Popular quotes about Women! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men-that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.
Susan FletcherI wish you would stop and seriously consider, as a broad and long-term feminist political strategy, the conversion of women to a woman-identified and woman-directed sexuality and eroticism, as a way of breaking the grip of men on women's minds and women's bodies, of removing women from the chronic attachment to the primary situations of sexual and physical violence that is rained upon women by men, and as a way of promoting women's firm and reliable bonding against oppression. . . .
Marilyn FryePersonally I get so much of my inspiration from women in other countries, so I don't feel like American women are the leaders and I don't agree with the notion that Americans can accomplish more or do more. But I do think that what we can uniquely do here in America is mobilize and galvanize a lot of these ideas and resources. It's a war of ideas. We, Islamic women, are very well supported in this country by institutions, academic and nonprofit, that are already in the field endorsing women's rights and tolerance. The women in other communities have been the pioneers in this work.
Asra NomaniWhen we consider that each of us has only one life to live, isnโt it rather tragic to find men and women, with brains capable of comprehending the stars and the planets, talking about the weather; men and women, with hands capable of creating works of art, using those hands only for routine tasks; men and women, capable of independent thought, using their minds as a bowling-alley for popular ideas; men and women, capable of greatness, wallowing in mediocrity; men and women, capable of self-expression, slowly dying a mental death while they babble the confused monotone of the mob?
Neil GaimanFormerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old form, women were forced to obey an overbearing husband in the privacy of an unjust marriage. In the new form, the working single mother is economically abandoned by her former husband and ignored by a patriarchal society at large.
Arlie Russell HochschildThe media and even, to some degree, leaders of women's organizations don't understand that the women's movement is an absolute part of society now. It is in the consciousness, it is taken for granted. It is part of the way women look at themselves, and women are looked at.
Betty FriedanWomen are an enslaved population - the crop we harvest is children, the fields we work are houses. Women are forced into committing sexual acts with men that violate integrity because the universal religion - contempt for women - has as its first commandment that women exist purely as sexual fodder for men.
Andrea DworkinWhy don't you trust women to make this choice for themselves? We can encourage people to support life. Of course we can. But why don't you trust women? Why doesn't Donald Trump trust women to make this choice for themselves? That's what we ought to be doing in public life. Living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitement, convincing other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day but on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions.
Tim KaineWomen are far more likely to follow orders to evacuate, especially women with children. At the same time, women were much more likely to die during the South Asian tsunami. In some villages it was 3 to 1. And that was party because of the average strength it takes to hold onto something. Also it was cultural; women were less likely to know how to swim, as were children. So much of this is based on how we develop our own survival skills before something goes wrong: Even if nothing goes wrong, it might be good to know how to swim.
Amanda RipleyThe mechanism of violence is what destroys women, controls women, diminishes women and keeps women in their so-called place.
Eve EnslerI like women who havenโt lived with too many men. I donโt expect virginity but I simply prefer women who havenโt been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one canโt insist on love or demand affection. Youโre finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.
Charles BukowskiSport industry is not women versus men. My biggest champions a lot of the times in my career have been those men. Not that women necessarily wouldn't, but if there are no women in the room and the door is locked, it takes a guy to unlock the door for you and let you in. We have to get better at working together in that regard, as opposed to feeling like we need to crash the door down. You don't need to bring out the ax; sometimes you can just knock. And sometimes guys will open the door for you, but for so many women who felt like they had to fight so hard, we forget that they may be allies.
Jennifer WelterI think that one of the tasks of feminist women - mainly women of culture - in our time is to seek out those women who were only forgotten because they were women.
Maria Teresa HortaI had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.
Leah Ward SearsA materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' . . . What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one . . .
Monique WittigLouis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence.
Jeffrey RosenYou shouldn't hate another women because she is beautiful and you shouldn't hate yourself because another women is beautiful. Like, that's the trap that women fall into so much and they are like โShe is so beautiful I hate herโ. I could never say something like that about another women. I celebrate everyone's beauty. Celebrate their beauty and celebrate your own, find the beauty in yourself.
Cameron DiazWomen have always been more critical of marriage than men. The great mysterious irony of it is - at least it's the stereotype - that women want to get married and men are trying to avoid it. Marriage doesn't benefit women as much as men, and it never has. And women, once they are married, become very critical of marriages in a way that men don't.
Elizabeth GilbertIt is very difficult to understand why in this country [India] so much difference is made between men and women, whereas the Vedanta declares that one and the same conscious Self is present in all beings. You always criticize the women, but say what have you done for their uplift? Writing down Smritis etc., and binding them by hard rules, the men have turned the women into manufacturing machines! If you do not raise the women, who are living embodiment of the Divine Mother, donโt think that you have any other way to rise.
Swami VivekanandaAs indicated by the increase in maternal mortality in 2010, right now it's more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. Amnesty International reports that women in [the United States] have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy complications than women in forty-nine other countries (black women are almost four times as likely to die as white women). The United States spends more than any other country on maternal health care, yet our risk of dying or coming close to death during pregnancy or in childbirth remains unreasonably high.
Jessica ValentiWomen need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else...And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them....It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least.
John McCainThe most obvious ones inspiring me are probably women in political life. There are also many women in artistic endeavors, but if they're painters, you don't necessarily see them, or if they're actors, you see the role they're playing. In political life, you see women of enormous courage and smarts and humor, and that releases the talent, especially in little girls who are watching.
