Popular quotes about Women! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 23
Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today's warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.
Hillary ClintonI ask myself a lot how other women can be against the ideology that has to do with women empowering other women. Going along with the access of power and the status quo and forging a special position and the thought process that goes: I am not like those women. When it comes to things like assault, for example, perhaps it makes them feel safer. It's the denial: I'm okay. This won't happen to me. Acknowledging that the world is a profoundly unsafe for women is a scary thought.
Jessica ValentiWomen had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women - women who had money. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be very charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to the court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in - older women and younger men.
Louise BourgeoisThere is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.
Marilyn FryeSport 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 WelterThereโs something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. Itโs a different perspective. It is a reflection as opposed to an interpretation, and I think we get a lot of interpretations about the lives of women that are not coming from women.
Ava DuVernayWhat's really appealing about women's cycling in America? If you took a poll in the women's peloton, I would bet you that 90% of the women have college degrees, and a lot of them have Masters. The women's peloton is very well educated.
Kristin ArmstrongOnce in a Cabinet we had to deal with the fact that there had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One minister suggested a curfew; women should stay home after dark. I said, 'But it's the men who are attacking the women. If there's to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.
Golda MeirWhen men write women, they tend to write women the way they want women to be, or the way they resent women for being. They don't really - they seldom nail it. It takes a woman to write a really good female character. I like that.
Simon PeggWomen like me. Women love me, so if I really wanted to involve the women, I don't have to assault the women.
Bikram ChoudhuryHere's my feeling: For everyone, men and women, it's important to be a feminist. It's important to have female characters. It's wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it's just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa. In my line of work, having Greg Daniels be such a great mentor to me is fantastic. Finding a writer's assistant, be it a man or a woman, and encouraging them to think with a feminist perspective, is key.
Mindy KalingIt'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 AshrawiOne of the reasons that women are kept in a state of economic degradation- because that's what it is for most women- is because that is the best way to keep women sexually available.
Andrea DworkinWhen we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and the world... There is a stimulative and ripple effect that kicks in when women have greater access to jobs and the economic lives of our countries: Greater political stability. Fewer military conflicts. More food. More educational opportunity for children... By harnessing the economic potential of all women, we boost opportunity for all people.
Hillary ClintonGuys constantly talk about pornography in two ways: as revenge and as reassurance. When you live in a world in which beautiful, sexy women are all around you, in the same classes, on the same athletic field, competing for the same jobs, then the pornographic world - the world in which women thrill to male sexual desire - reassures men that although they may feel "one down," they're still entitled to women's bodies.
Michael KimmelWhether outside work is done by choice or not, whether women seek their identity through work, whether women are searching for pleasure or survival through work, the integration of motherhood and the world of work is a source of ambivalence, struggle, and conflict for the great majority of women.
Sara Lawrence-LightfootWomen 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 VivekanandaWhy do magazines do this to women? It's all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they're not good enough. And when women don't feel like they're good enough, guess what? Men win. That's how they keep us down.
Candace BushnellIf there's a distinction between men and women, I don't pay attention to it. Honestly, I don't see it. I think all of us are part feminine and part masculine. I'm sure sociologists can come up with distinctions about what's different between men and women, but for every example you can give about what a woman does, you can come up with an opposite example of other women who don't do that. Those are more artificial distinctions, I think.
Wayne DyerLetโs not ask Barbara Walters about how Muslim women feel. Letโs not ask Tom Brokaw how Muslim women feel. Letโs not ask CNN, ABC, FOX, The London Times, or the Australia Times. Letโs not ask non-Muslims how Muslim women feel, how they live, what are their principles, and what are their challenges. If you want to be fair, ask a Muslim woman. Ask my wife. Ask my mother. Ask a Muslim woman who knows her religion, who has a relationship with her Creator, who is stable in her society, understands her responsibilities. Ask her.
Khalid YasinI'm not writing about things other women do. I'm writing for other women to have more self-confidence because I need it myself! And if more women were in power, I would feel more comfortable.
Sheryl SandbergHence both women and children must be educated with an eye to the constitution, if indeed it makes any difference to the virtue of a city-state that its children be virtuous, and its women too. And it must make a difference, since half the free population are women, and from children come those who participate in the constitution.
AristotleOverall, 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 BandaThere is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions arenโt needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up.
Lena DunhamYou believe in equality for women and men. And that means that, not only do you believe in it kind of in the abstract but you actively think people should seek it when it comes to the way you hire people, the way you compensate people, the way you treat women and men in professional settings and school, whatever the case, giving them equal opportunities without disadvantaging them because of their, for the fact that they're women. And to me that's what it means for me to be a feminist. I don't think it's that controversial.
John LegendWithout seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity.
Thomas HuxleyThe only thing I consciously avoid is playing the victim. I think women are portrayed as the victim in so many things, and I really like women with strength - although I feel now I may have gone overboard by playing so many strong, sassy women.
