Politics & Power Quote by Clare Boothe Luce

The joke lands because it flips a tired stereotype with a scalpel, then twists it inside the very institution that manufactures public speech for a living. Luce takes the old line about women being “too talkative” and answers with a piece of procedural theater: the filibuster, that grand ritual of male loquacity elevated into rule and tradition. It’s not just a punchline; it’s an indictment of how power gets to define what counts as “too much.”

The intent is double-edged. On the surface, it’s a zinger aimed at chauvinism. Underneath, it’s a critique of Congress as a stage where endless talk is treated as seriousness when men perform it, but becomes a character flaw when attributed to women. The subtext is about legitimacy: who gets to speak without being dismissed as annoying, shrill, or excessive. Luce’s line suggests that the problem was never speech itself, but which voices were allowed to occupy public time and call it governance.

Context matters: Luce wasn’t only a dramatist with an ear for timing; she was also a prominent political figure in mid-century America, moving in circles where women were treated as guests in rooms built by men. By invoking the filibuster, she picks the most institutionalized form of “talking too much” imaginable and pins it to male authority. The wit is doing political work: making hypocrisy look ridiculous, and making exclusion sound, finally, like the least reasonable thing in the room.