I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn't want to be an academic.

Development can indeed continue beyond childhood and youth, beyond the seventies. It can continue until the very end of life, given purposes that challenge and use our human abilities. . . . In sum, our development does not necessarily end at any age. We can continue to develop into our eighties, even to our nineties.

the new mystique is that women can have it all. There's a whole new generation of women today, flogging themselves to compete for success according to the male model - in a work world structured for men with wives to handle the details of life.

We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn't mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she "adjust" to prejudice and discrimination.

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.