Kristen BellClearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.
Alice WalkerI would ... go up to the mailbox and sit in the grass, waiting. ... Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to go gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. ... If there were woman all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be.
Alice MunroI thought that the R&B / Hip-Hop world really hasn't been explored on film and there's some issues that we're going through right now. It's in a very dangerous place , for women especially, both in terms of the songs that men are singing about. You know, R&B used to be a safe place for women and now it just seems like the songs coming out are so angry but also what women have to come out with. You have to get noticed. You see, it's like a script to follow. You come out hyper sexualized but what happens when you can't pull back from that. That's not authentic to yourself.
Gina Prince-BythewoodI don't know if I'm a feminist, as much as I really love being a woman and I'm proud to be a woman. I love everything about it. That might come closest. I definitely have nothing against men or men having their power. I do think that the whole thing with equal rights and paying women equally, it's disgusting. I think in this day and age, if you still have issues with women, then that's weird. I'm definitely for women winning. We're such a wild species, we have so much to offer. I'm all about that - being for ourselves.
Macy GrayI don't like to use the words "real women," honestly. I like to use the word woman. And I say that because there are so many women out there who are naturally thin, or are naturally curvy, and I think when we start putting a label on the type of woman it gets misconstrued and starts to offend people. At the end of the day we just all want to be known as women or models or actresses or whatever.
Ashley GrahamThe 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 SpenderIn our society, as women filmmakers, we are expected to make films that empower women and that raise awareness about women's issues. That is a huge misconception.
Esra SaydamAn ethic of maternalism was central to the utopianism of 19th century feminists. I don't think that today's women see motherhood as a source of personal power, let alone political power. I don't think that women now have that same sense that their lives as mothers gives them any special power or virtue. I think women see their lives as mothers as an adjunct to their working lives - a fulfilling and important adjunct, to be sure - but something they do in addition to working in the public realm, not because being a wife and mother gives them a distinct edge in improving the world as we know it.
Clare WrightAs women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?
Erica JongThankfully, it is getting better for women composers. We now have five women Pulitzer Prize winners in music since 1983: Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Shulamit Ran, Melinda Wagner, Jennifer Higdon, and Caroline Shaw. When Marin Alsop was asked what it felt like to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, she said, "I am exceedingly proud to be 'the first' but I am also a bit shocked that there can still be firsts for women in 2013!"
Barbara HarbachYou know what the biggest fear among women who age is becoming bag women. They're 55, 60, with no relationship and no job, and they worry about it. Look, the dirty little secret is the women listening to me know that this is a very factual assessment of our culture today, and it is very unfair, and it hurts, and it bothers them greatly.
Rush LimbaughMartina Navratilova is not a 'girl,' nor is Debi Thomas or Katarina Witt, and the women skaters weren't 'cute' in 1988. The problem with describing women as girls is that they never grow up and therefore can't take positions of authority in the world of sport. But the good news is that you can change language, so ultimately you can change the picture of women in sports.
Anita DeFrantzI shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Susan B. AnthonyWomen of color have no call to trust white women until white women take a gander at the world around them, investigate, learn and annihilate ignorance founded in being white in a society where the perspective and voice presented to the general public is white.
Inga MuscioOur world has created a false unrealistic image of what women are supposed to look like and act like. But the truth is that every woman was not created by God to be skinny, with a flawless complexion and long flowing hair. Not every woman was intended to juggle a career as well as all of the other duties of being a wife, mother, citizen, and daughter. Single women should not be made to feel they are missing somenthing because they are not married. Married women should not be made to feel they must have a career to be complete. We must have the freedom to be our individual selves.
Joyce MeyerI can say I love working with women. Film is a man's world, and I really appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with women, especially young women.
Olivia ThirlbyTaxing Women is a must-have primer for any woman who wants to understand how our current tax system affects her family's economic condition. In plain English, McCaffery explains how the tax code stacks the deck against women and why it's in women's economic interest to lead the next great tax rebellion.
Patricia SchroederOnly men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
Anatole FranceI think there's a part of society that is very for women being confident and being empowered, but I think there's another part of society that feels very threatened by women being powerful. Because of the feminist movement, a lot of women are feeling way more empowered to be themselves and do what they want to do in life.
Harnaam KaurIt's not that I believe women are more ethical. I will say that one of women's greatest weaknesses is probably our greatest strength. We are incredibly hard on each other. We ask all the questions. Men are more easygoing. If you've ever been in a group of women, you'll recognize this: Nobody gives one woman the opportunity to lead the way without asking a whole lot of questions.
Vicki DonlanWomen are human beings, and human beings are a very mixed lot. I've always been against the idea that women were Victorian angels, that they could do no wrong. I've always thought it was horseshit and does nobody any good. Remember, Lizzie Borden got off largely because the cultural agenda had convinced people that women were morally superior to men, so Lizzie Borden was "incapable" of taking the ax and giving her mother 40 whacks.
Margaret Atwood