in a motel; it doesn't matter, as long as the setting is private and pleasant. If we did all this, our kids would grow up into happier, healthier human beings. But we won't, of course. It would make too much sense.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Growing Up, Kids

• Sex is where you find it. I say take it and enjoy it. Give and receive freely, without fear, without guilt and without contractual obligations.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Giving, Guilt

• Let nature decide. When a cow is biologically ready to have sex relations, she mates with the nearest well-hung bull. When a flower is ready to scatter its seed, it pollinates. It's the same way throughout nature - except with man, who tries to postpone consummation of his sex drive, unsuccessfully for the most part, for six or eight years after he reaches puberty.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Flower, Men

• Legality can't create love if it isn't there, or preserve it if it's dying, but it can destroy love by making it compulsory.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Dying, Legality, Preserves

• You don't need a marriage license to live with someone, to have the security of a home, to rear any number of children, to have years of companionship; it's not illegal, but the moment you want to screw somebody, you have to get a license from the state to use your genital organs -or run the risk of being charged with any number of crimes carrying sentences up to and including death. So sex is really the only sensible reason for getting married.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Running, Sex, Children

• I don't feel that people should glom onto other people. I feel that relationships should be nice and easy and convenient and happy and not strictured with legality or jealousy.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Nice, People, Easy

• I've found that most people who are bound together legally would be a damn sight happier together -or apart -if they were released from the contract. A man-woman relationship is physical and emotional, not legal.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Men, Emotional, Sight

• I'm not proud of having been married -I've had five affairs, all of them real wingdings. I've enjoyed every goddamned minute of them, but sooner or later I've outgrown every one of them, and when I did I got fed up and threw them out. If they can't keep up with me, the hell with them.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Real, Proud, Married

• I want somebody, a men, who's whole and wholesome and has as much zest for living as I have. But I haven't found one who fills the bill; you can't hardly find them kind no more. And I know many women my size, psychologically and intellectually, who have the same problem.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Men, Zest, Want

• I need somebody who can at least stand up to me and slug it out, toe to toe. I don't mean a physical battle. I mean a man who would lay me, and when he was done, I'd say: "Oh, brother, I've been laid." Or if we had an argument, he would stand up and engage in intellectual combat and not go off and mope in the corner, or take reprisals, or go to drink.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Brother, Mean, Men

• As a matter of fact. I think I actually frighten men. I think I scare the hell out of them time after time.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Men, Thinking, Scare

• Male say they're looking for a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad, but what they really want, and usually get, is an empty-headed little chick who's very young and very physical -and very submissive.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Girl, Dad, Males

• I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from this sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison. As I see it, men wouldn't want somebody inferior to them unless they felt inadequate themselves. They're intimidated by a mature woman.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Men, Feelings, Sides