Controversial Sayings

The best kind of manumission (of slaves) is the manumission of the most expensive slave and the most beloved by his master.

No servant should be called a 'slave,' for all of you are the slaves of Allah. Rather, you should refer to him as 'my young man.' The servant should not refer to anyone as 'my lord,' but rather he should refer to him as 'my master.'

With regard to heretics two points must be observed, one on their side, the other on the side of the Church. As for heretics their sin deserves banishment, not only from the Church by excommunication, but also from this world by death.

To corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, is much graver than to counterfeit money, which supports temporal life.

Since forgers and other malefactors are summarily condemned to death by the civil authorities, with much more reason may heretics as soon as they are convicted of heresy be not only excommunicated, but also justly be put to death.

The inferiority of women lies not just in bodily strength but in force of intellect.

Feminine intellectual inferiority actually contributes to the order and beauty of the universe.

Women are by nature 'deficient and misbegotten.'

The essential value of her creation is 'for the generation of the species.'

Women are important not for any inherent value or virtue, but for their ability to reproduce.

Female subordination... is not a result of the fall, but part of the created order. Such female subordination, he argues, is actually 'for their own benefit and good.'

Strictly speaking, woman is a monster of nature.

In procreation the man is active, the woman is passive.

The rites of other infidels, which bear no truth or profit, are not to be tolerated in the same way, except perhaps to avoid some evil, for instance the scandal or disturbance that might result, or the hindrance to the salvation of those who, were th…

It is much graver to corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, than to forge money, which supports temporal life.

The general intellectual inferiority of women does not make them defective or inferior simply speaking, but only in the particular natural order, in comparison to most males and to beings with a more perfect nature—namely, the angels.

Without imperfection there would be no diversity, and without diversity the universe would not represent God in the best possible way.

When in 1 Corinthians 11:3 St. Paul says that 'man is the head of woman,' and in Ephesians 5:22 that 'a husband is the head of his wife,' Aquinas takes it as evident that if men are meant to rule, it can only be by virtue of intellectual superiority.

The male semen intends to produce a complete human being, a man, but at times it does not succeed and produces a woman. A woman is, therefore, a mas occasionatus, a failed male.

The state, therefore, which is bound to safeguard the complete well-being of its citizens, would be justified in putting such a man [a heretic] to death, removing him permanently from among men to whom he can do so much damage.