Popular quotes about Women! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 27
Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can't have anything without women.
Nawal El SaadawiWe can see, from California to New York, from Maine to Florida, Seattle to New Mexico - everywhere there are women's groups. Everywhere there are women who have gotten together to examine global warming, and women who have gotten together to prepare each other for single parenting - there are women who have come together to be supportive to those whose mates are in prison, male or female, partners are in prison. All sorts of gatherings of women. I mean, I'm just celebrating my 80th year on this planet, and I look back 50 years ago and there was nothing like that.
Maya AngelouIf women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?" "Hah!" went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, "Haven't there been queens? Weren't they women of power?" "A queen's only a she-king," said Ged. She snorted. "I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.
Ursula K. Le GuinOn Girls I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. Itโs always shocking when people question whether itโs a feminist show. How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isnโt a dirty word. Itโs not like weโre a deranged group who think women should take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have.
Lena DunhamThere's a difference between hot women and beautiful women. Hot women are everywhere; they abound. They are beautified, not beautiful. Beautiful women, on the other hand, are rare and a real mystery. Hotness speaks to our impulses. Beauty speaks to our imagination.
Zan PerrionThere 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 FryeWe have an almost desperate need for more women to run for office and for more women to really gut it out after they have kids and stay in their jobs and get to high positions in companies. We need women at the top more than ever. We need women's voices there because they are very different than men's voices and they bring a very valuable and necessary point of view to the table.
Mika BrzezinskiMany ideas have been transformed by adding one crucial adjective-women's bank, women's music, women's studies, women's caucus. That adjective did more than change a phrase. It implied a lot of new content: child care, flexible work hours, new standards of creditworthiness, new symbolism, new lyrics.
Gloria SteinemIf you just look at the number of roles for women versus the number of roles for men in any given film, there are always far more roles for men. That's always been true. When I went to college, I went to Julliard. At that time - and I don't know if this is still true - they always selected fewer women than men for the program, because there were so few roles for women in plays. That was sort of acknowledgment for me of the fact that writers write more roles for men than they do for women.
Gillian JacobsSometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
Gillian FlynnI love women. I love their hearts. There are a lot of women who are suffering. A lot of women who have been disappointed, have been let down. One thing I'd like women to know is the message: Hold on. Hold on. Be faithful to your kids. Hold on for the future because life doesn't always necessarily stay the way that it is. It will get better.
Michele BachmannI've noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately. And when I look around the room at the women here and I think about the performances that I've watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy and sometimes not. Sometimes honourable and sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That's what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary and it's what turning me on.
Maggie GyllenhaalMany men I come across see women in an antagonistic way, and it's always the basis for a bad relationship. What I mean by that is men who come with pre-conceived notions that women are trying to tie them down, or hold them back, or that women are shallow, or that women are only attracted to money, or whatever it is.
Matthew Husseythe lost women I need to know their names those women I would have walked with, jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom I would have joined After a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names?
Lucille CliftonOne of the things women are very good at, that's networking. Women are not afraid to say, "I need." They're not afraid. Men won't even ask for directions. Women will tell each other when they need something. Women will tell each other when their husband is having an affair. Men don't do that.
Marlo Thomasif networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women.
Rosabeth Moss KanterI am in no position to judge other women, you know. But I mean, why did she get pregnant? It's not good for women to go through the procedure of abortion and have something living sucked out of their bodies. It belittles women. Even though some women say, 'Oh, I don't mind to have one,' every time a woman has an abortion, it just crushes her self-esteem smaller and smaller and smaller.
Dolores O'RiordanIf women take their bodies seriously and ideally we should then its full expression, in terms of pleasure, maternity, and physical strength, seems to fare better when women control the means of production and reproduction. From this point of view, it is simply not in women's interest to support patriarchy or even a fabled "equality" with men. That women do so is more a sign of powerlessness than of any biologically based "superior" wisdom.
Phyllis CheslerPeople ask me almost every day, "Why? You are successful, you have kids, you have grandchildren, so why?" Feminist women are seen as unsatisfied. But all women in the world, if they are well aware of inequality, are unsatisfied women. They don't have the same rights as men, and there is no freedom until there is equality between men and women.
Maria Teresa HortaHow do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We're the number one threat to women. Globally and historically, we're the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women... You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.
Louis C. K.I see certain parallels between the debate over feminism where some women argue that women should not be forced to stay at home and take care of children [and debate about hijab]. And there are other women who are saying you are criticizing my decision as a free liberated women to stay home and take care of my children.
Ari ShapiroWomen 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 GilbertWomen are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top - C-level jobs, board seats - tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.
