50 Angry Woman Quotes Exploring The Nature Of Rage

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published May 29, 2023

Feel the fury with our angry woman quotes.

There are many stereotypes about the so-called angry woman in popular culture.

We will explore this concept and seek to understand the nature of anger better.

Check out our angry woman quotes below.

What is an angry woman?

Colloquially speaking, an angry woman sometimes refers to a bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman.

Some may even use the word shrew.

Cognitive Therapy For Women is a platform that supports women in need.

In her article on female anger, Peggy Loo, Ph.D. gives us some common myths about women’s anger:

Anger is bad.
Getting angry won’t change things, so it should be ignored.
Anger is destructive and always leads to adverse or unwanted consequences.

Unfortunately, women who have questioned the status quo or sought to change the world have been labeled angry.

Women, like men, have been writing, expressing, and discussing their anger since the beginning of time.

Are men angrier than women?

Questions such as ‘Are men angrier than women’ rarely have black-and-white answers.

Context matters, and gray areas crop up anytime you generalize an entire population.

What does science say?

Men, on average, are more outwardly aggressive than women.

Naturally, it seems reasonable to assume that means men are angrier, but science says otherwise.

Research finds that women experience anger as frequently and intensely as men do.

A key difference is that angry men are more likely to display aggression.

However, this does not mean women are not motivated by rage as frequently.

A study at Southwest Missouri State University found that women were as angry and acted on their anger just as much as men did.

A takeaway from this study found that men felt less effective when forced to contain their anger, and women did a better job controlling their immediate, impulsive responses to anger.

So it seems men and women are equally angry but respond differently to anger.

To learn more, check out our angry woman quotes below.

Short angry woman quotes about the nature of anger

These angry woman quotes get directly to the point.

1. “Angry is just sad’s bodyguard.” — Liza Palmer

2. “Never go to bed, mad. Stay up and fight.” — Phyllis Diller

3. “I’m not an angry woman. I’m not bitter.” — Terry McMillan

4. “It’s time for women to stop being politely angry.” — Leymah Gbowee

5. “What I get a bit angry about is the image of women.” — Malala Yousafzai

6. “A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.” — Christopher Morley

7. “Angry women care. Angry women speak and yell and sob their truths.” ― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

8. “The line between an angry young woman and a grumpy old lady is very fine.” — Judy Horacek

9. “I am tired of angry feminists. I like my women happy, gregarious, and bathed.” — Evan Sayet

10. “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” — William Congreve

The top angry woman quotes about confrontation and being vindictive

There are many stereotypes about women’s anger, and these quotes speak to some of them.

11. “Finn did what he always did when confronted by an angry woman; he checked out her boobs.” — Jennifer Estep

12. “We felt the one thing the system feared was angry women. We wanted milk for the children.” — Kim Chernin

13. “An angry woman is vindictive beyond measure and hesitates at nothing in her bitterness.” — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

14. “Therapists are less likely to perceive a black woman as sad; instead, they see her as angry or anxious.” — Melissa Harris-Perry

15. “Yes, we are angry, yes, we are making a noise about it, and yes, we are hungry for change. We are harpies.” — Kate Hodges

16. “You get angry. You cry. But you never throw in your towel because that anger is what is propelling you to further action.” — Leymah Gbowee

17. “When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy.” — Susanna Kaysen

18. “I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.” — Claire Messud

19. “I’m usually good about my temper, but all these men trying to control women’s bodies are really beginning to piss me off.” — Eddie Vedder

20. “A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.” — Marlene Dietrich

The best angry woman quotes about the double standard of women’s anger

Women are often not allowed to be angry without being judged, and these quotes explore the double standard.

