Doug Engstrom

“I’m good at science because I’m not good at listening. I have been told that I am intelligent, and I have been told that I am simple-minded. I have been told that I am trying to do too much, and I have been told that what I have done amounts to very little. I have been told that I can’t do what I want to do because I am a woman, and I have been told that I have only been allowed to do what I have done because I am a woman. I have been told that I can have eternal life, and I have been told that I will burn myself out into an early death. I have been admonished for being too feminine and I have been distrusted for being too masculine. I have been warned that I am far too sensitive and I have been accused of being heartlessly callous. But I was told all of these things by people who can’t understand the present or see the future any better than I can. Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, nobody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along. I don’t take advice from my colleagues, and I try not to give it. When I am pressed, I resort to these two sentences: You shouldn’t take this job too seriously. Except for when you should.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“And Queen Elizabeth I even used profuse profane swearing as a way to strengthen her hold on the English crown. She liked to sprinkle her speech with “God’s death!”—still one of the most shocking phrases a sixteenth-century Englishman could utter. Man is the operative word here—women’s language was supposed to be both chaster and more devout than men’s. As one poet who worked at Elizabeth’s court put it, women should avoid indecent or irreligious words, because “the chief virtue of women is shamefastness … when they hear or see anything tending that way they commonly blush.” Elizabeth, though, swore “God’s death!” so often that even foreign ambassadors remarked on it. When”
― Melissa Mohr, Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

“In his influential treatise on manners, Galateo (1558), Giovanni Della Casa dictates that one should not sit with one’s back or posterior turned towards another, nor raise a thigh so high that the members of the human body, which should properly be covered with clothing at all times, might be exposed to view. For this and similar things are not done, except among people before whom one is not ashamed. It is true that a great lord might do so before one of his servants or in the presence of a friend of lower rank; for in this he would not show him arrogance but rather a particular affection and friendship. Della”
― Melissa Mohr, Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

“Modern translations of the Bible uniformly reject the richness of “him that pisseth,” replacing it with “every last male” (New International), “every male person” (New American Standard), or “every male” (English Standard).”
― Melissa Mohr, Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing