Popular quotes about Women! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 3
Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who use to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with any more. It doesn't matter who the individual women are.
Andrea DworkinWomen 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 SaadawiI 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 ValentiI feel that the thing about film and particularly about TV, actually, is it's being created now. We're living in the best time so far because there are many more women writing and women directing, women producing, and people are finally catching on to the fact that women want to go and buy tickets to see female characters and more than one in a film. So I actually think it's a very fertile time to be a woman over 40.
Cynthia NixonOn 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 DunhamWhat business needs now is exactly what women are able to provide, and at the very time when women are surging into the work force. But perhaps even more important than work force numbers is the fact that women - who began this sweeping entry in the mid-seventies - are just now beginning to assume positions of leadership, which give them the scope to create and reinforce the trends toward change. The confluence is fortunate, an alignment that gives women unique opportunities to assist in the continuing transformation of the workplace.
Sally HelgesenWomen lead in ways different from men's. Men, I think, have been programmed to give orders. Women have been programmed to motivate people, to educate them, to bring out the best in them. Ours is a less authoritarian leadership. I think women tend to play hardball less often. This is the trend of office politics anyway: the days of warring factions are over. We're talking now in terms of cooperation, and I think that is the game women play best.
Muriel FoxI like women who havenโt lived with too many men. I donโt expect virginity but I simply prefer women who havenโt been rubbed raw by experience. There is a quality about women who choose men sparingly; it appears in their walk in their eyes in their laughter and in their gentle hearts. Women who have had too many men seem to choose the next one out of revenge rather than with feeling. When you play the field selfishly everything works against you: one canโt insist on love or demand affection. Youโre finally left with whatever you have been willing to give which often is: nothing.
Charles BukowskiIt is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different - men and women live in different worlds. [...] At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.
Gavin de BeckerIt was long assumed that heart disease manifested the same in men and women. But Dr. Legato found that men may experience the classic symptoms of chest pain that radiates down the left arm. Women often have symptoms including shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, and back or jaw pain. A gender-neutral approach left many women under-diagnosed and under-treated and as a result many women died needlessly.
Jed DiamondThere still aren't enough[ roles for women of color]. And I'd say that's the case, not only for African-American women, but for all women in the Hollywood game. It's just slim pickings, and a very challenging time for us. I think that's why more of us need to work our way behind the camera in order to create roles that really illuminate who women are. We still have room for growth in that area, without a doubt.
Jada Pinkett SmithIf 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 CheslerTo me, there's two definitions of feminism. One is that you believe that women are equal human beings; that's not really a philosophy, it's just obvious. And the other is that you're actually fighting for women: you're promoting women and working towards the betterment of women.
Stephen MarcheIn real life, I knew that fandom was made up of women, and women of color, and women of all ages. But on the publishing side of comics, it was a lot of white, straight men. It was often jarring to me to be the only women at a meeting or at a panel at a comic-con. Fortunately I had mentors who were not blinded by my gender and who said, "Yes, we know you can write these books." That hasn't been the case for everyone. What gives me great hope is that in the eight to nine years since I've started, I've seen tremendous growth.
Marjorie M. LiuI 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 RimbaudI don't believe you know anything about a man like me or a country like this. It takes rough men, Miss Fair, to tame a rough country; rough men, but good men. Your father is in that class. As for you, I don't think you'd measure up, and you'll do well to leave it. You're a hothouse flower, very soft, very appealing and very useless...In the world you are going to, men want pretty useless women. They want toys for their lighte moments, and we have those women out here, too, only we have another name for them. We want women who can make a home, and if need be, handle a rifle.
Louis L'AmourWe are human behind and this part of our human nature that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands. In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, and that time I realized that education is very important, and education is the power for women. And that's why the terrorists are afraid of education. They do not want women to get education because then women will become more powerful.
Malala YousafzaiWomen had always been thought of as looking after the family when men go and earn an income and they're the bread earner and so on. So there is a kind of generation of inequality, [and], on top of the fact, women have pregnancies and periods, [and] when the children are very small, there are greater demands on their time. So one way or another women have had a pretty rough deal in the past, and there's no reason why that should continue, and any country that has tried to remedy that has succeeded in doing so.
Amartya SenMen's sexuality is mean and violent, and men so powerful that they can reach WITHIN women to fvck/construct us from the inside out. Satan-like, men possess women, making their wicked fantasies and desires women's own. A woman who has sex with a man, therefore, does so against her will, even if she does not feel forced.
Judith LevineThere is not a revolution that succe Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed.
