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.

If you follow the voice inside you, it does give you guidance.

I don't know if fury can compete with necessity as the mother of invention, but I recommend it.

I can't mate in captivity.

It's not that women are less corruptible than men are, it's that women have had less chance to become corrupt.

Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same.

That's a huge fear for middle-class women. It's not so much a fear for poor women, because poor women have always assumed that they are going to have to support themselves. It's middle-class women who have this fantasy that somebody else is going to support them.