Love & Passion Quote by Clare Boothe Luce

Luce snaps the velvet glove off a “compliment” that’s really a leash. Being told she “thinks like a man” pretends to elevate her while quietly reaffirming male thought as the default setting and female intelligence as an exception that needs translation. Her refusal isn’t modesty; it’s a power move. She exposes the trap: praise that sounds progressive but functions as a gatekeeping ritual, granting women temporary visitor badges to the realm of reason.

“Thought has no sex” is a deliberately clean, almost clinical sentence, and that’s the point. Luce isn’t asking for inclusion; she’s denying the premise that intellect is gendered property. The follow-up lands like a verdict: “one either thinks or one does not.” No qualifiers, no “for a woman,” no special pleading. The rhetoric is binary on purpose, a way to starve the patronizing frame of oxygen.

The context matters: Luce built a public life in rooms designed to make women feel lucky to be present. As a dramatist (and later, a major political figure), she understood performance and audience management. This line is stagecraft aimed at hecklers and benefactors alike, cutting off the chuckle that often follows “she’s surprisingly smart.” It also carries a sly sting: if thought is sexless, then men who rely on gender as a credential are confessing they have little else.

The subtext is feminist without being sentimental: stop grading women on a curve. Stop calling equality a compliment.