Gloria SteinemIt's not just a question of numbers. There will be more women (in parliament) who are conscious of women's rights ... There will also be women who are not committed to equality.
Hanan AshrawiThe time has come when women should pay for a gigolo. Why should only rich men have young, beautiful women? Rich women should have young, beautiful men.
Ruth WestheimerI have always felt that perhaps women have sometimes almost embraced the same values as men, and the same character as men, because they are in the men's world, and they are trying to fit into a system that men have created. And maybe in truth when there is a critical mass of women who play that role in governments, then we will see whether women can really manage power in a way that is less destructive than the way that men have used power.
Wangari MaathaiWhile I think men and women are equal, they are also different and I think it's inevitable and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy and an enormous number of women simply doing housework.
Tony AbbottWe are human behind and this part of our human nature that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands. In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, and that time I realized that education is very important, and education is the power for women. And that's why the terrorists are afraid of education. They do not want women to get education because then women will become more powerful.
Malala YousafzaiThough women may appear equal in some ways, and though we definitely have accomplished a lot, the fact is one in one women will still experience sexual violence at some point in their lives; a mere 17 percent of the U.S. Senate is female; women still only make 77 cents for every man's dollar - and that's not even taking into consideration global issues like sex trafficking or honor killings. We still need feminism, it's just not as easy for people - especially people in an incredibly privileged country like America - to always see that.
Julie ZeilingerWomen will work out their destinies โ much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women.
Swami VivekanandaIf you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you how wonderful you are, you'll never get anything done. Women need to get over being women. I'm tired of that socialization of women; that we are always supposed to be sitting around pleasing somebody.
Nikki GiovanniNo other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
Bell HooksI read a lot of studies about the fact that there is a bias in the way health care is doled out, down to the fact that most medical studies are done on men, not women, so most dosages are planned for men, not women, and on and on. And more than that, women's pain is gauged differently and their complaints are received differently. And the idea that there's a place where you can go where everything is geared toward you, as a woman, is great. But it's a shame that we need to find places that are "safe" when the world, the whole world, should be a safe place.
Shonda RhimesWe're not going to fix the sexual harassment epidemic unless we can acknowledge that this is not a women's issue, this is a man's issue. The burden should not be on the shoulders of women only to solve this, because we can't do it alone and it's not fair. We're seeing now the tsunami of all these women coming forward, which is such a blessing. But the tipping point will be when men in the workplace decide to be our allies.
Gretchen CarlsonI grew up surrounded by these tough, ballsy, strong women. They were also adoring women, but they were the kind of women who would argue over what kind of pants you were wearing or the color of your nail polish.
Michael KorsThese are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.
Catherynne M. ValenteJust as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in.
Edward BernaysOverall, I have formed three major organizations: the National Association of Business Women, the Young Women's Leaders Network, and the Joyce Banda Foundation. Under the foundation, we have a huge program that targets women to teach them about HIV and other diseases and to give them economic empowerment.
Joyce BandaWomen don't like guys who are dangerous. Women just want us to think that because women are trying to kill us.
Dennis MillerWe have a lot of women on the staff, obviously. It's a predominantly female writing staff and we hire the best people. It's not like we go we need more women or we need four women directing.
Callie KhouriWomen are the primary resource of the planet. They give birth, we come from them. They are mothers, they are visionaries, they are the future. If we can figure out how to make women feel safe and honor women, it would be parallel or equal to honoring life itself.
Eve EnslerThere is a lot of gender segregation. You still have many poor women who work in women-only jobs. In the family, in most cases, only women have the double job of working outside the home and taking care of the family.
Alix Kates ShulmanSure they say we (women) are life givers not takers, but guess what, most women can multi-task and be life givers and fighters. Boxing is not a life-taking sport. Boxing is not a violent sport; it's an art, a dance, a science. Sometimes the smarter boxer wins and sometimes the stronger boxer wins. Of course aggression is a feminine quality. It's a quality that exists in human beings whether they are men or women.
Sonya LamonakisIf editors truly want to improve their byline ratio, they need to stop lamenting the fact that few women journalists send them cold pitches and start taking a hard look at their stable of regular contributors. How many women are on the masthead? How many women columnists or bloggers are on the payroll? This is how real change is going to happen.
Ann FriedmanWomen are God's last creation. You suppose he's saying, "What should I do to follow this?" Well, it's really a head -scratcher. I think women are absolutely wonderful. I think this world is going to be governed by women.
Merle HaggardThe talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.
Dale SpenderPrejudice against womenis many, many times intensified against older women. You are viewed not as an intellect but as a body.... Astonishingly, even women's liberation has paid extraordinarily little attention to the older woman and to the fact that her job is limited because she is [older]. They say that women shouldn't be sex objects, but you damned well better be a sex object if you want to get ahead in television.
Elinor GuggenheimerI feel like we're looked at as either completely nonsexual characters or overly sexual characters, and I feel like that affects how we're treated in the public space by men. I believe that women of color experience street harassment in a very hyper way. So I wanted to draw these women in their very normal, regular states and put those images out there in the public for people to see, instead of these other, very sexualized, images of women.
Tatyana FazlalizadehEvery time a journalist will say: "Can women be funny? Can women be pilots? Can women be scientists?" It's less of a question and more of a statement after a while that makes you believe that maybe we can't. I think that's dangerous. I was really happy that I didn't have those barriers, but now I recognize the barriers of many other people.
Katherine Ryan