Sheryl SandbergWhen 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 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 McCainI don't love women. Love has to be reinvented, we know that. The only thing women can ultimately imagine is security. Once they get that, love, beauty, everything else goes out the window. All they have left is cold disdain; that's what marriages live on nowadays. Sometimes I see women who ought to be happy, with whom I could have found companionship, already swallowed up by brutes with as much feeling as an old log.
Arthur RimbaudIt'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 AshrawiKatherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.
Philippa GregoryThere are many images and realities of what women are, become, can be - strong, vulnerable, dogged, determined, frail, brave, courageous. The faces of women are at once gentle, reflective, firm; steeped with a sense of self, the lives of women growing older are lives of care, toil, splendour and glory... the future is not to be feared.
Jocelynne ScuttWomen were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups.
Nawal El SaadawiWe have to nurture our young women and understand the beauty and the strength of being a woman. It's kind of a catch-22: Strength in women isn't appreciated, and vulnerability in women isn't appreciated. It's like, 'What the hell do you do?' What you do is you don't allow anyone to dictate who you are.
Jada Pinkett SmithMost of my writer friends are women, and they're all extremely talented, so of course I think the state of contemporary fiction for women is pretty great. Which is to say there is a ton of amazing work out there. These women are writing hard. There's much to be said. We're on it, chief.
Jami AttenbergAndrรฉe De Jongh story led me to other stories of women who joined the Resistance in France. I found literally dozens of memoirs written by women who had become spies and couriers and helped to create the escape network. These women were like action-star heroes.
Megan ChanceThere are so many issues that impact women. When we talk about prison reform, for example, women were [once] sterilized in women's prisons. When they were giving birth, they were asked to sign paperwork but they weren't even completely conscious of what they were signing. That sounds like something that would never happen in America, but it was happening, not just in America, but in [California], one of the most progressive states in the United States.
Patricia ArquetteWhen we talk about feminism - equality without apology for ALL - we can't be talking about for all white women or all highly educated women but all women, regardless of color, class, creed, sexual orientation or identity.
Christine PelosiThe argument that it is difficult to find women is complete BS. Any bank will tell you that the No. 1 employee they lose the most money on is the mid-tier female they bring on when they are 22 who leaves in her mid to late 30s. These are women they spend a ton of money training, and a ton of money attracting and hiring. And then they lose them. And they lose them for many reasons. They're going to other sectors, other industries. So for us in the financial-services world to say we can't find women is ridiculous. They are out there. We've done it here at Anthemis.
Amy NauiokasInvesting in women, helping women to achieve their dreams, sending young girls to college. Trying to train young girls to be leaders. Sponsoring the Minerva Awards. All of these programs didn't exist before that help women day in and day out.
Maria ShriverThe legacy of women's war work is our present post-industrial employment structure. It was the war that created the demand for a technologically advanced, de-skilled, low-paid, non-unionized female workforce and paved the way for making part-time work the norm for married women now. A generation later, it was the daughters of wartime women workers who completed their mothers' campaign for equal pay.
Linda GrantI'll tell you the truth - I went to a women's college, Barnard, the most selective college for women in America today. If there's one thing I came out of Barnard with, because it was a women's college and a great institution of higher education, it was fearlessness.
Anna QuindlenTheories by women about women have only recently begun to appear in print. Theories by men about women are abundant.
Patricia Ann Meyer SpacksIn 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information.
Joyce BandaI should have known you'd side with them. It's some sort of of male bonding thing to think women aren't capable of running their own lives." He nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. "It's ego and sheer desperation. We have to keep you thinking we're the superior species." "News flash, Jack - no women on the face of earth believes that anymore." He trailed kisses down her cheek. "But men don't know women know that. We still live in our fantasy world, so don't muck it up for us.
Christine FeehanA yet women -good women- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.
Charles BukowskiWhen we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women's rights. It's about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women's rights is one aspect of it, it's not the end-all, but I also think that the women's issue is the strongest entry point that we've got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman's issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It's the fastest path that we've got to making change happen.
Asra NomaniA lot of men these days are insecure in front of women, because women have become so strong. Men are very frustrated because they don't know what women want.
Pernille Fischer ChristensenWe segregate men from women, and no matter how many times we insist that men and women are equal, men and women should be treated the same, when it comes to the moment of excretion, even the most modern society - especially the most modern society - segregates two restrooms with little icons outside the doors, one wearing a dress, one wearing pants.
W. J. T. MitchellThe early feminists were pro-life. And really, abortion is a huge disservice to women, and it hasn't been presented that way. As Feminists for Life-what we're trying to do is support women, and so what we want to do is-reach women on campus-college campuses so that, when they get pregnant, they can find housing. They can find money they need to stay in school.
Patricia HeatonIf we are going to out-innovate, out-compete, out-educate other countries, it's going to be women who make a difference, it's women who are going to lead the way and you know, until women get that rightful place and decision making and leadership and growth, America won't realize all her potential.
Kirsten Gillibrand