Nawal El SaadawiFeminism or the family? Carried to excess maybe. I have insisted that women cannot be defined solely in those terms. But for a great many women - not all, because we are only beginning to realize and affirm the diversity of women themselves - choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice.
Betty FriedanI'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much.
Kirk DouglasIt's easy to pretend 'to be fierce and fearless because living your truth takes real courage. Real fearless and fierce women admit mistakes and they work to correct them. We stand up and we use our voices for things other than self promotion. We don't stand by and let racism and sexism and homophobia run rapid on our watch. Real fearless and fierce women complement other women and we recognize and embrace that their shine in no way diminishes our light and that it actually makes our light shine brighter.
Gabrielle UnionWe 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 bonding of women that is woman-loving, or Gyn/affection, is very different from male bonding. Male bonding has been the glue of male dominance. It has been based upon recognition of the difference men see between themselves and women, and is a form of the behaviour, masculinity, that creates and maintains male powerโฆ Male comradeship/bonding depends upon energy drained from women.
Sheila JeffreysThe 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 HeatonI think we have to keep putting women's sports in the limelight. I thought the Women's World Cup did a wonderful job of showing the quality of women's soccer. But we also need coverage and marketing and press and getting these female athletes to become household names.
Becky SauerbrunnJust as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in.
Edward BernaysViolence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime; and it is always unacceptable. Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves.
Ban Ki-moonI don't think you can be successful in television without appealing to women. I don't think it's possible. I think that men like women. It doesn't really matter what they do - they love anything. But women don't necessarily like every woman, so I think that's a challenge to get the female audience to not only relate to you but also like you.
Maggie QEconomic equity is an enormous empowerment of women. Having jobs that provide income means that women can be a more effective force, a more equal force, in the political process. Women with income take themselves more seriously and they are taken more seriously.
Betty FriedanIn acknowledging woman-to-woman help it is important to recognize that power, within the family and elsewhere, can be used vindictively, and that it is not only powerful men who abuse women; women with power may also abuse other women.
Sheila KitzingerWe do objectify women in our culture. We're starting to objectify men a little bit more. And there is nothing wrong with that. Objectify maybe is the wrong word. Celebrate their bodies and use beautiful men, beautiful women as a tool to get your attention and to sell things. But no-one - we're very, very uncomfortable in our culture with looking at a naked man. You know, naked women are everywhere, selling everything. And again, this is quite sexist. But naked men make us nervous.
Tom FordFor he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
Milan KunderaIf editors truly want to improve their byline ratio, they need to stop lamenting the fact that few women journalists send them cold pitches and start taking a hard look at their stable of regular contributors. How many women are on the masthead? How many women columnists or bloggers are on the payroll? This is how real change is going to happen.
Ann FriedmanThe 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 SpenderDid I not feel that the time has come for the questions of women's wrongs to be laid before the public? Did I not believe that women herself must do this work, for women alone understand the height, the depth, the breadth of her degradation. - Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
Elizabeth Cady StantonThankfully, 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 HarbachThere are some die-hard male chauvinist pigs and there are some Neanderthal women who are threatened by equality - but the great majority, polls say 65% to 75% of women of America, of all ages, absolutely identify with the complete agenda of the women's movement: equal opportunity for jobs, education, professional training, the right to control your own body - your own reproductive process, freedom of choice, child care-the whole agenda.
Betty FriedanPresident Obama understands women. He trusts women. And on every issue that matters to us, he stands with women.
Cecile RichardsI firmly believe that if you help a woman, then you educate a child, you help the family. Because women are very focused on health care and education and on the family. So if you help a woman, you help the family, you help the village, you help the country. And so empowering women is a very important part of moving, not just women forward, but the economy of the nation forward. Particularly in very substandard nations.
Carolyn MaloneyWomen govern us; let us render them perfect: the more they are enlightened, so much the more shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men.
Richard Brinsley SheridanMen have to be hooked. Women don't need that. Women go freely into anything. That's their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women have to be contained
Carlos CastanedaFeminists have convinced themselves that any difference between men and women is oppression and that women in the United States are an oppressed minority. This is such a lie. American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth.
Phyllis SchlaflyPeople say I'm into black women. Robert De Niro is into black women. I'm just into women who are real, and they happen to be black.
Bill MaherWe have not ratified The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Among Women. I think 194 countries have signed onto it, but the United States has not. And CEDAW to the United Nations is what the Equal Rights Amendment or the women's equality amendment is to the United States. I think we should pass the women's equality amendment and a lot of these other fights would go away.
Carolyn MaloneyWe cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purveyยญors of resource lists.
Gloria E. Anzaldรบa