The need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. It's women's version of the Golden Rule.

The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.

The young women seem to think that they can only go out with or marry a man who is superior to them. The problem there is that they are wanting to be defeated, as opposed to finding a partner.

To punish the individual for the sins of the system makes no sense. We're responsible for changing it, yes. But we can't actually invent another universe, so we have to start where we are.

More than poverty, more than degree of education, religion, access to natural resources, even degree of democracy - violence against females is the biggest indicator of whether a country will be violent in itself or be willing to use military violence against another country.

There's no such thing as post-feminism. It's like saying post-democracy, excuse me, what does that mean? We're nowhere near equality, so the very idea of post-feminism is ridiculous. The same people who 30-40 years ago said the women's movement is not necessary, 'it's going against nature, my wife is not interested' [are] the same people now saying 'well it used to be necessary but not anymore.' The very invention of the word post-feminism is the current form of resistance.

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.