First man or woman may refer to:
- The spouse of an elected head of state, see First Lady, First Gentleman.
- First Man, the biography of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
- The earliest anatomically modern human remains Homo sapiens idaltu
- The first person created in one of the religious or mythical accounts of creation (see list below).
Various creation myths describe the legendary first human. In theology and literary studies, the word protoplasts is used as a technical term for the first people in this sense. In each case it can be either male, female, or a couple.
Famous quotes containing the words man or woman, man and/or woman:
“What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that I care. Only, if such is God’s will, and Fate and Evolution—let there be God!”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“There was a girl who was running the traffic desk, and there was a woman who was on the overnight for radio as a producer, and my desk assistant was a woman. So when the world came to an end, we took over.”
—Marya McLaughlin, U.S. television newswoman. As quoted in Women in Television News, ch. 3, by Judith S. Gelfman (1976)