21. “Men make angry music, and it’s called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary, and suddenly they’re angry and militant.” — Ani DiFranco

22. “I’m a lazy man with lazy dreams. I need Tai to wake me up, make me vibrate, irritate me. I need my angry woman, my unforgiving friend.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

23. “I was scared nearly out of my mind. I’ve faced blazing guns in the hands of angry men, which is bad; and daggers in the hands of angry women, which is a thousand times worse.” ― Stephen King, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I

24. “Women really move me. I feel connected to all kinds of women. I am angry because I think we’ve been mistreated throughout history in different countries, including America. I admire women.” — Salma Hayek

25. “The realization and articulation that the cultural ideal of the perfect woman was someone who had no sense of Self and was a key part of the angry energy that drove Feminism to its swift success.” — Judith M Bardwick

26. “Why have two angry women in the bed with you at the same time? And think about it – you know how much you hate to talk after sex, imagine having two women just nagging you to death.” — Wanda Sykes

27. “I hate Mother’s Day. If anything, it’s an affront to all women who think full-time moms have never worked a day in their lives. Which reminds me of a good joke: What do you call an angry feminist on Mother’s Day? You don’t.” — Kimberly Guilfoyle

28. “The importance and visibility of women’s collective anger can’t be overstated. This anger takes determination, thoughtfulness, and work. It means respecting our own anger and being willing to respect the anger of other women.” ― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

29. “I know that might make some women feel uncomfortable, but we need to stick together instead of getting angry at each other for our choices. I think women are sensual, beautiful beings, and I feel empowered when I express myself sexually.” — Christina Aguilera

30. “When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you’re told that you’re overreacting, you’re too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.” — Kathleen Hanna

Angry woman quotes and sayings about the consequences of holding anger

These quotes explore how anger can destroy us from within.

31. “Anger is a short madness.” — Horace

32. “He who angers you conquers you.” — Elizabeth Kenny

33. “Keep cool; anger is not an argument.” — Daniel Webster

34. “When anger rises, think of the consequences.” — Confucius

35. “As surely and quickly as you saw that the young woman’s hair is dark, you knew she is angry.” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

36. “There’s still a lot of misogynist pop music out there, and I think that hearing something that’s so explicitly feminist and so angry.” — Kathleen Hanna

37. “Because if it’s unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, it’s totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry.” — Claire Messud

38. “Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?” — Michelle Obama

39. “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” — Buddha

40. “Anybody can become angry, that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” — Aristotle

Famous angry woman quotes about the power of rage

These angry quotes come from a variety of influential people.

41. “People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.” — Stephen Hawking

42. “Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” — James Thurber

43. “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

44. “When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.” — Thomas Jefferson

45. “I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.” — Claire Messud

46. “We’re still growing up in a culture where girls and women are not supposed to be angry – is a real revelation for young women.” — Kathleen Hanna

47. “Furthermore, what you saw extended into the future. You sensed that this woman is about to say some very unkind words, probably in a loud and strident voice.” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

48. “What feminism sought to do, when you get right down to it, feminism was brought to us by a bunch of angry women whose major grievance and beef was with human nature and God.” — Rush Limbaugh

49. ”There are all these scripts where the women, if they’re working, are prostitutes and lawyers with an angry streak who’ll kill you. It’s a reaction to women leaving their men and men being angry about it and saying it on some subconscious level.” — Parker Posey

50. “No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are, we lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo’s Women’s War, the marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.” — Adrienne Rich

Is Angry Woman Syndrome a real thing?

The Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, is one of the world’s renowned medical journals.

According to JAMA, angry woman syndrome is an authentic medical condition.

In the January 1971 edition, JAMA published The Angry Woman Syndrome, noting, “Specific common denominators in the angry woman syndrome set it apart from any established present-day classification.”

The article goes on to note, “These symptoms are periodic outbursts of unprovoked anger, marital maladjustment, serious suicide attempts, proneness to abuse of alcohol and drugs, a morbidly oriented critical attitude to people and a contrary obsessive need to excel in all endeavors, with an intense need for neatness and punctuality.”

The case study looked into the lives of three women the author describes as people who experience a “constant striving for perfection,” leading to “their undoing.”

These experiments resulted in new conversations about the pressure many young women felt to be accepted in their communities.